[UE4] (WIP) Modular Hallway | Critique Appreciated

OLVR

I've been messing around in 3ds Max for a while now and have been wanting to take a swing at environment art. Came across this concept on Art Station and thought it would be perfect for my first scene.


I started by making the foundation pieces in max


After spending quite a bit of time UVing and texturing these pieces, I threw them into UE4 and got this...


It looks terrible and I can quite figure out why. Not sure if its the lighting, textures, models, or all of the above but needless to say im kind of disappointed on how its going so far. I want to figure this out before I start working on the props so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

OLVR

Updated all the textures, added more detail to the door model, and watched some youtube videos about lighting in ue4. Definitely not perfect but im getting closer to the reference.

OLVR

added stairs to the back. 

scrawld

Some critiques if its help,

The tiles on the wall are very uniform and the edges and corners very straight. It reads more like lines drawn into concrete rather than individual tiles or blocks, if that makes sense. That's also not helped by the grouting in between the blocks being the same colour as the blocks themselves. Here's an example of what I might think the wall might look like, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v6glY. Subtle details like the slightly irregular edges of the blocks and the corners being slightly rounded that make them more 'real'.

The floor is very uniform in colour. All the detail is in the roughness/glossiness it seems, which looks nice but then not much detail in the albedo/diffuse. You can search for examples of concrete floors on Artstation to see how much of a grungy mess concrete floors can be.

Also, I wouldn't be afraid to throw in some place-holder assets for all the props, just some simple primitives to stand in for the canisters, boxes, wood pallets, etc to populate the scene. It can help when you're blocking in lighting to have something to cast shadows and add interest, which will then help inform your lighting decisions. Props will also break up any repeating textures so you can get away with adding more details without the repetition being so obvious.

Hope that's of help. Best piece of advice I can give is to keep going .

OLVR

scrawld said:

Some critiques if its help,

The tiles on the wall are very uniform and the edges and corners very straight. It reads more like lines drawn into concrete rather than individual tiles or blocks, if that makes sense. That's also not helped by the grouting in between the blocks being the same colour as the blocks themselves. Here's an example of what I might think the wall might look like, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v6glY. Subtle details like the slightly irregular edges of the blocks and the corners being slightly rounded that make them more 'real'.

The floor is very uniform in colour. All the detail is in the roughness/glossiness it seems, which looks nice but then not much detail in the albedo/diffuse. You can search for examples of concrete floors on Artstation to see how much of a grungy mess concrete floors can be.

Also, I wouldn't be afraid to throw in some place-holder assets for all the props, just some simple primitives to stand in for the canisters, boxes, wood pallets, etc to populate the scene. It can help when you're blocking in lighting to have something to cast shadows and add interest, which will then help inform your lighting decisions. Props will also break up any repeating textures so you can get away with adding more details without the repetition being so obvious.

Hope that's of help. Best piece of advice I can give is to keep going .

Thank you so much for the response. You pretty much nailed the 2 things that have been bothering me with the scene so far (the wall and floor texture). Also I had no idea what that floor material was until you said to look up concrete floor. I guess its called a acid stained concrete floor, thats where it gets the orange color from. Now I have some good references for that. Im going to start redoing those textures when i get a chance. Thank you again for the advice, much appreciated.

OLVR

Updated the wall and floor materials using suggestions from scrawld. I think im done fidgeting with the materials for now, going to start working on some props and ill come back to the walls and floors if need be. 

OLVR

Just a little update on the scene with some props in there. I also darkened the walls a bit.

OLVR

made a ton of small adjustments and adding some grunge decals