[WIP] Garden Station / UE5 Environment

tharris

Hello! I this is my first time using this forum to document my progress on a project and open my work to feedback as I go, I'd love to hear any advice you might have for me.   I'm calling this piece "Garden Station" and I have the following goals for it:

• -High fidelity: my past works have suffered from a common issue of only looking food from a distance, and the materials kind of fall apart when examined up close.   I'd like to address that in this piece and have assets that look good from a first person close up.
• -Better modularity (Geo and textures): I've worked with trim sheets and modular geo before, but because my projects have been small I haven't benefitted from using those modular parts in multiple different ways.  My plan is to re-use components of this project in the next project I do to demonstrate an efficient workflow.
• -Improve foliage skills
• -'Gamify' photo reference to be more stylized. Rather than work from a piece of illustrated concept art, I want to try using photo reference and modify it to look more like game art.
• -Design content not pictured in reference (ie, backside of structure).  I feel pretty comfortable recreating what I'm provided with in a concept, but I have a weakness for coming up with my own designs in blank areas.  I hope to come up with a believable and fitting way to flesh out the backside of this garden station despite it not being shown in the reference.

So those are the main things I'm going for in this project.  Wish me luck!

Latest WIP render, 07/28/21

tharris

Here is the primary reference image I'm using.  I quickly modified the version on the right to get a feeling of the mood I was going for.  I very briefly manipulated the photo to add some tapers to the wooden beams, but I won't be treating this image as an exact 1-1 representation of what I'm going for, its mostly for mood. For example, I didn't take the time to bow the roof structure inward in the center, but I will be modelling it that way.

I added some notes to show the design elements that are my current focus for moving forward.