[UE4] Playable Sci-Fi Environment (Space Station) Project
Hi
everyone! I would like to present to you a project I am currently working on
with a friend. His name is Ianis Pignon, and he is a programmer, and my name is
Tanguy Oliveras, and I am a 3D artist. We are currently studying at the video
game school Créajeux in France, and this is our last year. Therefore this
project is kind of like an end degree project.
I am keen on science-fiction and futuristic games, so I am a huge fan of Star Citizen. Thus I am really looking forward to what the game will look like in the end. That’s why I mostly took inspiration from this universe for my project. The goal is to create a playable demo and we will try, with the little amount of knowledge we got, to be as close as possible to what Star Citizen offers.
We began this project for quite some time now, but I will try to give you the major updates and show you the different steps we are working on.
To give more details about the project: at the end of it, we would like to have a controllable soldier who can move around a hangar hanging to a space station. Then we could get onboard a spaceship and then fly around the space station. At first, we only aim to get those three assets (soldier, space station, spaceship) working together, and then we will try to have more and more features:
- Fully modeled spaceship, with interactive exterior/interior, including, the small cargo bay, the cockpit and the turret.
- Fully controllable spaceship within the cockpit or the turret, flyable around the space station, and armament equipped and ready.
- Fully modeled and animated soldier, including two versions ( full equipment, and equipment free for piloting the ship), including different camo skins, and including his armament ( assault rifle, pistol, sword )
- Fully modeled, full scale space station, with some parts detailed at human scale, including the main landing pads, where the main spaceship will be standing next to a hangar, and some rooms behind it, and some other larger or smaller landings pads, without a hangar, but connected to a corridor.
- Adding AI, including hostile ones for space combat, but also NPCs for quest giving.
Keep in mind that those are only long term objectives, and we may not have the time or the skill to do everything, but we will try to do our best.
If you want to see more of my work, go check my artstation : https://www.artstation.com/minder
But enough talking, here are the first screenshots of the blockout of the three assets!
Feel free to give any feedback or ask any question if you have one! 
Replies
Second Update!
Quickly showing you the progress of the project. At first, I am focused on modelling, to get the right shape and the right feeling to get that sci-fi and Star Citizen vibe. For the moment, everything is done in Maya.
For the spaceship, I finished doing the main shapes and some detailing. I am taking the time to consider everything that would be needed in the demo, like the correct scale, to get in the ship, in the cockpit, in the cargo bay but also in the turret. I also need to take into account the attachment points of the armament and the place required for the landing gears.
For the character, the low poly mesh is done excepting his suit and his equipment. Now I can go to Zbrush and do the polish the character needs, as well as all the little details. For this solider, I mostly took inspiration from halo, since, for me, they are the best futuristic soldiers I have seen so far.
For the space station, since the blockout and all the little assets to make the details are done, I went to model all the big modules the station will be made of. I’m also trying to figure out, how many tris I should get at the end, and therefore how far I need to push the details.
Here go the screenshots!
I love love LOVE those spaceship parts, especially the last images with the globes. What's the sort of scale of it next to the soldier?
Ahah, actually the space station is really big, it is about 3.5 km long, so the soldier is really tiny compared to it. I will soon upload a video so you will have a better view at the scale of all the objects.
I have focused a bit more on the space-station to have the final blockout, and also to see how the hangars will look like at the end. There is a lot more to do, most of the main modules are just in their rough version, but now I have a good idea of what will be the final result. For me, scale is really crucial in this scene. Like in Star Citizen, and for most space scenes, there is a huge contrast between the size of a human, and the size of the landscape. This is why the space station is about 3.5 km long, and thus can carry many medium size ships. This is also why the landing pads and the hangars will be the only areas detailed at human scale.
I also integrated what I have for the moment in unreal, and worked a bit on the lighting, so here goes a video!
Next time, I will try to post the progress of the soldier and the spaceship.Feel free to give any feedback or ask any question if you have one!
What are you thinking for the BG, in terms of skybox?
Thank you! I also never played destiny unfortunately. Are you talking about The Reef?
For the skybox, I don't have a precise idea. I don't have much experience for this kind of things, but I have heard about Spacescape, a software that could help me create space background for the skybox. However, I will have to find how I will import it into Unreal.
Finally, the high poly of the soldier is done. I tried to add many details using my own hard surface alphas. I really tried to give a different look between the armor and the suit beneath it. I also modelled the equipment that will come along the soldier. This will help me to break the symmetry look of the character.
Everything was done in Zbrush this time. However, since I already have my lowpoly model in Maya, I can already export everything in Substance Painter to bake it and then texture it.
