Stylized Dungeon Environment [UE4]. Looking for some critiques!

tyler_siemers

A dungeon scene I have been working on for awhile. My main inspiration being Diablo 3. Basically, my goal was to take the art style of that game an elevate it to be a bit gritter, as well as using modern game art techniques. Just curious to hear any thoughts or tips anyone may have!

Esuka

Interesting work. It's a nice set, and you did some great work with the materials. My biggest issue is that it's hard to see the work you put in. The lighting is limited to a few local areas, so it's hard to see anything in the recessed areas. I don't think you have to make things a lot brighter, but perhaps you can add a little more for legibility. This is a matter of taste and objective, but I find black is often bland and hard to express with. You might experiment with an alternate tone for your darkest areas. What are you rendering this in?

I hope this is helpful. Great work so far.

tyler_siemers

Esuka said:

Interesting work. It's a nice set, and you did some great work with the materials. My biggest issue is that it's hard to see the work you put in. The lighting is limited to a few local areas, so it's hard to see anything in the recessed areas. I don't think you have to make things a lot brighter, but perhaps you can add a little more for legibility. This is a matter of taste and objective, but I find black is often bland and hard to express with. You might experiment with an alternate tone for your darkest areas. What are you rendering this in?

I hope this is helpful. Great work so far.

Thanks for the feedback! One of the biggest challenges I had for this pieces was having moody lighting, yet being light enough to show off my work. I was trying very hard to get a Diablo 2 / 3 tone for this piece. Generally, I don't think black is a good color to use in much of anything either, so maybe some adjustments are in order. This was rendered in Unreal Engine 4.

Esuka

Ok! I haven't done that much lighting in Unreal yet, but I know there's a Post Processing Volume you can set in the scene, and one of the effects is tone grading. That will allow you to adjust your darkest shadows to be a particular tone (blueish, redish, etc.), so you can try playing around with that. As for ambient light, I haven't found a great answer for that yet, but I wish you luck.

tyler_siemers

Esuka said:

Ok! I haven't done that much lighting in Unreal yet, but I know there's a Post Processing Volume you can set in the scene, and one of the effects is tone grading. That will allow you to adjust your darkest shadows to be a particular tone (blueish, redish, etc.), so you can try playing around with that. As for ambient light, I haven't found a great answer for that yet, but I wish you luck.

You were right! I messed around with those settings a bit. I changed my shadows to be a bit more bluish, so now there is much more contrast. The first image is the new version.