[WIP] - stylized town - critiques welcome
Hello everybody,
I'm new on polycount. I wanted to share a personal project I am working on right now.
The concept belongs to the wonderful artist kemineko. You can find some of his work here https://twitter.com/kemineko/status/1446802033651044354
My goal for this project was to gain more experience creating environments in Unreal Engine 4, particularly reusing geometry and trim sheets, the "fluffy tree" technique, water material and small animations, lighting and mood in general.
I'm still working on the lights and maybe the plants.
I think my lighting doesn't have the magical feeling of the concept, I'm still experimenting as I'm not really sure how to achieve that.
I also think the willow tree and hanging bushes aren't so well suited for the "fluffy tree" technique (Pontus Karlssons tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iASMFba7GeI&list=PLKcnIzhIGsH0mQuM2Wd5oT33aW9LbvxmZ&index=18) so I might try again with a more regular vegetation technique.
What do you think?
ORIGINAL CONCEPT by KEMINEKO:
My SHOT 1
My SHOT 2
Replies
Off to a great start here. Lighting isn't my strongest suit, but I think the magical feeling from the concept comes from the heavy bloom in the highlights - it might be worth diving into your post-process volume and cranking up the bloom intensity a little to try and capture that.
The houses underneath the arch seem to trail off into a misty white background in the concept, whereas you can see much further than that in your piece. Reducing the visibility of those background houses could help with the depth and push the misty, hazy vibe of the concept some more. You could play around with adding some extra fog into the background using this technique:
I do agree that the foliage looks too full and thick for the willow and the hanging bushes, however that technique works great for the foliage on the window sill (far left). I've not tinkered around too much with that foliage technique but could you try simply deleting some of the faces from the tree canopy mesh to reduce the fluffiness? Beyond that, manually placing leaf cards around an overall tree canopy shape could be a more effective method.
I'd also suggest brightening the edge highlights of the wood on your trim sheet a little more, pushing those highlights ever so slightly closer to a yellow and then desaturating them just a little.
It's looking great so far, keep plugging away.
Hi Mixsup, thank you for the great feedback.
I will apply what you said and will post back here soon.