[FINISHED][UE4] Space Prison and Research Facility

Vizimir

Hello, 

last week I started working on my new project with sci-fi atmosphere. The rough idea is to create some kind of futuristic prison with suggestion that the owners of the place use prisoners to obtain valuable (powerful maybe?) material. 

First things first, I created some fast concept arts with interior design, loosely inspired by movies like Space Odyssey, Moon and The Empire Strikes Back. Main scheme consists a big round chamber with hero prop in the center and smaller corridors leading to prisoners cells. The hero prop is  
a muli level machine made to storage the resources obtained by/from prisoners.











Next I created a first blockout in UE4 to test shapes and scale in the 3D.













There is several more things I want to test before I go to asset creation, but I'm courious what do you think about the concept, scale and composition.

Vizimir

Quick test for today, I decided to add  wider corridors and result is more appealing to me. 
I think I'm ready to start creating assets and adding details to the scene. 

Vizimir

Hello, 
I made some progress with my scene and replaced all modular assets with new ones and made some basic materials in designer to work with.
For the start I going for a neutral white and black light scenario and I will add colours later.
I have got some problems with light seams beetween meshes and as you can see in some pleaces they are still visible but it was far worst than that. I think they are acceptable for now, and gonna be masked  with proper texture (trim sheet) in the future.
Let me know what you think.

Vizimir

Hi,
another uptade to my project below. I made trims for modular interior elements and maped all of them. Also I started adding some color. 
Let me know what you think.

Crazy_pixel

Uh nice project I like the shapes of the hallways and the neon light design. I can feel the claustrophobic mood

Auldbenkenobi

Reaaaaaaaaally digging the vibe in this. It's like a pleasant mix of Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey 

Vizimir

Nice to hear that guys

Quick shot on the main room with core machinery. Still need to work on lighting of whole space and color intensity of core tubes.

Obscura

Just saw this on twitter and really reminded me to your scene:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKnNFNxXkAEaCUO?format=jpg&name=medium

jdellinger98

That last update something seems a bit off to me. I'm in no means an expert in design but, the white neon hallways Are amazing, but the "core machinery" renders just leave something to be desire I guess. 

I think it has to do with everything in this render being completely symmetrical. I do think it's good but, there is nothing really drawing my attention to any certain focal point. Overall I think your killing it; imo I'm not a  fan of the neon light shooting directly upwards on every single doorway. If I was playing this area in a game, I'd get lost so often.

Vizimir

Hello, 

another update to my scene. Added decals, some storytelling and tweaked colors with lighting. 
I still planning to add one crucial element to whole scene, which, I hope bring more story to empty corridors.
So the shots:

Obscura said:

Just saw this on twitter and really reminded me to your scene:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKnNFNxXkAEaCUO?format=jpg&name=medium

Oh nice, thanks for good reference

jdellinger98 said:

That last update something seems a bit off to me. I'm in no means an expert in design but, the white neon hallways Are amazing, but the "core machinery" renders just leave something to be desire I guess. 

I think it has to do with everything in this render being completely symmetrical. I do think it's good but, there is nothing really drawing my attention to any certain focal point. Overall I think your killing it; imo I'm not a  fan of the neon light shooting directly upwards on every single doorway. If I was playing this area in a game, I'd get lost so often.

You are right about focal points in this shot. I change a composition a bit, to focus more on the corridor than on the core, and still planning to add storytelling element somewhere there: 

As for neons above doors, I think during gameplay one of them can be different color or flicker to point player in the right direction. 

Vizimir

Hello,
quick update, the scene is almost finished, next week I planning to work on postprocess and volumetric fog effects.
For today, meet the droids, let me know what you think.

mrgesy

Loving those concepts! For the 3d blockout, I would try playing with those light sources. I personally feel like there're too many competing lights. For the shot with the core and the corridors visible, I would turn off all of the corridor lights except the main focus corridor. This will attract attention more to that corridor. Light is very useful and powerful for guiding the eyes and shouldn't be used everywhere.

Vizimir

mrgesy said:

Loving those concepts! For the 3d blockout, I would try playing with those light sources. I personally feel like there're too many competing lights. For the shot with the core and the corridors visible, I would turn off all of the corridor lights except the main focus corridor. This will attract attention more to that corridor. Light is very useful and powerful for guiding the eyes and shouldn't be used everywhere.

Thanks, you got a point about the light, but still I like the design with corridors turned on, so I decided to make subtle changes to the lights intensity, now the focus corridor is brighter than the rest.

Anyway I call it a day with this scene, below are the final shots and the video, critique welcome. 

Video:
https://youtu.be/5vRBFzmJfxk

Eric Chadwick

Looking great, nice job on completing it!

shabba

Vizimir said:

Hello, 

last week I started working on my new project with sci-fi atmosphere. The rough idea is to create some kind of futuristic prison with suggestion that the owners of the place use prisoners to obtain valuable (powerful maybe?) material. 

First things first, I created some fast concept arts with interior design, loosely inspired by movies like Space Odyssey, Moon and The Empire Strikes Back. Main scheme consists a big round chamber with hero prop in the center and smaller corridors leading to prisoners cells. The hero prop is  
a muli level machine made to storage the resources obtained by/from prisoners.

Hi,
Very cool designs, I like how it turned out. Even though your work is complete I'd like to offer a suggestion for you to keep in mind for your next scene possibly? I hope you dont mind.

IMO without the text, there is nothing in this environment that would be able to indicate the narrative you described "futuristic prison with suggestion that owners use prisoners to obtain valuable material." 

Next time try to interject real life modern day objects that would indicate what you want to tell the viewer (restraints for prisoners), and then put a futuristic vibe/spin on them while maintaining the part that your audience can actually relate to (futuristic restraints for prisoners), and you'll be able to tie the modern day object into your futuristic world even with symbolism, while keeping your viewer understanding the story and world you are trying to sell them.

Maybe I would have expected some device, or piping, that suggests 'harvesting' from the prisoners, and then moving it into the hero prop. The scene completely lacks the narrative you described. And because of that, I feel like your hero prop is not as satisfying as it could be.

Happy Arting! See ya next time

Vizimir

Hi, thanks for cool feedback, really appreciate it.

I think you are right, very good point about bringing to the scene elements from modern times with which players can relate to. 
I must say, probably I got caught in too much in interior design than the overall story. I believe the source of the problem was that I started from the concepts and build up the story on the fly after big part of the environment was already done. I saw it as problem during the scene creation and decided for the next scene that I will start with overall story and let that dictate concepts and whole environment, not other way around.

Anyway, I learned a lot during this project and enjoyed  creating it. I haven't decided yet what i want to do next, but probably it's not going to be Sci Fi. Stay tuned.