1st Game Environment - Fuedal Japan; Narai-juku

Retribution

Hey guys,

I've recently decided that since graduating, my passion heavily leans toward working in the game industry rather than film/VFX. I've taken a shot at my first game environment as a result, and I'd love to garner some feedback on the result of this piece. The total poly-count is 28.7k for the scene. 




Next stop is to bite the bullet and build scenes in the Unreal Engine, rather than staying comfy in Maya.

Maya / Photoshop / Rendered in V-Ray

Carabiner

I can see how this would be an area that's different from film/VFX, but you really really need to put things in a game engine if they're game art or if you're applying for game art jobs. The whole point of what we do is making things that look good in a game/when they're played - like, it's cool that you can render in Maya, but that's not what this job is about. Get thee to Unreal!

In terms of the work itself, the whole scene is pretty dark. I see a bunch of the yellow lantern light sources, but they don't seem to actually be impacting the surfaces around them much (would love to see these light sources properly set up in Unreal or another game engine). Your shadows are way too dark and crunched - I can't see any detail in some areas. I'd add more fill lighting or up the contribution from the lanterns. The sky background also doesn't seem to be contributing much to the lighting, which is just neutral in tone and doesn't have any sort of blue toned coolness that you get with that time of day, e.g. https://www.freshpalace.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Home-Chamoson-Switzerland-Dusk-Lighting.jpg

I really like the material on the cobblestone path and how it's reflecting so much light. It reads as wet, which would be nice to add to the rest of the environment -- maybe add some rain particles in there dripping from the rooftops, or gutters with drips?

Also, just as a note, total tri count is nice to see but if I were hiring for a game art position, I'd also be interested in seeing breakdowns of any hero props in a scene -- i.e. their individual tri counts and texture breakdowns.

Retribution

Awesome feedback, thank you Carabiner! I can certainly see your points. I'll be looking at moving all this in to Unreal and seeing what I can do about the sky/ground colour imbalance, along with lightening it all up a tad. I also hadn't thought to break down hero objects, so that's a good one too. 

Plenty to do! If I had any sleeves, they'd be rolled up. 

Retribution

I've spent the last several weeks diving in to the Unreal Engine and rebuilding the scene! Taking Carabiner's feedback in to account about the scenes light values (thanks again), I've hopefully taken the scene in a better direction now. It's been great not sitting around, waiting for renders for a change - real-time is awesome!

I'd love to hear any thoughts & critique about the scene at its current stage, perhaps there's something I've missed that you can spot. 

Retribution

Got to get in to the habit of showing more angles, obviously a player would see it from lots of directions - so here's some more screenshots. 

Retribution

...and here's a fly-through of the environment!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ea2743v3J8&feature=youtu.be