Crit for Sci Fi environment diorama UE4

CelestialHavoc

Hi! I am currently in my second year of university, and was wondering if anyone could give me some critique on our first sci-fi project?

The crate was our main focal point, and we had a set budget for the surrounding environment. The textures were done in Substance Painter, and the renders were taking in UE4, any advice/critique on this piece for me to improve would be very much appreciated! As I'm not entirely sure where else to take it,

Thanks again for your time!

Carabiner

Hey there, were you working from an existing concept? If so, can we see it?

There's some technical things that I would suggest polishing up if you have the energy to do so. For example, broken-looking normals here:


Strange pinching here:


The whole side silhouette feels a bit wobbly and unrefined, which is one reason why I asked if you were working from a concept. 

Consider making a more definitive statement with this silhouette, like one of the ideas I drew at the bottom.

In general, your textures look a little noise and low-res (like the metals on the handle). What resolution are you using, and can we see how you've packed your UVs?

Larry

One thing i can add is that you have a bit too low poly, especially on that main crate chest, alot of baked details would be nice if they were blocked out instead. It will actually showcase that you can understand where to bake and where not to, maximizing the balance between quality and cost. For such a small diorama scene even about 200.000 tris would be okay in total, considering the quality you get back

CelestialHavoc

Thank you for the feedback!

Yes, due to our brief we were asked to work from the concept below: But due to only having one view we were allowed to loosely interpret it.

We also unfortuantely have a strict budget, 1048 texture sheet for the scene and the crate, with 1k tris, then a 524 texture sheet, and 500 tris in total for all the additional crates. However I have already bumped up my resolutions for the shots above. I will keep in mind to work to around that level of detail though for any future dioramas, or if I ever come back to this piece!

I can deffo go back and re-bake some of the pinching and errors on the crate though, thank you for pointing them out! If the handles are too noisy would you suggest I make them far cleaner like the concept above? and just make all of the textures in general less 'bitty'? I have attached the AO, the rest of my texture sheets have all been padded so it's harder to see the unwrap

Thank you both again very much for your feedback! It's very appreciated And I shall start amending the bake and texture details