Final Fantasy VII Church Fan art - Looking for feedback

broken_shadow

Hi everyone, I'm trying to understand environment art for games again. I've been away from it for a long time (like 10 years) doing visualization work, and the production pipeline for that is different, to say the least.

I created this fan art of the church from Final Fantasy VII Remake to practice utilizing modular pieces and trimsheets. My other goal was to use vertex painting to blend between two textures as well as for color tinting for texture variation and destruction.  Created nearly all assets aside from a few Megascan stuff.

One of the things I wondered about was that I've been hearing that polygon budget isn't that big of an issue anymore, so I heavily subdivided my wall pieces to get enough vertices for mesh painting in Unreal Engine 5.   The question is, did I go overboard with it?  Is this sort of thing ok for current and next-gen games.  See the very last image for reference.

Of course, any other feedback is welcome.  I'm sure there are other things that I can do better or questionable things some of you guys may see that I'd like to learn and fix going forward.  Thanks!

iam717

I AM NOT AN ENVIRONMENT PERSON:

For me i feel those smaller pillar pieces at the top and bottom of those pillars could've been lower in subdivisions, the arch i can see how you might want to go that route with them.  I guess it is fine and I'd dare say you might as well go ahead and make some sort of small game out of what you got already, change some elements add some floors/attic/basement to make it not FF, why waste a good scene on sitting around doing nothing use it again to expand, i wouldn't make an outside until you've figured out a good story for the inside and your updates to the "game" would expand out and those would be the updates, it is what i would do but i can not do all these things, (no time) and refuse .a.i. shortcuts.

broken_shadow

Thanks and appreciate the feedback.  I see what you mean.  In hindsight I think it could be evenly distributed throughout the entire model.

teodar23

Look into edge decals and distance field material blending. Right now the meshes have pretty sharp edges and sharp (i.e. no) blending between adjacent surfaces. Maybe look into edge damage or at least chamfer some edges here and there.
Also, even though poly counts (!) are not an issue anymore its still a good practice to not get carried away - maybe take those subdivisions down a notch - and use polys where they really matter i.e the silhouette of the model, not flat surfaces. Vertex blending materials is cool but if it doesn't really add anything to the scene why use it...