[WIP] [UE5] Healer's House
Hey polycount, I've decided to do another environment, this time based on Vladimir Manyukhin Healer's house concept art; https://www.artstation.com/artwork/68oDvV
I thought I would try UE5 because I only just started on this project in UE4 when UE5 was released into early access, so I just converted my current project into UE5 . Unfortunately my graphics card isn't capable of taking advantage of Lumens feature in UE5, but I still want to try it.
Once I was happy with my blockout in blender, I have to then get the scale of the blockout to some sort of real world scale. The best way to do that is find something in the reference and find its height in the real world. For me I went with the Doorframe, l looked up the height of a standard door frame, made a cube to match that in blender, then scaled down my blockout and camera til the height of the door frame was the same height as the cube.
I export my blockout into 3ds Max to break it down into parts; architecture (walls, floor, roof), fixtures (beams, cooking range) and props (table, candlesticks).
My next step after that, is that I take the architecture pieces and clean them up (remove unnecessary verts). I then made the mesh watertight by welding the walls, roof and floor together, but leaving an empty face for the sunlight to shine in.
After that I unwrap the architecture. I use UV channel 1 for texel density- I'm using a 1024 texel density, and UV channel 2 for the light maps.
The architecture is essentially 1 sided, so when I bake my lighting in UE5 the lighting would bleed through so I need to create a light blocker. The light blocker needs to encompass the architecture but leaving a gap that matches perfectly up with the gap left for the window.
Getting the camera position from Blender/3ds Max to the Unreal Engine I found to be a big pain, I tried a few different ways, Unreal Datasmith and Blender Addons but nothing seemed to work. So I went back to basics and manually typed in the coordinates of my camera. To get the rotation of the camera is a little tricky but luckily I found this blog that helps you get not only the position but also set the field of view of the camera to match. https://dombrainbox.blogspot.com/2014/10/copying-over-3ds-max-perspective-view.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR3D73fuDQnCOGDCLEcPKeIs9BMPDY-4sp1pF8P64sXMTBa8Ppv6DauNTNg
It’s a little bit extra effort but I managed to match the reference image to a point I'm happy with.
For the lighting in my scene, I'm currently only using a skylight, directional light and an editor sphere with a HDRI material. I'm using realistic lighting values for my scene and you can read more about it here; https://www.polyplant.co/tech-art-portfolio.html#pbrlightingguide
Also here's how to create a HDRI Sky material
Unreal 4 Lighting Academy - Session 4.1
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Over the past few weeks I've slowly been chipping away at the "Architecture and Fixtures" parts of my scene.
I started off by finding some real world reference for the materials in my scene. I found Flickr was very helpful to find albums full of useful reference images. This help me find references for the materials in the scene, wooden planks and wooden beams and wattle and daub walls.
I started off by making my own wooden planks in Substance Designer, I searched on Substance Source and Quixel Bridge to see if there was any materials on there that I liked the look of but I didn’t find any that fit the style that I was after. The planks are quiet basic but I will add colour variation and dirt / roughness breakups with a RGBA mask at a later stage. The main thing is that I'm happy with plank distribution because I won't be able to change that a later date.I then apply the wooden plank material to the floor of the mesh in max, now comes the tedious part adding edges for the gaps in between the planks and then extruding them down to give the planks some height. I also detached some of the planks to give them look as if they had warped over time.
For the walls I got a wattle and daub material on Substance Source that is perfect for my scene, it is a very versatile material so I can edit it to get the look I want.
For the wooden support beams I found a material on Quixel Bridge, which worked really well and saved me a lot timing creating my own material. To make the beams less blocky and square, I chamfered the edges and added extra support loops and then started moving verts on the edges to give it a curved affect and deforming the beams without having to sculpt the beams. I also cut out spaces where the beams would slot into each other so it wasn't clipping but also adds shadows and grounds the beams.
For the cooking range I did the same steps as above chamfering the edges and then moving verts around to look like chipped and worn down stone.
This month I have been developing the main bulk of my scene.
For the architecture and the fixtures I decided to use a RGBA / Blend mask workflow, I find it’s a better for texturing assets in situ, such as adding dirt and dust around fixtures this therefore makes it feel more grounded.
I previously wrote an article about it here: https://80.lv/articles/pine-wood-garage-texturing-with-blend-masks-in-substance-painter/
Here's an example of how I've used it in my scene;
This is the mask for the back wall of the range;
This is after the texture pass for architecture and fixtures, in base colour mode;
It's not just walls and roofs it can be used for, it can also be used on smaller props. For example the shelves are using the same tiling material as the wooden supports, with just a 1k RGBA texture mask for the unique texture details. This a good way to keep to save memory and speed up the process.
I decided remodel the range to make it look more damaged, as I previously didn’t think it was noticeable enough. It was very easy to retexture the range, I had the material already setup in the editor I just needed to re-bake the mask within Substance painter and then export the mask into UE5.
Additioinally I've started on creating some of the props for the scene, they are nothing too complicated and there mainly tucked away in the corners so you can't really see them - but it still adds to the story of the enviroment.
The jar/pot with a cloth top tied with string took a while to work out, as it had an organic element.
I knew how to get the cloth falling down, but its harder to wrap it around the neck of the pot - I would therefore have to use some program to simulate it.
I created the jar in Max and then brought the model into Marvelous Designer, where I created the cloth for the lid top. Simulated it to roughly get it into place and then a long strip that had its end sown together to act as the string pulling it tight. I found this article about how to create rope in Marvelous Designer that was really helpful for the process.
https://magazine.renderosity.com/article/6077/creating-cordage-rope-in-marvelous-designer
I then imported the cloth into Max and used a spline to create the string around the neck of the jar.
After that I just had to create the high, bring it into Substance Painter for texturing and then into UE5.
The texture size for the asset is small it's only a 512 texture map and the cloth colour can be changed in engine.
I'm currently going through the process of just modelling and texturing the rest of the props in my scene, I'm probably going to do another texture pass soon because I'm not very happy with the dark areas to the right of the cooking range.
This month I've been steadily working on the scene.
I started by making a new texture for the floor because I wasn't happy with the old texture. I followed Derk Elshof's tutorial on how to make aged wood in substance designer and then adapted it to fit my floor. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nQgRPe
I then also adapted it so that it I could use it in Substance Painter for the props in the scene.
I've also been modelling and texturing the rest of my props for the scene, I used Megascans for the hide rug texture and foliage.
For the hanging cloths, I created them in Marvelous Designer, it’s the best modelling software for cloth simulation. I then took them into 3ds Max to shell them because I found that the double sided cloth gave me better lighting results in UE5 than a single sided version.
I'm currently doing a decal pass for the scene, adding edge decals on the furnace and damage decals on the walls, and also additional roughness breakup. I also need to start doing finishing touches to my post processing, such as adding a slight green/blue tint and tweaking the fog. As well as adjusting texturing and models based on feedback.
If anyone has any questions just let me know and I'll happily explain it to you.