I have also worked on more technical parts of the spaceship. Indeed, I really want to focus on those realistic details, which will help to make the spaceship more believable. For example, the landing gears include a fully working system to extend or retract them.
Since I wanted to have a first person view, interiors are very important as well. Therefore the cargo bay and the cockpit require another level of details. They are not finished for the moment, because it is much harder to get the right proportions compare to the exterior. This is why I implemented first person cameras directly into Maya to modeled the cockpit in the right way.
The soldier is finally done! A lot of work has been put into the textures and the details. Everything was done in Substance Painter, baking my highpoly mesh made in Zbrush. Since the character was done during an assignment at school, I have focused on a specific style for the textures. However when I integrated it in Unreal with the space station, it didn’t feel quite right for a space soldier. I may change the camo later for something simpler, like black and white or blue, with less dirt and deterioration because here it feels more like a ground camo.
You can also get a look at the wireframe, 40K tris without his equipment, 52K tris fully equipped. The character is rigged and skinned as well. Therefore, we have been able to integrate it in Unreal Engine, and use the existing basic animations to try it. I can now move around the hangars with the soldier.
I also made some lighting tests, with spot and point lights, but also with neon lights and emissive materials. This might change in the future, since I still have some issues. Indeed, I need to have a complete dynamic lighting. So no light maps and no static meshes. And Unreal seems not be made at first for that. I will try to do some research. At least, now I can make some good presentation video that can show what the final result may looks like in the future.
Feel free to give any feedback or ask any question if you have one!
New update !
I have worked on polishing the design of the space station. Since most of the modules are done, I changed the global layout of the space station, and tried to build the connections between the main modules. I tried to focus on making a realistic structure. Something that is logical with all parts holding together well.
I also took the time to do some research on how to make a fully dynamic lighting and how to do the skybox in Unreal Engine. Indeed, I managed to reboot the project with no static lights whatsoever, so I don’t have issues anymore on building the lights and on the preview of the shadows. The only problem now, is that If I have too many dynamic lights crossing each other, I have a strong performance drop. Therefore I will try to use as much emissive materials as possible.
For the skybox, I spent alot of time getting this stuff to work. I’m using Spacescape to create the background, however it seems that the axis are not the same between this software and Unreal, so I had to fix them by hand. If I have the time, I will also do my own background, but for the moment I’m using one of the presets of the software.
I have focused on detailing the landing pads as well, but it takes more time since I have to do them at human scale. This is why they are not finished at the moment. There will be the main landing pads at the side of the space station, a large one at the top front of it and a group of smaller ones on top at the middle of it.
Next time, I will have to unwrap everything, and this might take a while for me to do another update, in order to show you something new.
Feel free to give any feedback or ask any question if you have one!
After designing the whole station, I went back to detailing the hangar. The deadline for my school’s assignment is tomorrow, so I try to focus on the most important parts. This is why only the main area of the hangar is detailed. I have even designed the doors in order for them to work properly, however there is still nothing behind them. I also tried to properly connect the hangars. Furthermore, I redo all the lighting. By setting the right parameters, I achieved to get a great global lighting for the hangar, with quite a lot of lights. Emissive materials add a lot to the scene too. Everything still needs to be tweaked in order to get the best visual result possible, but I am waiting to get the final textures and decals.
Now, I can have a good idea of the performance I will get while playing the demo, since I have set up most of the things that may reduce the FPS. Therefore, in the editor in fullscreen, I have around 60 fps inside the hangar (due to all the dynamic lights crossing each other) and 120 fps outside. I hope that those numbers will increase when we will build the final executable file.
In the meantime, I also unwrap all the assets. However, since I will only use tileable textures, I don’t have to do the UV sets. Therefore I began to do the highpoly meshed of the textures that will be baked on a simple plane, in order to make more interesting tileable textures.
Feel free to give any feedback or ask any question if you have one!
As I said, the next step was to texture the whole hangar. I had around a dozen tileable textures to work with. It was a long process to assign each UV shell to a texture, and then scale, move and orient the shell depending on what I wanted with the textures. In the end, the textures feel kind of just put weirdly on the walls, but at least, I think that I have enough diversity, with the few textures I am working with. Furthermore, great lighting, emissive area and decals, kind of help to hide the repetition of the textures. They will be used for the whole station as well.
I have a good look at what will be the global result. But now, I will have to do the same texturing process on every parts of the station, so It will take a long time. Next updates will be a bit slow, however If I finish this project, I will be very satisfied!
Feel free to give any feedback or ask any question if you have one!