Help this enviornment art guy learn how to make enviros with Unreal4 please

Vorte

Hello,

I am David and I am 27 years old.

I have been working as enviro artist for a bunch of years now, but don't know unreal4 and I just want to learn it to get a job at any studio that makes first/third person games.

Even tho I have been in the industry for a bit now, I haven't ever done a full environment by my self and I don't know Unreal.

I haven't had education on environment art, and with out you guys I know I wont make it. I need your help.. please

I have only worked on racing games so far and I am kind of sick of it. So any help you great and talented people can provide will be unconditionally appreciated.

I am doing a little and simple scene to learn.




I am happy with my blockout in 3ds max. So I got this in to Unreal and did some very basic lighting and I had a nasty surprise.

I got tons of Lightmap artifacts all over the scene.


If I have a look at UV2 that Unreal did this is how it looks:

As you can see I exported the entire Scene as an FBX. so its a solid chunck, all the little props are all part of one single FBX.

So I am thinking I should separate every prop/asset from the scene, and import them separately so Unreal can easily create proper UV2s for them?

Feels like a waste of time to reasemble the entire scene in Unreal again when I have it already in 3ds max. Are there any tricks to speed this up?

Is there any way to get my 3ds max camera across to Unreal4?(position/FOV. . .etc)

Also, I had to scale everything up by 2,5 so it actually fits the scale of the character that comes in the 3ds person unreal scene. Why is this? (my max scene unites are set to cementers.)

I am working on this scene every day. and will do till I finish it. .  any help will be very appreciated.

thanks again,
David

Vincent074

I´m probably not the best to give you feedback on this but maybe you could try an auto unwrap on the UV2 channel inside of max and see if the results are better? In unity I used to make my own UV2s

NeonGold

Hi David,

You can export the scene as a whole (in a single FBX) and when you import it just make sure to un-check 'Combine Meshes' in the import settings window when you bring it into UE4. This will bring them in as separate objects and generate unique lightmaps for each provided you have 'Generate Lightmap UVs' checked in the import settings. In my experience the auto-generate does a pretty good job, but occasionally I have to make a custom UV2. 

In order to retain position, drag everything into the scene together and you'll see that they share the same pivot. I don't believe it's generally good practice to build a scene this way as the location of the pivot will be off, but it depends on what you're trying to achieve.

As for the scale issue I'm not sure because going from Blender I generally don't have any issues, but I would suggest having a look through the import settings to see if anything stands out to you. 

teodar23

You can use import into level, not the normal import option. Its under file and i think it can import lights and cameras and other stuff too.

Vorte

Vincent074
NeonGold
teodar23
Hello, thank you so much guys for your input. I have been silently working on my scene after being unblocked by your indications.

I have been able to import my 3ds max camera, I fixed all the lightmap issues and got some basic lighting baked.





I also started to get some basic materials and decals from Megascans and added them to the scene just to see how it looks.

This is the results, following my reference concept by the book.





I asked a couple of buddies and they both agreed that the issue with the scene is that is lacking a focal point and that makes it a bit confusing on what should you look at, or what is the main element of the scene, which is something that should never happen. Viewer should be always clear about what to look first.


I followed the rule of thirds  and Fibonacci curve to guide me on what elements to add or remove and this is the result.




The BIENVENIDO sign is a placeholder at the moment, letters are quite ugly atm but I am just pretending to create some contrast to guide the view over that element, which helps viewer understand it is a motel reception (please let me know if those where your thoughts about the scene after me telling you this). Btw its written in spanish as this is ment to be located in Colombia

I think I should experiment a bit more and add some more elements along the curve (maybe a light on the wall, moving the ceiling fan). Please let me know if you think this changes are improving the scene or they are actually making it worse. .

I am also finding a bit tricky to balance the colours, hue and brightness of the Base colour textures. I am not sure of when should I try to brighten up certain areas with light, or by changing the texture or by tweaking the LUT.  




Again, thank you so much for your time and for your input. Any feedback / critics / suggestions / tips are very welcome and appreciated,
David

teodar23

Looks good, i like it!
But i think it can be better.

First off, the image is too noisy, and i don't mean it has granularity, i mean there is too much contrast both in luminosity and hue. I took the liberty to tweak it a bit:

I removed some of the luma contrast and desaturated, then brought back some orange in the light to make it a bit moody.

Of course, the look is subjective but the point is:

1. you have too much contrast in your texturing, try to avoid textures with pitch black pixels like that dirt decal on the walls or the wood on the wall. the ceiling texture also suffers from high contrast .

2. the stretched decals look awful, try to avoid them.

3. try to avoid making a rainbow out of your image. colors are nice but don't overdo it. you already have blue and orange walls, why did you add the 3 colored stripes?

