Hey there,
I started a new project during the holidays and want to share my progress with you. Feedback is also very appreciated!
The scene's focus will be a small coffee shop based on an existing one in my hometown which I haven't been visiting for quite some time now (for obvious reasons).
To challenge myself I want to try to make it look like no human has been there for many, many years, as I haven't really completed any post-apocalyptic / abandoned scenes before.
Here's my reference board with pictures of the real place:
I'm almost done with finishing the main structures of the building and loaded it into Unity for a quick look. Next I'll tackle everyone's favorite task and do the UVs.
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UVs and most of the building textures are done now and I also made a height-based blending shader. I'll refine the vertex painting later, but will now move on to modeling a bit of the surrounding area. Would love some C&C!
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3309297,6.561604,3a,74.9y,37.14h,104.68t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipMVs6AlNzYguZ6LAP353-Iz81-BuAAiZaEWHZzD!2e10!3e11!7i13312!8i6656
Worked on some damage inside the coffee shop so it looks nastier. I'm also constantly playing with the lighting. It's less dramatic now, but I quite like the dim look it has. Aside from that I added a few props - the car is from an older project though, I just added a post-apocalypse-pass
Where I think you're definitely right is the lighting inside which was indeed very flat and dull. Hard to balance exterior and interior lighting. I tried to work on this a little bit, but I might have to dial the light in the middle back a bit, as it's coming from seemingly nowhere and also bleeds onto the ceiling? Not sure, would love to hear opinions on this.
I also switched from Unity's own lightmapper to Bakery and it's an incredible difference in both speed and quality!
Other than that I made a new background building for on end of the street.
The areas in shadow should be a lot darker or the light patches should be a lot brighter imo.
Your're right, the harsh shadows were a big problem, thanks for pointing that out. I decided to ditch the sunny afternoon look entirely and go into a different direction. I also tried to better guide the viewer to the coffee shop.
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Revisited the trees / bushes and added some variety to the smaller foliage
I'm also quite happy now with the interior lighting, but the whole room still needs to be a lot dirtier / messier. I was thinking of a lot of dirt / leak / rubble decals and more stuff lying on the floor + the vertex painting needs to be finished, but I'm open to other ideas!
There's also this new building:
Then I worked a bit on the exterior lighting and made it a little darker and increased the contrast between light and dark parts. Not sure if I like it better than the previous version, I'll might go with something in between in the end.
I also added a lot of dirt and trash to the interior which will hopefully make it look a lot more like it's been completely abandoned for many years now.
Here's a quick test of the scene in motion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBcgyHHXlfk
Late to the party, great piece of an overgrown city.
Care to elaborate on your bakery settings and what you used for the volumetric fog/godrays?
Great stuff man!
This is just amazing man. Maybe you can add extra nighttime scenario. But overall I am very impressed with the progress you done so far.
keep it up
Great stuff! So cool to see the progress! Only thing that can be tweaked a bit is foliage,just to give more variation, that green looks a bit flat, but it is a small thing, good job!