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[UE4] Last Bastion

polycounter lvl 6
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Luxap polycounter lvl 6
Hiya guys!

This most recent screenshot down below this line is going to get updated every time I do an update.

Final Update Screenshot




This being said, first post intro!

It's been a long while since I posted on this forum but its about time I get back into it.

This time I wanted to start building an asset package to then put on the Unreal Marketplace when it's done.
I will probably update this post at least once a week to not dull things down to much by spamming everyday.

Why create an assetpackage you say?

I am an environment artist working in the gameindustry, passionate about creating environments both in my professional time and personal time.
The issue that I have is that whenever I create my environments I have to spend such a big amount of time starting from scratch every time, which is why I want to create these packs to build up a library which both allows me to make a bit of money on the side and create future environments way quicker.

The good thing about this is, is that I will be testing the pack myself intensely as I will be creating portfolio work with these assets as well.

Current pack: Industrial


Starting out with an industrial pack seems like a good start for an assetpackage, allows for good modular use and is fairly general in it's use cases.

Additions

Planned

  • Finished different sets of pipes and scaffolding
  • Create a mix of tileable and unique materials
  • Creating 5 LOD levels for each asset
  • Making correct lightmaps 

Feedback


As I am going along posting updates, I would love your input on this pack, so leave a reply with some feedback or just stuff that you want to see included in this pack.
Also, if you have some nice pointers what to keep in mind and such feel free to share it down below!

Thanks for reading through this!

Replies

  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6
    Adding/refnining meshes and adding base materials

    Last couple of days I have been focusing on adjusting a lot of meshes expanding on the current asset count and adjusting the ones that I had going before and optimising them in any way I could.


    Click image for larger version  NameTimothyDries_04022018_01jpg Views2 Size2133 KB ID1423437

    I have also started adding interiors to the tunnels, they add to the polycount, but they can be more versatile in their usage.

    Click image for larger version  NameTimothyDries_04022018_03jpg Views1 Size1460 KB ID1423436

    Click image for larger version  NameTimothyDries_04022018_02jpg Views1 Size1725 KB ID1423435

    Click image for larger version  NameTimothyDries_04022018_05jpg Views1 Size2057 KB ID1423438

    Going to try and nail down the amount of assets and thing that I am going to need to make this assetpack worth while.
    I was thinking of adding in some walls/roofs so I can have some basic structures, but need to test this first, because I think it's going to overflow the amount of assets in the pack.

    Let me know what you guys think!
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6
    Lighting, more assets and new scene update!

    This week I have spent a lot of time refining the amount of assets I currently have/need for the pack together with some additional extra's that could be nice (adding them on the fly), they might just be a temporary thing, only time will tell! :D

    I was also thinking about adding some basic structures to it, as mentioned in the previous update.
    But I think that is only going to be an unnecessary expansion at least for this pack.

    Onto the good stuff!
    Screenies for both night and day :D



    Getting to a good place on the day shot, but the night spot still needs some more work in terms of lighting and I don't know if this scene is the best I can build myself, will need to do some more experimentation!



    An overview of the assets, missing some of the latest additions though.



    Other than making a lot of changes to the scene itself and the lighting there were a massive amount of changes to all of the meshes as well, adding interiors to all of the piping and making other assets more believable in terms of proportions and scale.

    Until next week!


  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6
    Unwrapping, texturing and lighting

    Spent last week improving on all the assets, doing a lot of uving and texturing.
    Also spent a ton of time improving the lighting and just the scene in general, I like where this is going, kinda finding a steady pace now.

    There is still a lot of stuff to make though!

    I was also thinking about making a material which layers dirt on top of meshes in Unreal, which would be really useful for all the different pipes so you can still have some dirt on it and be able to rotate it.





    Allrighty guys,
    See you all next week!

    Tim
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    looking good! I think these places are sometimes immense and have an epic sense of scale with tall chimneys going high into the sky I think thats, it feels a bit tightly constricted at the moment to me which is cool too if thats what youre going for.
  • Olingova
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    Olingova interpolator
    Great job on the lighting , those really intense spotlights reaaaally add something good :) maybe i would try to mess up a bit with the hue jsut to see what happen...

