[UE4] [Finished] Ancient Ruins

sargisstg

Hey Polycount community

I decided to share my progress here and hoping to get some comments and critiques for my environment.

When I started the main goal was to make a modular pack of ruins to sell it in the marketplace. After creating some pieces I changed my mind and started to make the full game environment in UE4. But that doesn't mean that I won't sell it anymore.

One week of hard working I have modular ruins with 30-40 pieces. (Maybe I will add more pieces later)
Here are some screenshots from the current period.







And all of these made by using these little pieces below.
I used 3Ds Max for base meshes and Zbrush for sculpting.



I'm planning to make some foliage and tiled materials I will post them later.

Let me know what you think.
Thanks for attention!

Ashervisalis

Looks really cool! I'm looking forward to seeing it with foliage/other colours.

Alex_J

if you go to sell this, don't limit your search by calling it "medieval." those columns you have could easily fit into a greek or roman themed game. I'd just call it "ancient ruins" or something like that. 

I think more variation wiht your materials could go a long way. Gray rocks gets a bit boring to look at. Check out images of famous ruins all over the world to get a sense of the different colors you might play with. Pompeii, Machu Picchu, Sukhothai..... all different types of stones with different types of stuff growing on them. 

Arcane_Convolutions

This looks very nice so far, you did a great job on the sculpting. I am excited to see what kind of foliage and materials you add.

CybranM

It looks great but like BIGTIMEMASTER said, it would probably be beneficial to add some different materials and variation to the assets.

sargisstg

Thanks guys for great comments and advice. Now I working on moss material to blend it using PrecomputedAOMask in Unreal.
Before creating the moss I tested with basic green color. I think it should look better with the final texture.





Let me know if you know another option.
Thanks.

zachagreg

The precomputed AO mask looks nice on areas like the stairs where you would have those crevice areas between the stairs and the wall, but it is lacking on areas such as those back walls. You can try adding a Z-upward facing mask and lerp it with a cloudy grunge mask. Most of the moss I've seen from reference tends to creep towards the sides and tops of stones on a wall. May also want to look into a depth fade-esque effect for the moss coming up from the ground. 

Try one of those in tandem with your AO mask as well as lerping in some kind of grunge to break up the soft generated feel of the precomputed Ao

sargisstg

@zachagreg thanks for the tip I will try.

sargisstg

Hey guys!

After a long period of time, I finally found enough time to make ivy leaves. 



I made 11 types of ivy to add variation in the scene. For the Ivys I used amazing Guruware Ivy generator plugin in 3ds max to simulate the branches and scatter my custom created leaves. To reduce polygon count I baked the opacity map from high poly branches on simple low poly planes. Now I have 11 mesh of ivy with 2 materials, one for all branches and one for leaves.



So I placed them in my environment very fast. Right now the lighting is very simple and it's looking weird I know

And yeah I also added some new thick wall elements.

For the next update maybe I will try to make the lighting better.

Thanks for watching!

sargisstg

Hi good peoples of polycount community!

Figured out a little bit of lighting and added custom field grass.



I want to share with you my workflow that how I made the grass.

First of all, I made a simple 4 planes which I imported into Zbrush and used Fibers to generate grass meshes. Then I exported them to 3ds max. When I was happy with the mesh I created this grass textures in photoshop 


So when I had the grass meshes with a nice texture I made 4 planes again but this time for baking purposes.
For Baking I used Substance Designer baker.
I baked there Opacity and color maps.
Now I have I grass to use in the engine.




I hope this tip helps someone too!

Thank you again and let me know if you have questions!

zachagreg

Very nice little tut on the grass texture. Did you also go through and edit the normals for the grass?

sargisstg

zachagreg said:

Very nice little tut on the grass texture. Did you also go through and edit the normals for the grass?

Oh yes, I forgot to say about the normals . I baked the normals too in Substance Designer and then I multiplied intensity by 5 in Unreal.

sargisstg

Just did something cool and I want to share here.
I made custom clouds light material function. It's making the environment more liveable and believable. I think these small touches are making the work more realistic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avwvlFKLc-Y

It's done simply. I generated one tileable noise texture in substance designer and then using two different panner nodes in unreal it makes movable. And of course, there are some scalar parameters to control them in real time.

Here is the graph:


Let me know if you are finding something useful or if you have questions.

Thank you.

Benjammin

Nice work. This would be awesome 3d-printed and used as scenery for table-top gaming
Thanks for the grass tutorial!

sargisstg

Benjammin said:

Nice work. This would be awesome 3d-printed and used as scenery for table-top gaming
Thanks for the grass tutorial!

Yeah good idea!
I will try to share some more stuff and tips later!

Ashervisalis

It looks great man. Is it finished now?

sargisstg

Ashervisalis said:

It looks great man. Is it finished now?

