[Completed] Futuristic City Street - UE4 Environment
polycounter lvl 4
Hi all! I've begun working on a new environment by Koko Liem in tandem of being a mentee of @Lucas Annunziata through the Mentor Coalition. My goal is to use this space for progress updates and critique throughout the process.
The original concept, with permission from the artist:
You can find their work here: https://www.artstation.com/kokoliem
This piece inspired me by having a lot of nice futuristic, chunky aspects that remind me both of Overwatch and Valorant, while being more unique in the approach. There are a lot of opportunities to experiment with different shape languages, tiling textures, alpha cards, and bits of modularity. Any feedback as I go is really appreciated, as this is my first big environment I've tackled with a better grasp on 3D.
The original concept, with permission from the artist:
You can find their work here: https://www.artstation.com/kokoliem
This piece inspired me by having a lot of nice futuristic, chunky aspects that remind me both of Overwatch and Valorant, while being more unique in the approach. There are a lot of opportunities to experiment with different shape languages, tiling textures, alpha cards, and bits of modularity. Any feedback as I go is really appreciated, as this is my first big environment I've tackled with a better grasp on 3D.
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Here is the most recent Maya view of my scene that Lucas saw today:
I met with Lucas today, and the first apparent thing is that I went too deep with my blockout too quickly. I'm assuming it was out of excitement and wanting to show progress. A concern was that I hadn't really resolved all my proportion issues yet. I also went *way* too deep with my beveling too soon, which is a good lesson to keep in mind for the future. I got a bit too granular with the modeling all the intricate parts of it all, so that's something I'm going to be addressing, as well.
My goals for this week include:
- throwing in mannequin-unreal-man into the scene to work against
- pull back on the beveling/get rid of it almost entirely at this point
- simplify smaller meshes
- fix proportions more deeply
- come up with a material list to plan for the future/inspiration or what i think the materials are in the scene
- reimport into unreal with the confidence that everything is looking perfectly how i'd like it to look
- implement a grid system
I should be posting updates throughout the week. Any additional feedback is welcome! It's pretty early but I'm trying to get a good base to work from later. Things may change a good amount but for the better.
Here are some of my comparisons after working last night and this morning on it:
There are small tweaks I'd like to adjust still, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
of course, as expected, this throws a lot of the rest of the scene off. but, if one thing is messed up, it causes problems across the scene as I try to line things up, so it must be done! I won't be getting the camera 100% accurate to the concept but I would like to get this as close as possible, and every silhouette informs the silhouette next to it. One thing that I've been thinking about is that Lucas mentioned "if everything is chunky, then nothing is", so I really need to be able to capture the chunkier parts as well as the more delicate parts. I still have a lot to do, but if I can knock out the righthand side of the scene blockout-wise then I think that's a good start to this week's progress.
There's nothing like thinking "okay, this is fully ready to show for progress documentation" and then finding something ELSE to note or something wrong with the scene. I've already noticed two more things after making notes, so, this has a long way to go! Whew!
Just to revisit my "to-do" list, here's what I've been able to accomplish:
- throwing in mannequin-unreal-man into the scene to work against
- pull back on the beveling/get rid of it almost entirely at this point (basically done, will be by tomorrow)
- simplify smaller meshes (basically done, will be by tomorrow)
- fix proportions more deeply (WIP, really hoping to be 80-90% of the way there by tomorrow)
- come up with a material list to plan for the future/inspiration or what i think the materials are in the scene
- reimport into unreal with the confidence that everything is looking perfectly how i'd like it to look (aiming to get that done tonight)
- implement a grid system (not everything can align easily on the grid but it does exist! and the major buildings are snapped to it)
I've decided that, although I can't get all the angles 100%, the easiest way for me to gut check myself is to continue the alignments in Photoshop. just gives me a better idea of how to improve. I'm really struggling to make things align in the middle part the most. Here's my current update:
And here is an update on how it looks overall. I think it's a lot closer to the concept, it did lose some of its "drama" but that's something that I think is okay for now. I think it's more due to the lighting difference, lack of bevels, and the camera, but I'd rather get it closer to the concept at first and then maybe get the drama out of the camera settings or Unreal adjustments. There are also some random floating blocks, just another part of WIP that hasn't been cleaned up yet lol. I'm trying to get the pillars right, then I'll start on the roofs. Here's to getting a lot of coffee tonight and kicking this things butt for tomorrow!
