UE4 : Victorian fantasy room - environment diary - critics welcome

Lether

Hi guys,

I have started an environment to improve myself in texturing and lighting in ue4. If I am okay enough with the quality I hope it will become a portfolio piece.
I started with a reference and I gathered some documentations. I wanted to work with modular assets but it wasn't the main goal of the project.
Here is the first ref img1 (from this one, I selected all the object I found okay for the project). I don't know who painted this awsome concept art. Very sorry. I searched on the internet, but the info remain not reliable.


 img2



Then i selected what i thought it was the main asset to build the big part of the building.

So I am curently at the higpoly modeling stage. Here are screenshots. Here i decided to not followed the artistic style of the ref. As I said earlier, i would like to learn more about texturing and lighting. I would like to work with substance designer and painter so I think I will go to a semi relastic/realistic texturing. Oh, the references are here to guide me throrgough the modelisation. It is not very important for me to be 100% accurate with the references.

If you have advices, tips, critics or suggestions, please go ahead I like learning new things. (and sorry for my bad english, if you don't understand or if I am rude, I can re-write my message).

What would you do with those highpoly. Add details and scratches with substance designer or go to sculpt some things. Is it important even if my main goal is texturing and lighting?

How would you do the low poly? Cleaning high geometry or retopology? (I just loop edge with a subsdivision surface/turbosmooth).

Thank you all Good night

MarcoAntonio

Hey, nice progress Lether! My opinion a good way to go would be using trim textures and combining them with tile textures. You can combine this with a sculpt for certain assets (like props) and get nice results.

Lether

Thank you. Yeah, i think study this workflow would be great. I see lot of people using it and it seems very powerful.
I didn't know very well when to sculpt or not. Props are a good idea to beggin with, let's do this !
Thank you for your tips Marco.

MarcoAntonio

No problem! Sculpts are the best way to get high detailed assets but they take a loooot amount of time. So at the end they are just worth it when you need a statue or high detailed piece (hero prop or whatever). For the rest (things like walls,floor, columns... even broken walls and debris) you can use trim textures combined with tile textures. Things get better if you have GI and decals (decals are veeeeeeeeeery important in my opinion).

Lether

Hey Marco, sorry, i didn't notice your reply... I think I 'm going to study the trim texture. I plan to do first the modular assets. I want to learn more about modular workflow. For now I am experimenting different types of normal baking. I have founded this tutorial made by Leonardo Lezzi : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nNXyK.

But I am wondering one thing. How to include his tips to substance painter workflow? Is it possible to blend the two normals (smoothed lowpoly vs hardedge lowpoly)?
For know, I only get an error in my baking (normal is not good in the side of low poly see example below). I don't understand, so i will try to use a normal brush with my new trim baked.



Here is the update of the wall asset baked.

Doxturtle

Try adding some vertical edges that line up roughly with the centre of each of those top details (you can remove them later). This video explains the issue, even if its not the issue its good to know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USGFRzQWxdI