    For the pack himself, i think it might be interresting to already build some kind of "prefabs", i guess placing every platform by hand took you ages :p 
  • CybranM
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    CybranM interpolator
    I like the amount of wear on the pipes, its there but not overdone. The whole scene looks good, I'm looking forward to more :smile:
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6
    @Ged

    Thanks for the input! You are def right, I'll see if I can fix that this coming week :)

    @Olingova

    Tbh, it doesn't take that long, but man! Having modules ready to go is a supersweet idea, and not something I though about, so I'll def look at it.
    Appreciate it greatly :D

    @CybranM

    Glad you like it, looking forward to bringing the next update as well


  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    yea I agree, in addition to the assets, some grid snapped setups of various sizes would be super useful to level designers and save a TON of time in constructing environments. Pre-fabs save sooooo much time its crazy.  just selecting one prefab vs having to select 30 objects to move a chunk of the world can save 100s of man hours over the course of a 2 year production.
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6
    Thanks for dropping by @PixelMasher!
    All of the assets are aligned to the 10 grid inside of unreal, so that should really help people build stuff.
    When you talk about different grid snapped sizes, is having everything build to be used on the 10 unit grid size enough? Or what would you suggest?
    But yeeah, def going to make myself some nice and handy prefabs! :hushed:
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    More unwrapping and texturing!

    Spent last week unwrapping different assets and getting some good base textures going, these include a new set of pipes and a smaller silo.
    I want to get some base textures going for all the different assets before I start to properly finalise them.

    The sad thing is, is that I haven't had as much time to work on this if I liked, but still did a fair chunk of work




    Allrighty,
    Short and sweet this week I'm going to catch some sleep!

    Thanks for dropping by!

    Tim

  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    Luxap said:
    Thanks for dropping by @PixelMasher!
    All of the assets are aligned to the 10 grid inside of unreal, so that should really help people build stuff.
    When you talk about different grid snapped sizes, is having everything build to be used on the 10 unit grid size enough? Or what would you suggest?
    But yeeah, def going to make myself some nice and handy prefabs! :hushed:
    yea I just  mean larger grid size prefabs like a 10mx10m chunk of assembled stuff, or a 10x20m piece of walkways etc. just larger pieces of assembled art that you can move as a single object thanks to being inside a prefab. that way a designer can assemble a scene by clicking and dragging 10 things into it vs hundreds of singular assets. Iteration time goes waaaaay down that way. Im gonna be making a video tutorial on the how and why of this soon ;)
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    Unwrapping walkways, pipes and building more stuff!

    @PixelMasher Thanks for the reply man, I see what you mean now, totally true! I have been working on some prefab stuff this week, everything aligns to the grid anyways so might as well make it easier for myself to build other scenes with in the future :D
    Thanks so much for the reply :D

    Onto this weeks update then!
    This week was really hectic timewise, so I am super glad I got some free time this weekend.
    Spend my time unwrapping and texturing (Base textures for now) different assets, a smaller set of aluminium pipes, all of the walkway pieces and some more.



    Also did something about the scale of the entire scene, making it more realistic then it was before as well, so let me know what you think :D
    Created a bigger silo variation and upscaled the smokestack by a lot!





    The scale def feels waaay better then before so thanks again @Ged for the pointer on that!

    Allrighty guys,
    Should have more time on my hands this week so next week is going to be a good update!
    ( as long as my schedule holds up ahhaa)

    Thanks for dropping by!
    Tim


  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    yeah that looks more epic, cool, looking forawrd to seeing it all done, nicer smoke on those chimneys is a must of course :) the materials are looking really nice
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    Prefabs and more texture adjustments!

    Hiya guys!
    Been adjusting some textures and building a lot of prefabs this week! Definitely focused more on the prefabs and adjusting models and building some smaller stuff to give them a proper test, and had a lot of fun doing this!

    @Ged Thanks man! Materials are looking allright for some assets, but they still need a final pass on most of them, because I need to balance the dirt and get the color of the painted surfaces to be adjustable, appreciate the kind words!

    So no noticable big changes tot the scene as I experimented and went through all the assets and fix smaller issues, but I did end up with lots of prefabs though :D
    Making the prefabs was pretty weird at first because I would just build them in the scene, and then convert them to a blueprint, but that would weirdly offset them all because it takes the center point of all the meshes combined. So I had to go in and adjust all the values manually, but once I got a good number of base prefabs going it was way easier to just copy one of them and build upon that one.

    If anyone knows a better way, suggestions are more then welcome! :D


    Other then that, did some changes to the larger silo's but that is probably the only noticable change in the larger scene though




    Now that I got a decent number of prefabs going, which will speed up future scene-building by a ton. So this week I am going back to finishing all the assets that still need to be unwrapped and getting all the textures in a good place so I can start balancing and tying them together.

    Thanks for dropping by guys!
    Tim
  • macoll
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    macoll polycounter lvl 13
    Yep looks cool ^^
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    More levels, testing and material adjustments!

