[UE4] Cabler Lot (WIP)

Luke_Neubaum

Hey guys, working on another environment based off of Simon Stalenhags artwork. I'd love to get any general critique on what you think is missing or should be added. Specifically did some different dynamic light angles, and I was wondering which one you think is best. 
1.
2.

3.

4.


I'll be posting updates pretty regularly, now that I have some more free-time this week. 

Luke_Neubaum

Added two more assets today. A wooden Pallet, and an industrial Hand Lamp. I also readjusted the lighting and deleted some of the post process. I need to add that in later. I think a few more assets and a skeleton or corpse could be added to the scene to really tell a story. I'll also be adding in a new sky sphere, along with some POM clouds and maybe some more movement in the clouds. 

Wooden Pallet

Hand Lamp

Updated Scene. No post process. 

Luke_Neubaum

I realized I haven't posted the actual close up. 

Here's the concept from Simon Stalenhag  

Some adjustments have been made to the original concept, as I am working off just one image.
It's about 100k tris. Four 2k maps. 

Carabiner

If you're going for a similar mood to your reference, I think what really sells it in the concept are a few things: The "herd" of machines (as opposed to just a single one in your scene), and the snow/slightly blue lighting contributing to the austere feeling. 

Also, the "legs" of your machine feel a bit less sturdy than the ref. I think yours have fewer black mechanical parts behind the yellow shield, which makes them feel a bit flimsy. Maybe dupe/add some mass there?

I also checked out your progress on your blog (https://www.lukeneubaum.com/blog/B99m/modeling-and-uv-decisions for the curious) and would like to chime in about your poly count question. I'd say that it's not necessary to model in the tiny cables wrapped around the large central part - those are suuuuper expensive since they're cylindrical and they don't add much to the silhouette.

Overall really nice quality of work, also.

Luke_Neubaum

Appreciate the response @Carabiner.  I think I'm going to stick more to the reference, add more snow, and give it more of the blue stormy look. I'm also going to push out the mass a bit more behind the yellow shield and remove the cables on the low poly and just bake it down from my high poly. Thanks again for the critique!

Luke_Neubaum

After quite a bit of thinking, I decided to stick much more to the concept in the surrounding environment as well. So I spent the afternoon creating another scene. Created a new road, darkened and changed my Fir trees, and added in a stormy cloud sphere. 
Thing left to do:

• Tesselated snow textures using Substance
• Smaller sappling cover
• Cracked tar lines on the road
• Broken snow around the cabler feet
• Sculpt some cliff rock
• Adjustments to cabler
• Create horizontal powerlines

defragger

your camera is too far above the ground. Place the camera at eye level to get the feel of an actual observers point of view. Simon placed the camera even lower in a car.

Luke_Neubaum

Quick update on the scene. Replaced all the landscape textures with substance shaders of my own. Will be applying them later tomorrow. Good thing is that most of the landscape material parameters can stay.

Here are the Substance shaders with tesselation. 
Soft Snow

Gravel 

Disturbed Icy Snow


Here are the conical trees. Temporal AA is doing me dirty and clumping those needles to much, I might look into TFXAA fix in Ue4, that might help offset the blurring whenever I use world position offset. 

Luke_Neubaum

Posting a quick update. If I finish up on tomorrow I should post a bit more breakdown of the scene. As you can tell I've changed it slightly  from the original concept. 

Luke_Neubaum

Final few shots before posting. Added world blended snow on a few of the assets, I also sculpted two more rocks. 

Critiques are always welcome!

garcellano

Did you use World Machine for the landscapes? Just was curious. Still wrapping my head around that.
Nice scene overall. Keep it up.

Luke_Neubaum

@garcellano
Originally I did, but snow tesselation with large landscapes can be a real big pain to optimize, even with decent LOD's. So I made some World Machine peaks and exported them as meshes, then decimated in zbrush. As far as texturing goes, I brought it into substance painter and used the heightmaps as fill masks. You can do all sorts of cool things with those heightmaps. Let me know if you would like some photos of the process!

7bajwa

Nice!! Good going, Luke!!
you can brighten up the dark areas. Especially the trees. It's an overcast but bright one.
Keep it up!! 

Alanandrade92

Nice work @Luke_Neubaum !

Could you try to breakdown of what you did on the rocks? How did you do it? I've recently had a job to sculpt rocks and I wasn't totally satisfied, but your rocks are rocking !!!