[WIP] Abandoned Train Wagon, Yes, Yet Another Abandoned Scene... [UE4]

Tiodorr

Hello fellow polycount people.

 I finally dared to post something online and I am very excited to share my newest personal project with you guys.

I had the idea to make a small, playable scene in UE4 with an abandoned and then re purposed tank wagon by wanderers who need shelter in the middle of nowhere. 
It all started with deciding to do a modeling exercise and finally decided to create a tank wagon that was inspired by The Walking Dead game. 
After I decided to take it further and make a story out of it. 

I am looking forward to finishing this scene and will post updates on a regular basis..hopefully! 

Tiodorr

Reference board for the tank wagon. Main inspiration is from The Walking Dead game, asset created by Elite3D studio.

Tiodorr

Since I had aleady started with the project, but was feeling anxient to start a thread, I had already made the wagon itself. After that I gave it a 'destruction' pass and started designing sort of a shelter that survivors have put together from scrap parts from other train wagon nearby. 

Tiodorr

I made the initial blockout of the scene, where I can accommodate my abandoned wagon. The environment will be a small scene, which supports the story and indicates the reason for abandoning. I want the scene to take action in late autumn and the initial lighting pass I established tries to support that. I still need to work on the intensity of the shadows and the ambient fog.

marco_3D_artist

Great Job!! I would love to see it textured

Tiodorr

@marco_3D_artist Thank you!!

Tiodorr

Small progress on my small level inside #ue4. Added a first, rough iteration of my trees. Still figuring out the overall layout and blockout of the scene.

Tiodorr

Here's an update of my small playable scene.

I'm currently making progress on the landscape, story behind the train explosion, tree iterations and the wagon model itself.

I would love to know what you guys think! I will keep posting updates.

Tiodorr

Final touches on the tank car, repurposed as a shelter after the train explosion.

Still need to take on the clothes and sculpt them up.

Hope you guys like it!! Cheers!

Tiodorr

After tweaking my UV layout to optimize it for the most resolution possible, I already started texturing. (I used a ton of mirroring and stacking)

This is the progress I have so far, I spent a considerable amount also to pick a nice palette, that would suit the asset and the environment it is going to be in. 

As a bonus, I do these test renders in Iray, with a nice autumn HDRi that goes well with my plans.

Tiodorr

Close-up and more progress on the look development, and comparing to real-life reference. As the asset is quite huge, I first try to take on focal areas (areas of interest) and establish them first. Then I take a break with them to do some smaller portions of the asset. 

Saving time in Painter became almost unbearable (about 3mins)

By the way the resolution I am working on is 1024. As a result, the images I am showing here are not the most hi-res, however I still keep in mind to frequently check the results in 2k and 4k.

Hope you like it. 

If anybody has any comments on my progress, I would love to hear about it!

Tiodorr

I made some screenshots, texturing this enormous thing takes so much time!!



Hope you guys like it so far and I am really curious to hear if you have any feedback on this big guy.

Tiodorr

Texturing the broken bridge. Currently blocking out some basic textures to see how it feels. Because the reason for collapsing was an explosion, I will need to go hard on the smokey areas and burnt wood.

Tiodorr

Some more progress on my rusty guy. I applied 2 coats of paint on the main bridge structure and most of it got peeled already.
The wood will need to be randomized in Maya later on.

Tiodorr

I started set dressing the level, the trees were made in Speedtree and for the organic assets, I the 'Open World Collection' from the Marketplace, since they are not my focus for this project. 

There is still a lot of iteration to do, but it is getting there.

teodar23

hey man, good progress so far.

i see some places where the models could use some more polys - don't be afraid to add where needed.

the metals look dull and uniform, almost like plastic - i know that real corroded metal is really rough and dull but yours looks somewhere in between. look at real metal painted and rusted - there is variance - some dull parts and some shiny ones.

the yellow texture is too repetitive - add some variance to break it up.

don't spend too much time doing renders because it will look different in unreal.

but looks promising and i like the idea a lot.

Tiodorr

Hey, thanks for the feedback Teodar. 

I totally agree with all your points.
I also got somewhat confused with my reference, as some of them had a different degree of rusting and was also not entirely sure how much I wanted to push it.

I will try and fix it up now )

Cheers.

Tiodorr

Animated some cloth to react to the wind. I will have to tweak the wind settings to get better results I guess.

Tiodorr

Latest updates from my scene. I really didn't have the chance to update the thread but I essentially dressed up the scene with a bunch of premade assets from the Megascans library and Epic's Open World Demo.
I also scanned a few objects by myself to create a small library of assets.