    Evening guys!
    It has been a busy time for me, working on another scene for 7 days.
    So from this week I am back at it again with this one, adjusting materials, making more levels and getting in more assets to make the whole scene make more sense.

    I spend some time making a fairly simple shader, where I can control the color of the material, and adjust the amount of dirt if needed to make more dirty spaces.



    Made a new scene to focus more on tighter spaces and really test how easy it was to use the different assets and testing lighting/post processing (And generally have fun to be honest, I love building stuff! :D )



    The scene down below is the latest scene I am working on, the terrain and grass are still placeholder and need waaaay better blending!
    Also adding a ton of lights to give it that proper night time feeling, I'm thinking of making it more abandoned, still thinking about it though!



    Feels good to compose all this stuff like this, I feel that I am getting back into a good flow as well!

    Thanks for dropping by guys, cya next week!
    Tim

    macoll said:
    Yep looks cool ^^
    Cheers man! :D


  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    Story, grass and lighting!


    Been working in some lighting updates and adding more story elements, this is something this scene desperately needed, I was being to focused on just creating the assets them-self and overthinking stuff.
    So happy with this weeks update!





    Been working on the grass and terrain textures at the moment so I can tick those off!
    Need to get the colours back to the old grass though, I really like that colour, but need to finish the grass bakes first before I can finish the shader.


     
    Also gotta get some more AO in there as well!

    Cheers guys, 
    Cya next week :smiley:

  • RustySpannerz
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    RustySpannerz polycounter lvl 13
    Wow, this is looking incredible! Can't wait to see it fully finished! 
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    More grass, terrain and scale adjustments!

    Well, looking at the last weeks update and saying that the grass textures were done, well, that was a lie :happy:
    Did some more work on the grass material and terrain textures, making some substances and updating/checking some of the scales of some of the meshes that needed some adjustment, such as the fencing, car and some of the ladder pieces.

    Still need to do some adjustments to the colors of the fencing material, and still got some materials to do next!





    Next week ill try to finish up the assets that I still need to get done, such as the banners, metal panels and other things!
    Also do some more modelling on the truck, and get that to a more final state.

    Allrighty guys!
    I'll see you next week with more updates! :D


  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    Adjusting scale, composition details and more storytelling!

    Got another crazy week behind me, but balanced it with a nice day off on saturday.
    I did some more final adjustments to the grass textures and started adding in more grime and storytelling details, I want to portray that it this is the final bastion of mankind when something happened with the outside world, so it has to have to feeling that people flock to it if they can get there, but they need to be wary of security issues.




    Also did some test in a different lighting setting for the grass that I made, seeing how it would hold up there for use in future projects, and also made a little breakdown how I made these over on my blog in a handy one-page format (I can't link it here because the size can be quiet hefty!

    Link to the breakdown:
    https://www.artstation.com/timothydries/blog/1qGQ/environment-art-blog-11-lighting-updatenew-scene-grass-tutorial-and-romain-jouandeau

    The tutorial is halfway down the blog in the weekly tip section.



    The tutorial took up a fair bit f this weeks time, I wanted to finish this before the Artstation Challenge, but it seems that there is going to be a fair bit of overlap, because I don't want to rush it either!

    Allrighty guys!
    I'll see you next week with more updates! 
  • Kanni3d
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    Kanni3d ngon master
    It's composition is extremely well done, and the lighting is killer even from the start! Didn't expect there to be foliage, but it's a great addition especially for the story telling - great work!
  • pixelpatron
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    pixelpatron polycounter
    This is awesome! Great job!
  • defragger
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    defragger sublime tool
    Amazing foggy atmosphere and lighting! The new blue fence is great as well.
    Dirt decals on the white tanks need some refinement but I already love where you are going with this scene.
  • Luxap
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    Luxap polycounter lvl 6

    Final Update!


    Allrighty people, it's time that I put the last things into this scene and move onto a different one, I am glad with the results I got out of this in the end and that is the reason why I am also a bit later then my usual sunday time, because I was so close to finishing this.
    Spend last week done some finishing touches, making a night scene and doing a whole lot of presentational stuff.







    It was fun working on this one, but it's time to move onto a new one! (Artstation Challenge Probably!)
    So I'll probably start a new thread soon!

    @Kanni3d Thanks so much! I love making some foliage to give some color and some visual contradictions :D
    @pixelpatron Cheers!
    @defragger Thanks so much, appreciate the kind words :D

    Thanks guys for staying with me on this journey and all the awesome feedback!
  • ParksMarks
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    ParksMarks polycounter lvl 5
    I have nothing constructive to add, but I love it- very well done from start to finish!
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