[WIP] Medieval Dungeon, looking for feedback
polycounter lvl 3
This is a medieval dungeon environment I have built recently, to test modularity, lighting and unreal engine materials. Before uploading it to my portfolio, I'd like to check what you all think, and ways you think I could improve it.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
First floor (Entrance and Torture room):
Second Floor (Cells):
Third Floor (Crypt with Altar):
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
First floor (Entrance and Torture room):
Second Floor (Cells):
Third Floor (Crypt with Altar):
Replies
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3r3n2
Their use of color and fog really helps this piece too! I would look into adding in some cool colored elements into your environment to help balance the hot orange lighting you have. Here is another example with less extreme lighting
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Lznow
Additionally I think your materials need a lot of work, they are looking a bit blurry/low quality from your screenshots, and I think your texel density is off on some pieces such as the walls and floors.
I'll post here again soon with improvements, hope I can count on your input in the future.
I have been working on improving the lighting, and adding some assets to fill the empty hallway.
I think the addition of a faint fog helped flesh out the dungeon, along with the addition of dust particles.
Im worried I migth have gone too brigth this time.
Here is what I'd do to get this to the next level.
Introduce another light color, the warm/cool combo is always a winner. Your current lighting skews to all warm, and thus isn't very visually appealing or interesting to look at. ThisisVictoria already mentioned and gave solid direction but thought I'd echo the same sentiments.
Your torches are too evenly spread out and also emit light levels that do not appear to be aligned with the natural amount of light these flames would be emitting. It looks odd and kinda like when a bad 3D model of a human has an oddly proportioned head or anatomy, it just looks "off" and you can't quite put your finger on it unless you know your stuff. Artists tend to rush their lighting, and honestly it's probably more important than the assets/textures. The lighting for the torches doesn't flicker naturally like a fire would. Okay for stills, but for the video...it really sticks out as unpolished. Adding another light fixture (pile of lit candles on shelf, chandelier, candles on a candelabra).
"The Rack" and some of the barrels and other assets look bread new and doesn't have the same amount of wear or appear to have even been used. Need to think of context and aging of assets that would have similar levels of wear or damage. Some blood pools around the flooring under the wall chain restraints, at bottom of some of these iron maiden's and other torture devices would look cool and give you some nice reflections.
Walls, floors, pillars; these assets could use a value/color pass just to slightly nudge the values or color to give the environment some life. Typically I recommend darker floors to help ground it more, and midvalue for the walls and lighter pillars, or introducing some other element for the pillars like wood/metal/marble/decorative. For this type of environment I'd probably suggest wood with metal supports or iron rods/nails for some contrast. Could use more variation/decals. Areas of wet or slight moss. Cobwebs?
Bone wall?
Decals, where are the fingernail and claw marks, where are the urine stained sections, and dried blood or carved inscriptions? (would need to make time period appropriate).
From Silence of the Lambs (great flick), but kinda disturbing, (sorry).
I think you got a solid foundation, but you've spread out and made a larger environment when you could focus more on a room(s) and hallway for a solid portfolio piece and focus more on details, smaller supporting props and some story telling.
Prop ideas:
Stone wheel and stool sharpening blade
Metal weapons rack with weapons - spears, swords, spiked ball mace, flanged mace, mallets
Ale barrels or open wooden barrel with weapons in it
Old jars on shelf with poisons
Fire pit with branding tools
Wooden fireplace bellow
Kit pieces with metal bars/door to have sections that could be walled off to make cells
poop bucket
Good luck
- Pixel
Its true that ThisisVictoriaZ told me about ligth contrast, but Im a bit lost when it comes to that. Since all the light inside the dungeon comes from torches or candles, in my mind it only makes sense that those lights are warm.
One way I thought of migth be to add windows and let the "nigth light" add a bit of a cool contrast to the walls and floors.
And about having spread out the environment, would you recommend me to take a step back, maybe delete one of the levels and make it smaller?
Maybe combining the first floor (torture room corridor) and the second one (cells) and leaving the crypt with the altar as a separate floor. Or even deleting it completely.
I have started to make a few tweaks in a copy of the level:
- Mixing the first and second floor
- Adding windows in the cells to allow some night light to leak in.
- Cooling down the environment with post processing
- Darknening the floors
And you were rigth many of my props are almost brand new, with very little wear, so I started solving that:
About adding leakages, dirt, moss or blood to the walls and floors, beside using decals, would u recommend the use of vertex painting, or the use of secondary UV masking?
And lastly, about the static torch ligths in the video, Im working on adding light material functions, but for now it looks too artificial, dosent change as the fire should.
The wall of bones seems a bit excesive to me, maybe in the crypt, but not in the first floor. Which dosent mean I wont be adding some skulls or bones XD
Again, thanks a lot fot your recomendations! I'll make sure to improve the environment with them!
Keep pushing it, @pixelpatron had some great tips and references! I look forward to seeing more!
I've gone down a rabbit hole, trying over and over again new ligth setups, ways to play with the ilumination to keep a certain level of darkness without creating too dark spots again, and pushing the dungeon towards cooler tones.
I've added some wooden supports to the ceiling that I gotta work a bit more on, but add a bit of contrast to the rest of the stone dungeon, and decals here and there to add variety to the floors and walls.
I've started working on some new assets, and a prisoners/corpse I may add in different poses, either inside cells, cages, or chained to the walls.
Speaking of chains...a chain spline system to add something interesting to the ceilings.
@pixelpatron I'm working on creating some decals/marks to the cells' walls, I loved that idea, and adding some different ligth sources like candelabras.
The skull wall seemed a bit too much for now, maybe I'll add something similar to the crypt later.
And @ThisisVictoriaZ I'm very thankfull for that image, very usefull as a guide.
The chains in the last two images are already done using a spline system, I'll make sure to upload a video of it soon!
Any more suggetions regarding illumination and/or props?
Keep it up!
Thanks for your suggestions, the overpaint makes it look a lot better!
I agree the chains need some improvement, the blueprint need some adjusting. As a last resort I'll just create them as static meshes as you said, for visuals.
About the flat floor, you're right, and I'm shocked I hadn't noticed something so obvious before!
I'll correct those mistakes soon, but I'm glad it's getting somewhere finally!
Thx to everyone who helped and gave suggestions!