4. In the pic with lighting only enabled there is no colored bounce light. I would expect some of that orange from the floor and wall to bounce in the enviro. idk whats happening there.

About the modeling, you have edges that are too sharp (furniture and objects) and edges that are too straight (walls).

Also, the light is coming in like there's no wall on that side, which is weird. if that's the reference then so be it, but maybe add a car there or a tree or a person to cast a shadow in the room, that indicate there is an outside.

Vorte

teodar23 

Hello Teodar. Thank you so much for your input, I appreciate a lot you took your time on this, super valuable feedback. It helps me keep my moral up too!

I am taking very good note of your suggestions and will work on it. I am taking a little rest so I can get back to it with fresh eyes.  Will go through all your points 1 by 1.

THANKS!
David

KatharinaSuhany

Hello there!
You made quite some progress so far! 
I think the only little thing I would add to the points made by Theodar is that the floor looks in my opinion to clean and polished in comaprison to the rest of the room, especially in comaprison with the walls. I think addidng a little bit of dirt (from shoes etc.) might help.
Hope that helps1

Vorte

@KatharinaSuhany

Hi KathrinaSuhany,

Thank you for your feedback! Taking good note on that too, will work on it.

Thanks for the help!
David

mhofever

IMO I wouldn't desaturate the scene, unless you decide to tell a bleak story. I like the way you got it set up now, it's vibrant, clear and gives off a positive vibe like I want to come here with my mates and enjoy a good drink in the hot sun.

Anyway, here's my 2 cents.

I think it'd be better to frame your dirt around the edges more. Thats not to say you can't have detail on the main surface. Unless you're telling us this place is so dirty the owner doesn't bother cleaning it, then it'd be good to get something to reference a clean version against a dirty version. Same goes for the floors, frame the dirt around corners and edges and add a splash of water splotches, like it's been mopped, to the texture to get the roughness to pop a bit and make them less shiny.

When I first looked at your shot, my eye was drawn to the counter. If you want to have the viewer focused on this area, then perhaps you could add some assets here to support that area of the shot.

 From the information I can gather in the shot, this is some sort of shop, but it's not clear what type of shop it is. If your concept is showing just exactly what you've added, then perhaps you can add some elements of your own to tell a story.

While having a concept is good to visualise the sceen, you don't necessarily have to follow it to the teeth. Part of the fun of enviornment art is telling a story in a scene .

Overall it's looking great though, it feels fresh and positive. Look forward to seeing it through.



Btw, you shouldn't have to feel like you need to learn a new engine in order to make yourself more desireable to hire, in fact I can say from experience that studios vary from one another in terms of how they work. Some in fact have their own in-house engine and will set time aside to teach new hires their tools. While it's great you are learning Unreal 4 and will be beneficial, it won't necessarily make you unhirable because you haven't worked with that engine. Engines and editors are just tools, it's your creativity that the studio is hiring. Learning tools is easy, learning to become a good artist is not.

Vorte

@mhofever
Hello Mhofever, thank you so much for your feedback and guidance, very appreciated. Will work hard on your suggestions and will post an update of my progress in the upcoming days. 

I understand your point regarding not knowing Unreal won't make me unhirable. My current situation is that I have always been working with Inhouse engines and I am now starting to learn Unreal to actually work on my personal environments. I have done some props as personal projects but not environment scenes. That's why I'm currently working on this right now. This is my artstation in case you are interested   https://www.artstation.com/david_vortrefflich It's like I am doing stuff the other way round ^^. I am realising now I was quite lucky I landed a job as environment artist some years ago being the art test my first enviro ever (in Marmoset)!

Again, thank you so much for your time!

Vorte

Hello,

I have been silent for a while now so I decided to give a quick update on my progress.

This is the current state of the scene. I did experiment with composition by adding more storytelling elements. I dont know if i was just looking at the image too much or my additions weren't working very well, I wasnt sure if it was improving or getting worse, so I decided to just stick to my original ref, make all the assets and then if I have more time then bring in my additions, but after doing some numbers Ive estimated that modeling and texturing every single asset in the scene is going to take somewhere around 200 hours But still, Im feeling positive about it. I think I am capable to commit to the plan but it will be a personal challenge for sure.


Some colleges suggested to use tiling textures and weighted normals to speed up things, but I would like to take some close up shots of pretty much every area of the scene and mantain a high quality standard. So this is going to take a long time, Im spending 6 hours on it every week and my finishing date estimate is February 2021 So probably I will update the thread with less frequency, maybe once or twice a month.

Here you can see what my additions are in this image.

I also started to experiment with different shots, some of them work better than others



Thanks for your help!
David