While working, I did start narrowing down things like "hey, this could just be a prop that I can manually adjust" versus what I could not. I gathered up some things so far that have a zero'd out pivot and can be manually placed (even including the little mannequin in engine just to have more flexibility, but of course that credit goes to the Unreal peeps):
Even though my Maya scene now looks like this...
(which is a bit more chaotic and missing some things that are actually in the main scene or have things I'm not exporting - I'm looking at you, high poly box), and now my Unreal scene looks a bit like this:
The lighting is pretty damn off - didn't really mess with it at all today - and at one point I messed up and deleted a chunk of my materials, so it's kind of a shit show in that respect, but overall I'm pretty dang happy with how it's coming along. It's lost a lot of it's initial blockout drama from my first pics, but honestly, that's just more opportunity to play with the camera angles later, because I think I can bring it back. And some of the dramatic feeling was more from the bevels making things feel more real, so I'm hoping that comes back when I start texturing.
I have another meeting with Lucas Annunziata in the morning, so I'll be updating this on how that goes and what my goals are for this next week. I think I successfully accomplished all of my goals this week, although I would've liked to play around with finding more material inspiration or just trying things out in designer, but I'm a *bit* nervous to start all of that, so I'll leave that for the future.
(Left long rectangle one had the trim sheet affecting it, right had no material - compression makes it hard to see the slight curve on edge)
Some material things I played with on my own:
Played with these in Designer, I was more happy about this one without the color, but I was trying to match the color to my concept a bit for the brick in the mart building. The grout is really bright - but it looks much different in engine, much weaker.
Got Thiago Klafke's material tutorial here and played with it really quickly, loved how effortless it felt and how it wouldn't take too much more to bring it to feeling more "finished". The following is in Unreal and Marmoset, respectively, with a normal map, AO map, and a slight color thrown on (some rou/met values default to marmo, I'm sure, too).
It's really tough to wrap my head around texturing in a modular way. I'm starting to understand what helps make tiling textures work, but they're not my strong suit yet. I think what I've grasped from Thiago's tutorial will ultimately help me with the bricks more than what I did in Substance, because it feels too on the realistic/flat/boring side while the method he uses is more simple and has a lot going for it.
Any direction for trim sheets info is appreciated, though I've been swimming through the waves of tutorials. I think it's one of those things I'm just going to have to experiment more and more with to understand fully. The tutorials I've sat through are helpful, some are information overload...and some of it is I just want to learn how to use *only* normal trim sheet maps that vary from the main texture. My head hurts even trying to think about where the disconnection is in my brain lol! I plan to have more updates soon, but they may be slower as I go into figuring out textures.
Is there a reason that this is angled? If you want that kind of shape you could always just make the shapes straight, map your uvs straight, then skew your geometry. It would make it more reusable and easier to work with.
Here's a snippet of what the building looks like with my plaster material:
I feel like it captures a nice light painterly effect without overdoing it. I did most of the work in designer, combining some grunge + other texture nodes and then I brought it into 3DCoat so I could paint the seams a bit better and have a cleaner transition between the lighter parts and darker parts, as well as to tone down the contrast of the texture. Here is my plaster texture next to the brick one I shared a few days ago (albedo only):
With the UV coordinates that I set for the building combined with the unwrap of this Unreal cube (for both materials), its a lot easier to see where the tiling is, but on a larger scale it's not as noticeable, and has a nice gentle painterly feel to it. The bricks are just a first pass, though I'm happier with the normal maps and AO maps more so than the color map for it. It has some painterly details but not as much as the plaster, which I think is acceptable.
Here's a zoomed version of the two. If the material were used more toward the camera I'd worry about the tiling more but it doesn't seem to be a big deal:
Work has me so damn tired! Plus getting a new bike and trying to get out on it every day or every other day has me beat, too! I'll post more progress soon, thanks for checking this out so far. Yay for progress!
Trying to find the right translations was pretty interesting. I found a website where I could roughly draw the Chinese character and it would give me rough estimates of what I was going for. There is one character that's hiding slightly behind a bush in the concept, I couldn't seem to figure that one out. I think I'll just work on having the bush cover it like the concept, because I don't want to stray from what it could really mean.
