Allewway Project

Mohamed_Zain

Hello Guys 
This my first time posting here so i hope to get as much feedback as possible 
This project i've been working on for a while and I'm some how got blocked and i'm not able to figure out what i'm missing 

I created this project based of the concept Alleyway by Adrian Regalado but i tread to play more with the lighting to make this dark alley effect .
and by the way this is my first UE4 Environment so as i mentioned i hope to get feedback as you can provide me cause this will be really helpful.
so i'll really appreciate your feedback guys and try not to be nice i need every bit of criticizing you have.
thanks in advance guys.

Mohamed_Zain

and these screenshots of couple of props i created and unwrapped in 3Ds Max, textured in Substance Painter and Renderd via SP Iray 

Gigabitten

!!!

I love this.  This is more than just a bunch of realistic looking meshes and materials.  Instead, it's a bunch of realistic looking meshes and materials that artfully sets the mood of the scene!  It reminds me of the ways in which a filmmaker might set the mood of a scene.  Well done!

Sora123

I dont know if it is a style choiche but it is a bit to dark and you cant see the details you made in this scene. If you weuld to compare the concept art to this scene you can clearly see every detail lit by light. I dont see that in your art work. My take you can eighter make it realistic  or make it more artistic using light and reflections. 

Mohamed_Zain

Gigabitten said:

!!!

I love this.  This is more than just a bunch of realistic looking meshes and materials.  Instead, it's a bunch of realistic looking meshes and materials that artfully sets the mood of the scene!  It reminds me of the ways in which a filmmaker might set the mood of a scene.  Well done!

thanks, i really appreciate your feedback

Mohamed_Zain

Sora123 said:

I dont know if it is a style choiche but it is a bit to dark and you cant see the details you made in this scene. If you weuld to compare the concept art to this scene you can clearly see every detail lit by light. I dont see that in your art work. My take you can eighter make it realistic  or make it more artistic using light and reflections. 

first thanks for your feedback 
second do you think i should do the lighting process from scratch or just try to highlight the details with more lighting 

Gigabitten

Sora123 said:

I dont know if it is a style choiche but it is a bit to dark and you cant see the details you made in this scene. If you weuld to compare the concept art to this scene you can clearly see every detail lit by light. I dont see that in your art work. My take you can eighter make it realistic  or make it more artistic using light and reflections. 

That might be true.  Still, might it be possible that the brightness on your monitor is low?  Because now that it is early in the morning, the sun is coming through my windows and hitting my monitors--monitors whose brightness was turned all the way down from last night--and I can definitely see what you mean.  Of course, the risk of increasing the light intensity might be that the scene looks worse when monitor brightness is turned all the way up.  I suppose it's a tradeoff.  However, when the brightness on my monitors is turned to 50 of 100, I can see a sufficient amount of detail within the scene.

pixelpatron

Night scenes in 3D can be tricky, because it typically doesn't work to have a game or film behave the way it would in real life, instead of looking at realistic lighting (still good to use for reference; but make a decision for your jumping off point); look at other games with night scenes, and Hollywood sets from film/television. Typically night is portrayed as a wash of blue, purple or green. 







(leans more realistic and concept art, but you can still make out the blue/green and more importantly; the details shine through. I'm sure if you go internet hunting, you can find screenshots from The Order 1886 that demonstrate successful lit night scenes).




(sorry for the graphic image, but just too good of an example to not show). 


I like your scene A LOT! Just not the lighting. I'd say start over with these as direction (not all of them obviously; but the theory). Pick one style and try to execute; or find a reference image/concept with these elements and re-execute.

Good luck.

Gigabitten

pixelpatron said:

I like your scene A LOT! Just not the lighting. I'd say start over with these as direction (not all of them obviously; but the theory). Pick one style and try to execute; or find a reference image/concept with these elements and re-execute.

Good luck.

Ok, now I see what you all mean.  Still, it's worth keeping in mind that the moods of these screenshots/still-frames are different than the moods I was detecting from the original poster, which might best be described as dark, mysterious, or maybe secretive.

Here, I will post a couple of real-life photographs of city alleyways at night so you all know where I'm coming from.

One thing I like about these two photographs is how luminescent the lights are.  This makes sense, because at night our eyes adjust to the dark, and any lights around us seem much brighter than they would in the daytime.

Mohamed_Zain

pixelpatron said:

Night scenes in 3D can be tricky, because it typically doesn't work to have a game or film behave the way it would in real life, instead of looking at realistic lighting (still good to use for reference; but make a decision for your jumping off point); look at other games with night scenes, and Hollywood sets from film/television. Typically night is portrayed as a wash of blue, purple or green. 