Thanks! No there is a lot of work left to do. I'm planning to add more vegetations, add moss material on the walls and many many tasks to finish. In the end, I will publish it in unreal marketplace.

zachagreg

That light function is sexy! I always love small realistic movement in an environment. Have you thought about adding some wind into the scene as well to interact with the foliage? You could even set up a parameter collection within the scene so that the speed of the clouds is correlated to the speed of the wind on your foliage.

sargisstg

zachagreg said:

That light function is sexy! I always love small realistic movement in an environment. Have you thought about adding some wind into the scene as well to interact with the foliage? You could even set up a parameter collection within the scene so that the speed of the clouds is correlated to the speed of the wind on your foliage.

Thanks! Right now I'm using simple default grass wind function on foliages but this effect it's not really cool. I will try to make custom grass animation but later. Now I'm working on some important materials.

Toxicspartan94

Its really inspiring to look at this! The presentation is fantastic! I really love seeing your breakdowns and process looks terrific.

sargisstg

Hello everyone. I want to show what I'm working on right now.

Yesterday I saw this image and noticed some smooth wet smooth transition between moss and the rock.

And of course, decided to challenge me and try to achieve it completely in unreal material editor

And I have this now.


 It's very simple but it gives the scene a little more natural look.



This can be achieved by using Precomputed AO. Simply I'm adding 0.6 to the main mask power.



Also I made 2 trees and one bush using speedtree



To be honest, I didn't like old Ivys I have decided to make them again but this time using speedtree. It's an amazing tool I have full control with that and now I can achieve the look that I wanted.



Thanks for comments and attention. 

hublus

You're doing great progress. Keep going!

sargisstg

Added more Ivy variations. Could not wait to share here with you.



Some tasks remaining until rebuilding the level with finished kits. As I said this map is for testing a kit I will make the final map with good design and composition at the end.

Stay tuned! Ending soon

Lokthar

@sargisstg
Are you planning to do any variation for the ivy or just do one for every column?
How does it work with speedtree? do you import the mesh?
Sorry for this noob question

sargisstg

@Lokthar Each column has its own ivy and to add variation in the scene it's enough to rotate them randomly. What about walls I generated 4-5 types and placed them in the environment. And yes it's important that they are all using the same material instance. So it's optimized and runs well with LODs.

Lokthar

sargisstg said:

@Lokthar Each column has its own ivy and to add variation in the scene it's enough to rotate them randomly. What about walls I generated 4-5 types and placed them in the environment. And yes it's important that they are all using the same material instance. So it's optimized and runs well with LODs.

Awesome! Thanks for your answer! add your post to my favourite, cant wait to see next post

Clarencezer

Damn, it all looks amazing! Thank you for showing how some of the things work.

sargisstg

Hello everyone.

Finally found free time to continue my environment ( freelance jobs disturbing )
I started to make the final level as I said in my last post. There is some tweaking left to change. I recorded a little gameplay test to demonstrate how it looks like while gaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYMfeEdF8RY&feature=youtu.be




I want to finish this week. So stay tuned and thanks to everyone for feedbacks!

sargisstg

Hi.

I'm glad to show final screenshots of my ruins project. I uploaded a new gameplay test too.
Before uploading this in my portfolio I will make some breakdowns. Also, I have the opportunity to share my environment on 80 level. I will show some tips and tricks about how I did my environment. Once it's done I will share it here again.



And here is the gameplay test

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

Thanks everyone!

sargisstg

Hi, polycount community.

I want to share a short showcase video of my environment. 
Soon It will available on UE4 marketplace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEoi2cg_CY&fbclid=IwAR1zbwwRVZRJVRXZrV2OpZJZ3ZAIPPvft5kPiA-C1uesYVU7KrcHoaZo2zw

sargisstg

Hi polycount community.
Here is the 80 level article check it out! https://80.lv/articles/001agt-002mrs-crafting-modular-ancient-ruins-in-ue4/
Thank you!

snoops3d

very cool man! I like it !

sargisstg

Thank you! )

CurtisRb

I like the work you did, the environment is well structured, I think the bloom effect was a little much for my taste as it took away from the photoreal look just a bit. I was watching the video and wanted to get lost in the reality but the bloom (over exposure) kept telling me it was cgi. Loved it tho....

sargisstg

CurtisRb said:

I like the work you did, the environment is well structured, I think the bloom effect was a little much for my taste as it took away from the photoreal look just a bit. I was watching the video and wanted to get lost in the reality but the bloom (over exposure) kept telling me it was cgi. Loved it tho....

Thanks! Yeah I agree with you but I think the bloom effect gives a dramatic look to the environment. Without that, I found it was a little bit boring so I kept it in the end.

sargisstg

Finally!!! Ancient Ruins Pack is now availabe on Unreal Marketplace !!! 🍾🍾
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/slug/ancient-ruins-pack

aclund3

Nice work, mate!

CybranM

Looks nice, good job!