I started to get them placed on their individual meshes:
And then I started playing with lighting a little bit more, but I'm not very satisfied with it - the lightmaps are a bit chaotic so I should sort those out on the bigger objects. I'd also like to start on a glass shader soon just to have an idea of what that'll be like. I wish I could block the fog volume coming into the Mart, but I haven't figured out how to do that. It seems like most tutorials are for in game blocking only.
Some goals for this week:
Here are some small snippets of the bevels! ahhh!! So exciting:
I feel like I've only scratched the surface of beveling but I'm hoping to knock it out this week and keep working on textures.
Great to see you discovering the magic of trim sheets
Most recent render, where I've been playing around with lighting a bit, and slowly getting my materials sorted from the main master material I've started:
And then my more favorite renders, detail and base lighting renders, respectively, to show the normal maps really working! (+ the unintentional alpha maps peeking into the detail map, haven't figured out how to easily hide that in this render yet without touching the mesh):
It's funny that some of my favorite areas are the least important to the frame of the scene, but they're just the smaller details that I know will really push this piece further than what I could've done even a few months ago. I've mostly wrapped up a lot of the trim sheets on the left side (mart + beyond), now I'm working on the middle chunk, stairs/sign/orange focal points, and have a slight coverage of the right side.
I've hopped around a bit but the middle will probably be the longer part just to get things sorted. My goal is to have it all done before the end of the week, I think I'm pretty on track. I'd work on it more tonight, but my hand is tired of unwrapping!
Thanks for checking this stuff out~
I don't know how exactly what I did to make it happen but everything got a bit yellow today from me playing with fog and glass, so I should look at that tomorrow. My goal is to get the first round of trims pretty solidified after work tomorrow, and maybe have a material party!
I'd love to play with some foliage, so if anyone has any recommendations, that'd be great - I'm just going to google my way into a foliage hole soon! I'm not the most unconfident with it, but I'm not used to doing foliage with Maya. I miss the bend modifier in Max where it was easier to adjust bends and curves without being destructive. I'm sure I'll figure it out in Maya though
I had an atmospheric fog, but added a height fog as well; got my numerous reflection captures placed, adjusting the lighting, gave a bit more breathing room to the ground. Added a slight bloom and vignette and some very light depth of field with the camera settings. I also made the glass a bit more blue. I kind of reworked my trtim sheet so I need to go back and fix some areas that are now a bit askew, or metals that are lookin a bit funky from stretching :P I really want to hop into foliage next, I did another test bush but it's so flat, I know how I'll need to approach it to make it not look flat but I'm just a bit nervous for making it look like it fits within the scene (or maybe just...not flat - unlike the current hehe).
I still have a long way to go but I'm feeling pretty good about where it's at right now!
I managed to get this look with box modeling and turning it into a normal map. Here's what the mesh looks like near where the panels are:
It'll need some work to make it look blended better, I think, and to break up the repetitive look between the two roofs. I'm pretty happy I was able to at least figure out an idea in the meantime. I'd also like to play with the scale more.
I really love the presentation of the WIP's and to see how the scene evolves, thanks for sharing!
You're completely right, @InvaderRoxas - balancing it all is tough! I can't imagine having school on top of personal projects again, good luck with managing those! It's really tough to find a balance sometimes. I'm starting to feel the "wind beneath my wings" again, but I'm using it primarily to focus on work instead of personal projects. Playing some games on the side really helps me unwind from it.
Tonight I decided to play around with more VFX after seeing some really inspiring pieces today. I played around with some roughness maps for the windows today, as well, but those are in limbo right now, they need a bit more love.
Here are some gifs from me trying to get a CRT look on the screens in the scene!
And a close up outside of the camera view:
I have two panner nodes working together in the emissive to bring out the lines going in two different directions, while the gradient is in the albedo. I was trying to get the lines to affect the emissive lettering decals more, but I need to ponder how to make that work within it's little mini-master material. I probably just need to hook one node differently. Here's a snapshot of my setup, it's a bit messy right now, but the "true" goes toward the lettering and the false goes to the background.
Any suggestions are welcome! I also am really digging how this glass is looking right here, so I'll share a snippet:
I have to look at all the unwraps to see what's going on with other windows, but I'm feeling good about where it's going. I hope I can spend more time on this this weekend. Because I still have some burnout, I think I'm going to play around with some materials instead of working on the meshes themselves. Maybe even fiddle around with some of my normal trim sheet to see what damaged edges I can make!
