[Finished] [UE4] Handpainted BotW Stable Diorama
polycounter
Hello all! In this thread I will be documenting my progress for my newest personal project. I recently finished playing Breath of the Wild on the switch and I absolutely loved it. I want to make a small diorama in unreal engine of one of my favorite parts, a stable! The specific stable I'm trying to replicate is the Northern Akkala Stable. For references I'm just using references from in game, but I'm trying to make the texture style more handpainted and stylized than they are in game. My progress so far:
I have basic grass which blows in the wind, and leaves on the ground! I have some almost completed textures on the horse head itself and the wooden structure that supports it. My next steps will be to make a highpoly version of the base of the stable, and get the flags and various fabrics textured and added as well!
Critiques and comments are appreciated ❤
I have basic grass which blows in the wind, and leaves on the ground! I have some almost completed textures on the horse head itself and the wooden structure that supports it. My next steps will be to make a highpoly version of the base of the stable, and get the flags and various fabrics textured and added as well! Critiques and comments are appreciated ❤
Replies
progress
Cart prop added into the scene!
Edit: I was wrong sticking with sunset
https://tshop.r10s.jp/brickers/cabinet/parts/5000-9999/6064-028.jpg?fitin=330:330
Since you've gone to the effort of making the assets in the scene, you'd most likely want to focus your lighting on it. Rather than low lit silhouetting. Right now it's forming for the latter, the scene is too dark so we're not able to read much.
I think you would benefit from having the sunrise in your scene to cast shadows and highlight your stable.
But if you're wanting to keep the current dark mood you'll need a brighter environment to show off your artwork. Compare how bright zelda is at night. Most games have a brighter stylized night to improve readability. Remember you're showing off an environment here, so it's important to show it off! Match the grass to your terrain too, it's too bright and doesn't blend at the roots.
Look at zelda here, the contrast is a lot less, you can see the shadows of stuff without it being near black (which can be also seen on the horse head).
Your trees are too contrasty as well, there are too many black values. I don't know if this is due to your texture having black/dark leaves or the vertex normals need to be fixed. You could also benefit from increasing the radius and effect of your lighting, and add some bloom. I'm crap at paintovers but hopefully it illustrates the point.
I also added this detail to the stable, the geo I had here before was super lazy and ugly this looks much nicer!
In my opinion if you can blend the foliage closer to the building that will make a big difference. I think the trees are too realistic against the building so its jarring. It looks like you have either shading issues on the grass or the colour variation is too harsh.
Hopefully this helps! Keep it up!
https://polycount.com/discussion/209623/smooth-foliage-like-in-breath-of-the-wild-europa-by-helder-pinto-mini-tutorial#first
You will see, to what extent you need to do this, but its kinda tricky to get it right and looking good all the time.
Also you could try removing cast shadows on the grass mesh to prevent such disarray between your lit/unit modes.
In regards to the opacity maps it may benefit from being slightly less spiky and have more rounded blades to support your stylised scene.
I understand its frustrating having to work on something 10x over, but you've got some nice models so far and being as the grass is such a prominent asset in the scene it makes sense to put some extra time into it! You got this
Honestly I'm having alot of fun working on this project, especially now that I'm having alot of interaction on this forum that really motivates me to move forward, it's not frustrating at all!
Can you post your lighting reference?
Anyways, I see this update as a big step forward.
Here is have drawn two arrows the blue arrow indicates where the sunlight in the game is coming from. In my scene I changed this to try to get a more dramatic effect, the light in my scene is in the direction of the yellow arrow. I can defiantly play around with different sun light angles.
About the lighting. Shadows are still to bright, and there is too much saturation going on. Try making the skylight weaker and if you use yellow in your sunlight, make it more white. Or if you are using light color, try using temperature instead. It will look more natural. Currently its hard to tell the light direction because there are no cast shadows, no brighter spots etc. This is partially due to the bright skylight, partially due to a too low sun angle maybe? But its hard to say from your image. If you make the image grayscale you'll see everything is in the middle range. There is no dark and bright spots.