[WIP] Stylized Witches Kitchen- UE4
polycounter
Hello! Ive been working on a new personal project for a little bit, and now I finally feel like I have enough done to start sharing one here.
For this project i'll be collaborating with two of my close friends who are illustrators. The two of them have been working together to make the concept art for this environment, and i'll be recreating it in 3D! Ill be using Blender to model and sculpt, and substance painter and designer for textures.
Heres what I have so far, I've got most of the major furniture in the scene, I just need to make the rug, table, and chair.
Concept art so far ( this is still changing, we are still experimenting with different color palates, shapes, and layouts)
Concept illustrations by Cori Boerner https://csb31697.wixsite.com/corisillustrations and Madeline Richardson https://www.smilingfeline.com/
For this project i'll be collaborating with two of my close friends who are illustrators. The two of them have been working together to make the concept art for this environment, and i'll be recreating it in 3D! Ill be using Blender to model and sculpt, and substance painter and designer for textures.
Heres what I have so far, I've got most of the major furniture in the scene, I just need to make the rug, table, and chair.
Concept art so far ( this is still changing, we are still experimenting with different color palates, shapes, and layouts)
Concept illustrations by Cori Boerner https://csb31697.wixsite.com/corisillustrations and Madeline Richardson https://www.smilingfeline.com/
Replies
I think the door looks a bit small. Generally dropping some mannequin in there might help with proportions and placement. Personally would move away from the concept, if it helps the 3D scene to look more natural.
Also, feels to me like style of the props could be more defined and consistent.
This could be done by taking one asset from start to finish, extracting rules from this asset (edge sharpness, distribution of details, line widths, pattern collection...) and applying to the other assets (sort of a guideline).
Don't know how you go about the highpolys, but starting from a good base mesh (either sub-d modeled or compound meshes (possibly remeshed)) can help to achieve defined form and avoid blobbyness.
@stefanWilliams_C Thank you! Getting the outlines was a pain but I finally built a nice post processing shader that works well
Some things I think could make it more cohesive (and stlye-o-mat?):
- Color pallet with fixed value range for the textures - very dark values could be reserved for outlines and lines.
- Vertical gradients. Removes some contrast from bottom and adds contrast where assets overlap.
- Lines - if you go for line art you could introduce some lines into the textures, or some brush strokes.
Tried to make paintover on previous screenshot - maybe it's not good
Regarding the furniture, I would look into real world furniture, even if it's stylized.
- Stand of the table is quite massive compared to top
- Chair has some weird leg width and seating surface doesn't have much support
- Curtain fixture is unclear, seams like they are rolled up instead of pulled aside
- Counter next to sink don't have board/plate on top anymore - this construction typical for kitchen counters
I think tinting with post process could make it too monochrome.
Just my 2 cents, main thing is too have fun of course. Much success!
As far as adding more black lines and gradients thats something I was actually already planning on doing, I agree that those things will really tie the props and furniture together.
Also keen to see how you'll go with the plants/foliage, cause those are always interesting the first time round, but are a really great skill to learn
so ive changed my scene as well to be more blue
more small stuff
I agree that the shape of the room being square isn't really helping the piece though and I think it's a fun idea to add stairs or something to help it be more interesting. I'll try to go through and add thicker bevels to the objects, especially the cabinet, and wonk some things up to make it a bit more fun and stylized.
I'm probably going to do a paint over with my current scene and some fixes so I can see how things would look.
Thanks again for the critique, it's super helpful!!
After I did that I did a paint over from my scene, adding in some of the things I noted from other artwork that might fir well into my own. Things like adding a roof shape, making the fireplace bigger, having a consistent color palate, changing the shape of the cabinet, and making the wall planks less " samey." Also, I want to add hand painted details to the models, thats something I really like and I think will elevate my piece. Basically I've got a lot to do
also I asked for some concept art for the ceiling so ill be building that soon as well!
I thought about coloring the polar bears eyes but I'm not sure if I want to or not
Gonna start working on small props again, got this little book stand and magic floating pencil done today
All of the furniture (like the cabinet and cauldron) is lit on one side and shadowed on the other, which would suggest a directional light, except a directional light would/should be blocked by the walls, props and furniture. There are thick light rays coming in through the kitchen window, but only on the second shot, and not through the door or circular window. Also the light ray effect layer seems to be under the outline effect layer which looks really weird.
I'm not sure what is going on with the lighting, but I think a more realistic lighting setup or an unlit more cartoon-y style might work better for this scene.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/VolumetricFog/index.html
And thank you! I'm excited to continue making fun little stuff to fill up the room. The room itself is definitely too dark so I'm gonna make it brighter and the god ray's slightly dimmer.