It's crazy how the little things are making the scene feel a whole lot more cohesive. Here's a still of where it's at now even with just a few tweaks over the last few weeks:
I messed with my normal map so some things aren't mapped correctly **i pretend i don't see it** and I'm trying to explore some texture ideas here and there but I'm not sold on anything 100% yet. I'm mostly just trying to combat burnout and getting a bit sick. But I still think this is coming together so nice and quick that it's a bit unreal. I want to get into foliage soon so I can throw out my current iteration that.....only serves a purpose of being a silhouette lol. I've been gathering up all the different foliage sculpting tutorials, so I'm hoping for the best. It would be nice to get something in, even if it's not final, just so I can see how it changes the space. I'm used to doing handpainted foliage, and I think it's super intimidating to bring that into Zbrush, but I 100% really want to learn how to make foliage feel more alive because it's *so* important to selling scenes like this. It's subtle but so good if it's done right.
The word you having now is similar but in chinese they have different meaning as they are separated words.
佳佳甜品 - correct
佳佳舌甘品 - wrong
I started a new brick texture and played with the vertex painting of it, fixed the typo with the sign, and did some smaller tweaks. I'm pretty happy to get my brick in because it already feels much more grounded by the weight of the normals on it. I'm taking a vacation next week & weekend where I won't be near my computer so I figured working on it tonight was a good idea. A lot of it was more material-based, lots of tweaking to the original master texture and the glass textures. And lighting bakes/shaders compiling lol. I'm excited to come back to this with fresh eyes after vacation...and a fresh brain.
I also made a really short gif to show the windows (and foliage if you're into that!), I had no idea I could upload gifs straight to polycount without having to have a third party so that's pretty cool!
I'm excited to get the ground cement texture going, I've just been a bit too intimidated by it so far, because it's just going to be a big focal point that I'll need to sell, but soooon. I think that'll really start to ground things. I also have all those weird normal map fixes on my list, I just haven't started on that yet! soooon (tm). we pretend we don't see them!
First, on top of the moving screens and cloth, I've added in something small where it's those little strips that move with the fan for the air conditioning in the background. It's really subtle but I think it adds the idea that these aircon units are actually working. I wanted to get a small turning fan in there (or a plane that fakes a fan look) but it may not even be seen at this point. It would be nice to have a secondary VFX aspect in there, but I'll wait for that.
Then, I've been playing a *lot* of Borderlands 3 and started seeing the hexagon windows everywhere. It started to inspire me to do my own take on their windows after grabbing some screenshots of inspiration. After getting the roughness and blur just right, I'm pretty dang happy with how they're looking. I need to align the planes with the VFX CRT lines better just so it's fluid, but this is a nice start. I'll also include the other windows without the special effects, not sure if I'll add the light rim but I think it'd make more sense if I did.
I really enjoy how subtle the movement is. That plus the newly implemented reflection spheres just....they just have me excited for what's to come!
Here's an overall gif of the scene, showing more of the clouds that I put in - I think they may be a bit too chunky and some are a bit too close together edge wise...so I may revisit that later.
and le final picture of progress for today~
Feedback welcome! I really want to start on the ground texture because that's just a basic material, and I think that will really change the overall scene. I'm going out of town this weekend, but I hope next weekend I can sit down and make more progress. Lately I'm in a better mindset of "it's a marathon, not a race". I am really loving the new lighting so much that I'm feeling so much better about where this piece is and where it's going to go.
Thanks for checking out my progress. If there are parts I can break down, let me know and I will try my best
A trick that works pretty well for cloth is to do a flatten normal driven by a panning noise texture. That way you make the folds of the normalmap fade in and out and seem to ondulate in the wind.
For the little things in front of the AC, i think the movement should be a lot faster and (as a more personal note) try to avoid the wind node in UE4. The back and forth looping motion is very noticeable and unrealistic. Again, just a personal note.
