[UE4] Asian Garden Environment - Looking for critique

Murozond

Hi everyone! I'm new to this forum. I'm a student in Game Art & 3D Animation and I just recently finished a school project focusing on modular assets. I decided to create another environment with modular assets. After watching Brian Recktenwald's masterclass on environment design, I decided to apply his workflow. I made the choice to create an Asian Garden Environment which has architecture from older chinese/japanese dynasties. 

I'm thankful about any critique or feedback I can get

Gathering references

First off I gathered references for my environment where I mainly focused on textures as well as details of different assets which I'll want to have in my modular asset library. Of course I also picked some reference pictures which should show the "big picture" of the final environment. 

UE4 block out shapes

In a next step I created some simple blockout shapes within Maya and import them in UE4 to test modularity, proportions and set up the level itself. I made use of the landscape brush to not make the level look to flat. The green lines indicate into what assets I thought of breaking down the environment. For the guardian lion statue I planned to make use of photogrammetry. Below the bridge a creek will flow through though I think right now the ditch is too deep.

Planning texture trim sheets

Right now I'm in the process of planning my trim texture sheets. This is somehting I'm trying for the first time. I downloaded one from gametextures whilst I created a second one by myself using the old school way with Photoshop and Substance B2M. I did a test render of them in Marmoset Toolbag to see how they respond to different lighting. There's probably one or two more trim texture sheets to come and I'm not completely happy yet with the one I created myself so I will do some rework there too.

hublus

Looks like ambitious project. I look forward to seeing your process. 

icegodofhungary

The ditch doesn't seem too bad. Once you get water in there it won't appear as deep.

Murozond

hublus said:

Looks like ambitious project. I look forward to seeing your process. 

Thanks, this give me extra motivation!!

icegodofhungary said:

The ditch doesn't seem too bad. Once you get water in there it won't appear as deep. 

thanks for your opinion, will see how it looks once assets and textures come together

Progress so far

Here's some of the progress I made so far, I finished the planning of my trim textures though I thought I'll post them once I start laying out the UVs of my modular set pieces. Currently I'm still on the modelling part, yet I still decided to export them to the UE4 scene. Here's some 'renders' of what the environment currently looks like. For the trees I used Maya PaintFX and created them from scratch. Currently it's only one tree used multiple times. I also did quite a bit of roof work for the buildings and the wall.







This is a test scan I did for the photogrammetry asset. The software I used was RealityCapture. I went out to a Chinese Garden nearby where I live to take pictures of the statue. I will probably go back again  to capture more pictures of the head part from a top perspective as well as from the belly and underside of the pedestal which is where some details are missing after the scan.

Murozond

Murozond

Haven't posted in a while due to being busy with school assignments. Here's the latest update on my WIP environment.
Apart from fixing some of the geometry (whatever looks not right) and adding bevels for some edges, which I didn't do yet, the modelling part is pretty much done. Except for the stones, everything has been UV layed out. After exporting the meshes to UE4, setting up the materials and applying them, I already noticed that some things aren't right. The white wall material is certainly something I need to look at. Something in with the output settings must have been set wrong, when I created the texture within Substance B2M. 

For the trees and grass, I decided to switch from Maya PaintFX to Speedtree. I'm happy with how the foliage turned out. However, I'm a bit unsure about the grass foliage painting and whether I exaggerated with it or not  (I'm using this tool
for the first time)

In regards to the lightning of the scene, nothing has been done yet. 

As usual, if you think there's something to criticize or comment on, please go ahead. I'm happy to take up any kind of feedback.

Murozond

Here's the first pass on the lighting

Murozond

Here's my latest update. Since the last post I have made many adjustments. Here's a list with the most significant changes:
 - increased the lightmap density for all meshes 
- changed the directional and sky light from static to dynamic 
- maxed out the AO from the post processing volume
- tinted the sky and did some overall color grading
- increased the fog density but lowered it's max opacity
- added some wear and tear to the tower building using vertex painting with a second material (also increased normal intensity of both materials)
- added more plants, two of which I created inside Speedtree, the third one was taken from the KiteDemo from Epic Games
- softened the shadows of my trees, some were set to not cast shadows because it didn't look good
- repainted the grass with more difference in min and maximum height

Murozond

After gathering more feedback from friends and colleagues, I made further changes to the scene. I added a mountain range in the background using World Machine. Then, I did a Landscape material layer blend for both the landscapes. This is the final outcome of my first own environment project.