[WIP] Old Arched house Environment

stefanWilliams_C

Hello again! 
I've started another personal project to practice some more hard-surface after many previous projects focusing entirely on organic assets. 
This time I've been very inspired by medieval scandinavian towns and wanted to work on, what I find to be an interesting arched house. 
Below is my reference board




This is my progress so far. Will mainly be focusing on overall color and composition now then zoom in on texturing and prop details later on

Thanks for reading, feedback is welcomed!

Vertrucio

Not sure if it's the texture, or your roughness on the texture, but the texture isn't quite selling me on the surface you're going for. It may be too low in roughness, or not have enough roughness variation where needed.

Fabi_G

Hi! Any specific reason you chose to employ the high-poly to low-poly workflow for the whole house? I'm used to see low-poly meshes using tiling materials plus additional meshes for edges and details, allowing for quick iterations (and use less individual textures). I think the current window placement would indicate some impractical ceiling heights for the rooms inside.

Good luck with the project!

stefanWilliams_C

Thanks for the feedback @Fabi_G !
My current idea is to have the main house as a more 'high res' detailed asset, with some high poly details that are added on top of the tiling textures and vertex painting I'm currently using. Since it's only this house like that I thought I would do it like that to be most efficient in getting detail for that particular asset. Otherwise, for the other 'background' houses, i'm using a modular set of individual pieces that can be swapped out and changed  

stefanWilliams_C

Hello again!
Since my last post I've had some time to work on this project a bit more  
Just been swapping out the houses for more a more modular setup and working a little on materials so I can get an idea of how I want this rather vibrant scene to look, color-wise. 
Redid the roof tile material as I felt that the previous one wasn't clean enough. Still doesn't feel quite polished enough yet, so I'll get back to that one I think. 
I decided I wanted some more detailed props in this scene and settled on having a bicycle in the scene and potentially some ducks crossing the road (still considering this idea a bit), which I'm working on modeling at the moment.




That's all I've got for the moment! Having a lot of fun working on hard-surface again, it's great to be practicing it more. For now I want to make some more modular pieces and make a few trims for glass, doors and window frames so I can get some more material work going!

Thanks for reading, feedback welcomed

rexo12

Really coming together. The ducks are a great idea (I've been playing around with a similar idea for one of my scenes, but with cats). In terms of composition i'm not sure I like them slicing across the frame like that though, it conflicts with the otherwise great sense of depth the scene has. Could be better to have them 'dress' the arch way in the same way the bicycle does, playing around at the edges of the frame.

A silly sketch of what I mean - just one possibility.

Also just a note about scale, the bicycle strikes me as being too large at the moment.

stefanWilliams_C

Hello! 
This project is going a lot slower than I had hoped as the usual business has hit, but it's nice to always have this one to come back to when I get the time. 
Since my last update I felt that this little environment was feeling too geometric, having all the assets neatly in place next to each other. Moving the houses around and breaking down the modularity a bit more I tried to make the scene more interesting to look at whilst leading the eye still. 
In terms of assets, I managed to get a bit further with blocking the bike and polishing up some windows. I also made a different variation of the street spline piece to break up the symmetry. 



Still working on this here and there, but it would be great to get some more feedback!
As of now I want to get some vertex painting going for the cobblestone road and polish the bike more. 

Thanks for reading! 

stefanWilliams_C

Managed to work on a cobblestone road material, this time entirely in designer as I wanted a bit more control over how I wanted them to look. I think I'm liking this material more as the main material used on the road since the other one felt a little flat. On that front, I also added parallax in Unreal to give a bit more of that height boost. 

I've polished up the bicycle more aswell and looking to add a few more smaller details then start texturing in painter, which will hopefully be included in my next update!


This is my progress on the environment so far. The foliage isn't mine, Megascans is really useful for getting some quick foliage in. If I have time, I'll make my own bushes/grass but for now I wanted to focus more on the hard-surface assets. I started to like the idea of it having recently rained, so the roughness is bumped down a little, maybe with some water dripping particles on the arch and in the foliage. 
That's it for now!

Thanks for reading, and as usual, feedback is welcomed!

stefanWilliams_C

It's been some time since i've updated my progess on this project here, so I thought I would show off what I've progressed with since the last post!
I've had to learn Blender for my new job (yay!) and have been tweaking and making some new assets in Blender for this project aswell just to see how making assets from start to finish is like when replacing maya with blender. So far that's just been the case with the street light, wall lamp and electrical box models but everything else that's getting changed in modeling software will be done through blender for practice purposes  


Alongside these prop and door assets, I've managed to finish up the bike! Overall quite happy with it considering my current idea of having the whole bike in shot, but if I want closer-up beauty shots I might want to refine some of the wiring and maybe re-export the textures into 4k res. 

As of now, that's where I am! Next I want to look at smaller-scale props and decals that could make everything look a little more polished and find a way to have life going on behind the windows  
Thanks for reading and feedback is much appreciated!

stefanWilliams_C

Since my last post, I've been trying to buff up a bit more detail into the scene, adding and polishing and such. Also thought it was time to start looking at hinting towards interior details. A little inspired by the Matrix demo and Spiderman games, I decided to make fake interiors using a scene capture texture which used pictures I had taken previously of a room interior. It seems to have worked pretty well, so for now I've used that same texture and manipulated it a bit around the scene to make somewhat believable interiors (although it doesn't matter too much how detailed they are since you don't really see them with the current angles).
 


I also worked on some more of the props (with a beauty shot of the bike , adding a concrete sheep, characteristic of Gotland's town Visby that this environment is inspired by. 



And that's where I am at the moment! I thought another camera angle might be nice, and getting that shot through the window hints at a little more of the scene a little behind the camera. 
Thanks for reading, and any feedback is welcomed! 

Eric Chadwick

This is looking great!

A small critique, but an important one for believability. It helps to pay close attention to the way things are built in the real world, and make sure to examine photo references for clues. Wood window frames are built from multiple pieces of wood, and generally the wood grain follows the longest direction.

Here I marked red arrows to indicate where the grain should be rotated. And green lines where there would be seams between the boards.



For example https://st2.depositphotos.com/1520587/6259/i/950/depositphotos_62591923-stock-photo-windows-with-shutters-patterned-on.jpg

Hope this helps!

MatheusDalla

Awesome work, the moment i saw it it reminded me of a picture I took in Uppsala

I think the buildings could use a bit more color variation.
Like this other pic I took also in Uppsala, so not only the grunge and tear but also variation on the color that can also be more expressive around the grunges. Also in the color variation if you make a sort of gradient top to bottom on the buildings where the bottom is a bit darker, it will look good.
It acts as a big AO effect in relation to the ground, also as a tiny "height atmospheric fog" or even weather damage to the building painting.
So its a big cue to make our brains perceive that the building is going up.


Anyway, great work!

stefanWilliams_C

Thanks for the feedback @MatheusDalla ! Funny you say that, I'm based close to Uppsala and have gotten lots of inspiration specifically around the cathedral area that includes lots of this kind of Northern Baroque architecture around. 
The color variation is a good point, I feel that the big picture colors work but some more contrast and that idea of giving a bit of 'height depth' to the buildings. 

Also, great observation regarding the wooden window frames @Eric Chadwick. Looking to draft up another pass with the buildings  

MatheusDalla

Picture that I took
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Cmda2cKFhg1u4wiQ6
Reference for the color variation:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/wWTphLnP9t2bmeqr9
And yeah, they`re both near the cathedral.