Detail lighting update:
Here's where I've been lately. I played around with bringing this into UE5 (which I thought either may completely be a mistake or be a good thing, I'm not sure which right now), because I figured it'd be a while if I started a new project to play around with in there. I've had a LOT of things outside of work keeping me super distracted, including vacation trips, burnout, and other fun things, and I'm not as far on this as I'd like to be, but I realize it's been awhile since I had posted last and the last WIP looked much different. I'm not sure how I really feel about how this is going lately, felt good about it this morning, but tonight I'm just more frustrated than anything. I guess I'm feeling a bit of imposter syndrome lately outside of work. But outside of that, I think things are improving...but there's still so much to go and fix or weird trim sheet artifacts that I need to handle with the normals. One issue I've found that I've kinda got myself mixed up in is that I wanted to be efficient with my material setups and because of that, they're a bit of a mess and I'm not sure how to fix things or make them work while retaining other parts of it. I do wish I had not put so much pressure to make only one master material and saved some of that for later clean up.
Trying to keep some hope alive, I've been playing with lighting, particle systems for dust, fog and some decals. I've been stuck on the concrete for weeks and have made some progress but not much. The windows shaders still have parts I set up but they're very finicky or don't show up at all, so I think I'll end up taking a different route. And I'm not sure how I'll tackle the props in the scene. I just feel like I need to get my lighting sorted but I have an itching feeling there may be deeper problems than the lighting.
I'd love to see this thing through but it's starting to exhaust me, I wish I had done a lot of things different and I'm not sure if I can do the concept justice. I've been trying to hide how I feel but I think it's slowly pouring into my work and it can be really tough sometimes not to compare yourself to others' skill. I took time off from this thinking I'd feel a bit better, and I did for a few hours, but I feel like I need another few week break again from a sore brain lol. I allllso hope to redo the foliage soon, that's something I've been doing more at work and have been happier with it than I expected, so maybe I can pull that in (though, the styles are much different, so I'm not sure 100% how it'll go). anyways, thanks for reading! next post my goal will be more progress and more optimism!
If I get to a point in a personal project where I'm feeling the fatigue or like there's too much to do to know how to progress, I allow myself to prune my priorities, to try and put more focus on whats really important. i.e. If having a master material is making it harder to achieve your priority of realising the concept image (or even enjoying the project), then maybe its not a limitation worth having and doesn't need to be a priority. You'll still be carrying all that knowledge of what you might have done differentially into your next project (personal or professional) and that's of huge value.
I think your nailing the concept art, and your bring that 2D image into a 3D space, that might mean details might be slightly different, e.g. the foliage, but its still absolutely the concept brought to life. 💪
My CC on the update is the fog/atmosphere is making the center of the image look washed out/low contrast, like I just want to take a big o' level adjustment to the center of the image and crunch it down to make it pop again. ( Actually, I through on a quick adjustment layer in photoshop and attached an image to illustrate what I mean, hope you don't mind. )
I also decided that I wanted to have individual texturing for the smaller props to give them more life/individuality and uniqueness. I find it pretty tough to make a nice tiling texture and can work much easier on smaller props, so I'm going to use that to my advantage in this project. It also gives me a nice break from larger scale tiling and trim sheets.
Here's where I landed at tonight:
and here is a paintover of things that still stick out that I'm aiming to adjust or add in, which actually isn't too much, i think the end will be more about tweaking and working with the lighting and post process...
I also want to add more junk and stuff on the ground but for now I just have rocks, which i may have to side down a bit to look more like pebbles! my glass shader also seems to be derping out a bit so I need to look into that, I expect that is something that is a bit messy with switching to UE5 but it's something we can work around, I think. It may just be my specific glass that I made being whiny - but that'll be a bit later
Here's a very rough GIF on the scene, I wish it were easier to share larger gif files online! But its easier to see some of the dust and foliage movement in this one. I'd love to get more movement in, I was considering maybe some flickering lights? But I need to revisit my original animation idea list that Lucas helped me brainstorm on.
And here is a detail shot of a favorite part of this scene for me. I really love the grunge feel on the roof and AC vents and that it's so easily done with UVs and my master material! I feel so powerfulllll pahah. I'm excited to add more inside the mart.
I want to do another round on the ground where the decal is clipping, complete the paper props around the scene, maybe add some trash laying around, and wires. Oh, and the air conditioning vents! and the interiors. I feel like I'm really coming up on the finish line which is pretty crazy.
Thank you again for the front page feature! It's always so exciting but also very validating to know what I'm making is good enough to make the polycount front page.
Here is the final render. There is a video on my AS post as well as a video of progression. Can't wait to take a break to prep for the next one