[UE4] Possessed Tree - outdoor/forest environment [WIP]

Grusti

Hi polycount! I'm glad to make something for you and want feedback in return

My latest environment heavily inspired by "Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice", Dark Souls and "Witcher 3". 

Firstly it was an environment that I was wanting to create while studying at CGMA in first semester of vegetation class by Jeremy Huxley but didn't have much time to finish it. After some time I decided to bring the case to the end.

long story short this is what I have right now and suggestions and feedback are welcome

LATEST


My main references:

Grusti

No vfx and post processing in scene right now

FreneticPonies

Looking nice! A neat hack you might try, generate signed distance fields for the scene, including the tree. Then turn on volumetric fog, and sdf occlusion for fog from the skylight. It should give the fog a more volumetric feel without the need for any direct lighting, up the atmosphere a bit.

IgorKlints

Well done!

gd6

Very atmospheric!

Grusti

Main stone for extraction shit that comes out of the tree

Grusti

done with assets and want to spend more time working on lighting and fx for now. No "post process"  in scene right now

feedback more than welcome

frmdbl

Very solid work, you definitely convey the desired atmosphere.

Purely visually though, this previous shot looks better to me.
It's probably partly due to the composition, but also the grass meshes transition into the ground too visibly in my opinion.

Grusti

little update before I start to bake light in production mode because I screwed up with previous bake T_T

Forest_Cat

Looks very cool!

Sbcas74

Awesome!

Shyralon

This looks incredible, especially the last images are a huge improvement, love the overcast mood.
Would you mind sharing your approach to the lighting?
I was attempting a similar light setup a while ago but found it very hard to not make it look flat and boring.

Grusti

Shyralon - Thank you! I will try to do a breakdown for this scene in near future, stay tuned ^^

marsilainen

Mood and the ambience is marvellous.  I do like the hulking main tree but it looks a bit "rounded".  In the references, there's usually fewer short small branches and the long main brances are more pronounced and have sharper angles and twists. This helps with the silhouette i think.

Grusti

Final artwork! More info about creation process and gifs will come later. More shots you can see on my artstation page 
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nkmbEcreation process will

Klaus Hustle

Really loving it! I'm a huge dark souls guy, i could imagine this to be somewhere in dark souls 3, great job!

When you're doing the ground, are you coloring the actual models of the twigs and leafs in zbrush for instance, or do you colorize it all together when you're done with the model of the map in photoshop?

Grusti

For you guys who interested in process of how I made my scene!

I wrote an article for 80lv

Enjoy! Hope it will be helpful

https://80.lv/articles/creating-an-ominous-scene-in-ue4-ilya-ivanov/