(sorry for the graphic image, but just too good of an example to not show). 


I like your scene A LOT! Just not the lighting. I'd say start over with these as direction (not all of them obviously; but the theory). Pick one style and try to execute; or find a reference image/concept with these elements and re-execute.

Good luck.

you gave me some ideas, i really needed some feedback like this.
I will gather some references and rework the lighting based on your ideas 
you really helped me .. thanks man 

Mohamed_Zain

Gigabitten said:

pixelpatron said:

I like your scene A LOT! Just not the lighting. I'd say start over with these as direction (not all of them obviously; but the theory). Pick one style and try to execute; or find a reference image/concept with these elements and re-execute.

Good luck.

Ok, now I see what you all mean.  Still, it's worth keeping in mind that the moods of these screenshots/still-frames are different than the moods I was detecting from the original poster, which might best be described as dark, mysterious, or maybe secretive.

Here, I will post a couple of real-life photographs of city alleyways at night so you all know where I'm coming from.

One thing I like about these two photographs is how luminescent the lights are.  This makes sense, because at night our eyes adjust to the dark, and any lights around us seem much brighter than they would in the daytime.

you area really getting my mind. that's exactly the effect that i was trying to create with this lighting
I'll try to mix between your refs and pixelpatron refs and i hope to come up with some thing nice 
thanks again 

JamesBrisnehan

*Edit* I got mixed up in who-said-what and mistook some of the things Giggabitten posted, for posts from the artist of the scene we are all talking about. Sorry for any confusion. I have changed this post to be less awkward but I left the image alone*


Ok, so you are going for a Film Noir/high contrast kind of look. That's cool, I like a good Noir lighting set up. But to pull it off well you might have to change some things:

I brought a copy of your image into Photoshop to use the levels graph for visual aid. In your scene, the highlights never reach above 25% brightness, making the brightness levels to feel clamped down,  which causes people to say it looks too dark.
In your Giggabitten's Noir reference, the lights are very bright and the shadows very dark. They are lit and color graded to have as much contrast as possible. The highlights reach all the way to 80% or even 100% in the levels graph and have a decent amount of mid-tones as well.
I also found some modern examples of the kind of lighting style you are striving for and they have similar Levels graphs to the Noir images.
Finally, while I was in Photoshop, I did a quick level and brightness adjustment to your scene as well as some paint over to better match the Film Noir lighting style. 

If you decide to try and match the lighting style of your Giggabittens reference closer I would suggest the following:
   -Increase the size and intensity of your lights.
   -Add a post processing volume and increase the exposure.
   -Add puddles and generally increase the glossiness of your ground textures. Maybe wall textures too.
   -Make sure screen space reflections is on, or you have good reflection captures set up.
   -Add more fog, denser steam, and/or more volumetric fog. 
Reflections and well-lit fog can add a lot of depth and interest to your scene while still adhering to the Film Noir aesthetic. 

JamesBrisnehan

*Ooops, Sorry, I got a little mixed up on who said what while reading though this post. I see now that the Film Noir reference was not posted by the person who started this thread, Mohamed Zain.
My bad...
Got a little excited, and carried away.

teodar23

@Mohamed_Zain i really like your initial lighting and mood. Although not perfect, i think its interesting an very atmospheric.
While i do like some of the other ideas being posted here, they have a different feel from your scene and thats one of the things that you get when requesting feedback, other people's way of doing things. And this is perfectly fine except for the fact that it can derail you from YOUR idea.
Getting back to the scene, i think you shoud use some form of bloom to make the lights pop. Also the uniform yellow window lights dont work. Maybe add some variation to them like a waviness from a curtain. Or just find some pictures online of such windows and use that.
Keep at it.

Mohamed_Zain

@JamesBrisnehan yeah i got your idea. honestly a had no idea how to understand the highlights of an image using Photoshop. but now i know how to edit my lighting and i'll try to play around to make it better 
thanks man, you helped me a lot 

Mohamed_Zain

@teodar23 I'm actually using the Post Process Volume but i guess i'm a little shy with it so i should make it more effective. and the windows i think it will look better with this. i was really striving for a good feedback and i finally found here so i really appreciate your response. thank you 

kanga

Just a quick comment. I cant see a thing. Could be my rig tho.

Mohamed_Zain

@kanga No actually it's my rig 

Mohamed_Zain

So guys i finished the project and posted it to Artstation and that's the project link so if anyone has the time to take a look and give me some feedback about the whole project would be great 
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRgmb2