[UE4] Mountain Trip

Vizimir

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share my first full scene made in UE4, its still WIP so I would appreciate any form of feedback.

The goal was to create calm, countryside scene with elements of mystery and to learn basic tools and workflows in environment art. 

The foliage and mountains are from marketplace but rest of the content (modular huts, fences, stone crosses, turist equipment) was made by myself using Max, Zbrush, Substance and Photoshop. It was my first time working with Zbrush and Substance, so a lot of props are not technically perfect.

Feel free to give some tips and opinions, they are very welcomed.

black_nine

Hi. Are you maybe inspired by Witcher 3 environment?  The roofs buildings there are slightly curved. But after seeing this backpack, I don't know if enivro is going to be, modern or medieval I think this should be a little more clear.

Steamy_Steve

A few screenshots from the player's perspective would help understand the actual proportions of what I see.
Maybe it's because of the vignette effect, but it feels a lot like I'm looking at a small misproportioned diorama, rather than a relatively wide mountainous area.

Also, even though this is clearly a stylized environment, grass looks a bit too....stiff, and strands a bit too parallel to each other.
My personal taste, of course.

zachagreg

I think you may need to push your atmospheric perspective more on the mountains. Currently they look very close and far at the same time. You also have a nice focal point in the two images of the trail and cross. Make sure your other images have a clear focal point as well. The top image the focal is immediately that red/orange tree and the second one my eye is drawn to the two toned trees at the center. May want to shift the focal point down to the first house on that one by making use of the contrasting elements you already have.

Vizimir

Hi, guys thanks for opinions, as for things you mention:

- scale: yes I spotted it too, unfortunetly a bit too late. Problem is with trees, they are to short, I should notice that during blockout stage but shit happens sometimes. I dont know if I want to remodel whole scene for that, with taller trees I would had to move huts further away from the forest, and the same do to the mountains. Probably I gonna leave it like it is and use this experience to be more conscientious in the next projects during blockout stage. Some human eye shots below:



- grass: Steve have some right, I just wanted use free marketplace grass and avoid making foliage in my first scene and learn other things, for now its okey for me but in the next exterior scene I will make my own foliage, using free content I learnt how it is made and I should be able to create my own now. 

- focal points: for the second picture I added some more turist equipment near the table, tone down the trees in the middle and tweak the light a bit for the whole scene. I still have to figure something out for the first image.
- medival or modern: scene is about mountain trip in modern times, old wooden houses like these are still quite common in the rural areas of easter europe, especially in small , almost forgotten villages near mountains, shinggle roofs are rather flat. But I may inspired a bit from Witcher 3 I also wanted to add element of mystery with abandoned  backpack in the seemingly peacefull forest, which may not me so peacefull  after all.

Ashervisalis

Looking cool. Grass is extremely easy to make from scratch, and your grass is kind of ruining the scene with how straight it is. I'd honestly spend a few hours on the grass.

Vizimir

Ok guys I remodel the grass from scratch, tell me what you think.



 


I also modeled new wheat on the fields, but unfortunetly as you see its a bit blurry, especially in the shadows. I ran out of ideas how to fix it. I tried changing mipmaps, modifying mesh vertex normals, changing mesh distance fields. Right now it looks like depth of field but it's not the effect I'm after, especially when fences and other objects near the wheat are sharp. Do you have any ideas what can cause that?

Ashervisalis

Well it does look more natural now! Can you show a single mesh example of the wheat foliage?

Vizimir

I made some final adjustments to the wheat (basically I did it from scratch again), and it look slighty better. Previously my mesh looked like this:

Now I changed it to something like this:  Less alpha channel made it less blurry  and even there is more vertexes the performance in the scene is better. To make it look more sharper I adjusted the value of r.tonemapper.sharpen to 1 and increased the resolution of final shots.

The result:









And the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-NHG_fdxUU&t=

I think I'm done with this one, some things could be done better but I learned a lot. First contact with Zbrush was huge pain due to much different navigation and modeling concept than other 3d software. I learned to use trim sheet on all wooden elements what was huge time saver. And of cours I enjoyed making it.

Guys thank you for your feedback.
Soon I will be posting my new work, starting with the first sketches and blockout this time.