[UE4] Castle In The Lake / Isometric game environment

LucasNazato

The idea for this project was to make a game environment in isometric view and to practice creating larger environments. It was also a good chance to start learning Unreal. The inspiration for it was Bodiam Castle, in the UK, and a previous artwork I made in pixelart of castle ruins in a lake.

It's not a real isometric view, as the camera used is in perspective mode, but by adjusting the FOV I managed to get a good result.

The AS Learning tutorial for Creating Materials in Unreal, by Kem Yaralioglu, was extremely useful, and for the lighting I used as a base the presets made by Tim Simpson, from Polygon Academy.

Modeling in Blender 2.83, material creation in Substance Designer and rendering inside UE4.

Critiques and feedback are welcome!

More images: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GaJLzN

teodar23

The high contrast in some of the textures makes the whole scene very "noisy". You could argue that the high contrast is an artistic choice and i would agree but the fact of the matter is that the scene is not pleasant to look at due to that noisiness. The repetition doesnt help either. I would find a way to break that repetition either by way of decals or vertex blended materials or macro textures.

LucasNazato

Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, I was thinking about adding some foliage to the walls to reduce the repetition, and decals / macro textures will help a lot too, didn't know about them before.
In regards to the contrast, you think that could be fixed in post process? And which ones exactly have too much of it?

JamesBrisnehan

I think the black mortar between the bricks is a big part of the 'contrast' and 'noise' teodar23 mentioned. Have you thought about light-tan mortar instead? It could be an issue with the ambient occlusion map being too dark. In fact, most of your textures have too much AO.

Also the texture stretching and seams on your trim pieces look pretty bad, especially the battlements. You might want to rethink how you UV and texture those. Looking up reference of real-world castles, and looking up tutorials on "trim texturing" might help.

LucasNazato

Yeah, I see what you mean now, I kinda like the contrast, but the AO is definitely overdone, I got so used to the texture I didn't notice anymore haha.
The rock texture I used for the battlements could definitely have used a lot more work, and I probably could have changed the tiling a little.

Thanks!