[WIP] Italy Environment

lluc21

So, I've been working on this for a while and I wanted to share my progress on this project, with the hopes of keeping my motivation a bit higher haha
This is the main reference for the layout, but I'm using many others for doors, windows, materials...

So far I have the blockout ready in Blender but I think I will have to redo it because I didn't use a modular approach. I have also done many of the smaller assets and worked on trimsheets and marvelous designer materials. 
This is how the project is looking so far inside of Blender. Next steps will be to redo the blockout in a modular way and start working on the different parts. I plan on building a Geometry nodes setup to arrange the buildings quickly, and maybe use it to build a small town as a full environment.

Here are a few of the Substance Designer materials I created for the environment. I am a beginner in SD, so any feedback will be very welcome.
Well any feedback regarding anything will be very welcome.

Alex_J

Looks great so far.

One thing I notice in the reference is that the building is so old it looks like it has been added to a few times, resulting in the stone making up the walls being not uniform. You can see like different sections within the wall. Some have small, tighter packs horizontal stones, others look more like your material, colors shift a bit... would be really cool if you had a few stone wall materials to blend between so the building had such a sense of history.

lluc21

That's a good point Alex! I will work on some other materials next and try to blend them and see how the result looks

Fabi_G

Hi! The pattern of the stone wall (second material) looks a bit unnatural. I think this is because of the sharp thin stones and wide gaps (in some cases wider than stones) and the way the stones are stacked (many poles, no rows/layers, little overlap of stones, would work more for ground),.

Keep it up!

lluc21

Good point @Fabi_G ! I think my next step on this project will be to prepare a handful of materials and work on an UE5 material to handle the vertex painting properly as it doesn't seem trivial to mix different kinds of brick shapes while keeping it convincing.
Any pointers regarding that?

Fabi_G

You could already create some variation by simply scaling the UVs, so that stones at the bottom are larger than at the top. Adding loops to across the building will allow to further offset UVs.

Regarding vertex-blending, you might want to look at the heightLerp function (explained by PrismaticaDev). Probably there is already some Megascan material setup. For blending to sets of stonewall textures convincingly, I would just try and iterate. You might have to adjust the height values in the material or create a specific mask to use. Making a variant of the same wall so the two sets align somewhat (rows) might also help with the result. Maybe there is some article in the wiki about it. Looking forward to see the results!

lluc21

Fabi_G said:

You could already create some variation by simply scaling the UVs, so that stones at the bottom are larger than at the top. Adding loops to across the building will allow to further offset UVs.

Regarding vertex-blending, you might want to look at the heightLerp function (explained by PrismaticaDev). Probably there is already some Megascan material setup. For blending to sets of stonewall textures convincingly, I would just try and iterate. You might have to adjust the height values in the material or create a specific mask to use. Making a variant of the same wall so the two sets align somewhat (rows) might also help with the result. Maybe there is some article in the wiki about it. Looking forward to see the results!

Woah! thanks a lot, the Height Lerp function seems to be exactly what I'm looking for. I will start experimenting with the materials and Unreal soon, I think it is very promising

lluc21

Prepared a Vertex Paint material inside Unreal and adjusted the Stone Wall a bit. I have to change the pattern to something more horizontal still.
So far the Brick wall is a scanned surface from adobe Stock, but I want to make the Brick Material myself in designer, seems to be simple enough for my skillset and I think it can benefit me.

The shader is a fairly simple Vertex color blend with heightLerp, using the red channel for the bricks and the green channel for the concrete
The door is from sketchfab but I also plan on doing my own ofc.

I'm happy with the results so far, but I also want to explore the option to have the wall material work with Parallax Occlusion Mapping, but it is not trivial to mix 3 materials and keep the POM looking right.

This is with POM

lluc21

Did some work blocking out the modules. I will start setting up a scene blockout in Unreal next and see if I need any more modules.

Fabi_G

Hey, cool to see progress. In regards to mixing different surfaces, I think the combination of natural stones and bricks looks a bit odd. Keep it up!

lluc21

Thanks! @Fabi_G I am aware of the mismatch with the bricks, atm I'm using a scanned texture for the bricks, but I plan on creating something in Designer a bit more chaotic. The look I'm trying to achieve is this:  So far the bricks are too perfect and the concrete doesn't match between the 3 blended materials

I adjusted the stone wall shape, so far this is how the new Stone wall and mixing is looking. I still need to create the brick texture ofc:

Alex_J

coming along nice. It takes a lot of trial and error to get things just right but it's looking better each update

lluc21

Thanks @Alex_J ! It's my first proper environment so hearing kind words help keep the motivation up. Hopefully I will learn a thing or two as well in the process... haha