UE5 Environment - Overgrown Temple

KadenBurke

Hello. I am happy to finally share a personal project that I have been working on. I made the dragon to practice my zbrush skills and when I finished the model, I decided that it would be fun to try and build an evironment around it. The dragon statue is based on the Naga statues from Thailand. The environment is also based off the temples found in the jungles of thailand. 
My goal for the environment was to make something that would fit into a game world. I would love to hear your opionions on it. 

DEVLiminal

Really nice work, congratulations. You've tried to capture a realistic image and you've succeeded. However, perhaps some adjustments are needed to the vine leaves on the top of the dragon statue. The fact that the leaves are coming out of the statue kind of detracts from the realistic composition you've achieved. I think intensifying the moss painting on the top parts of the statue could strengthen the feeling of it being abandoned with vines covering it. Additionally, I'd like to mention that I particularly liked the decorations you used on the statue.

I'd like to ask you a question: What resolution of materials did you use on this model, and do you use a specific texel density ratio?

Keep up the good work 

KadenBurke

Thanks @DEVLiminal for the kind words and encouragement. I agree that the plants coming out of the dragon need a rework. Im going to make adjustments to the moss and see what I can achieve with some more realistic vines on the dragon. 

All materials use 2k maps. As for texel desity, I aimed for 10.2px/cm. Most building pieces are all at 10.2px/cm. A lot of the details on the buildings were made with a trim sheet so there are some pieces that are a little lower and higher. The statue has custom baked maps that are about 18px/cm. I didn't aim for a certain texel desity number when I made the statue, I just wanted to make sure it was not lower than the models around it. 

Ashervisalis

Heya, just some observations, aside from the ivy, the temple looks brand new. I think the temple pieces need more damage, more breakup, and more brown dirt. I'd also suggest having vines and roots along the ground. Right now there is mainly large and small vegetation, I'd like to see medium sized vegetation. I'd also like to see medium and large vegetation breaking and growing through temple pieces. I feel like your dirt material needs work too, it sort of looks like a solid brown colour from your chosen camera angles. I think adjusting the lighting so the temple sits in more shadows, such as if the temple was in a forest or a canyon, would help make the lighting more interesting. Would be interested in seeing what reference images you used for this.

Keep it up!

KadenBurke

Thanks @Ashervisalis for all the feedback. You pointed out a lot of ways that I can improve my scene. I agree that the temple needs more damage, I was trying to save time but I think your right and adding more damage will go a long way. I am also going to do a foliage pass to add in some more medium vegetation. I actually have a lot of medium vegetation that I didn't use in the foreground because I thought it detracted from the image, but if I make the foliage break though the temple pieces like you sugested then that will probably help a lot. I didn't notice how plain the ground was until I read you post, there is basically no variation in the screenshots. It definitly needs some attention. I was having some trouble getting lighting right because I felt like I was creating too much shadows with the forest, but I am going to make adjustments later and see what I can do. I like the idea of more shadow on the buildings and using a fake canyon as a shadow caster might help. My reference board is big but the main reference was Ta Som and Ta Prohm. Both location are in cambodia and there are a lot of ruins in the area that I used as inspiration.

SebastianZapata

Hi @KadenBurke, it's looking quite good already!

One thing you could do to improve the details on the assets in general is displacement maps. I noticed from the close-ups that you're only using bump mapping. You could vertex-displace these or just use parallax mapping if you don't want to use a lot of resources. Parallax mapping is quite cheap and it improves the realism a lot compared to just normal maps.

Cheers!!

KadenBurke

Hi @SebastianZapata, Thanks for the feedback. The building pieces are already using parallax mapping but I am going to increase the intensity a little bit. The dragon is only using normal maps because I was trying to keep a low poly count and parallax mapping doesn't work on a surface that curved. Vertex-Displacement definitely looks better but because I already have parallax mapping set up, I am just going to use it.

SebastianZapata

Oh, my bad. Yea, maybe it needs more strength. It's looking great so far anyway!

Fabi_G

Hi! Another simple option to create trim modules with a more elaborate silhouette, would be to model the lowpoly trim, project its UVs onto the corresponding trim on the trim atlas and modify vertex normals to match the original bake plane. Here is a test created a while back for another thread, option A illustrating what I mean:
model

Modules created this way could be roughed up using booleans, applying a second material ID to cut out parts.

Keep it up!

KadenBurke

Hello @Fabi_G, thanks for the tip. I would not have understood your coment without the test scene. As soon as I viewed the vertex normals it made sense. I had experimented with adjusting the mesh to match the trim but I never thought of changing the normals to face the same as the bake plane. I love learning new things and I am very hapy that you shared this technique. Thank you.

KadenBurke

I have made some heavy edits based on the feedback I recieved. I adjusted some of the materials, added various meshes as ground cover like rocks and bracnhes, added a lot more foliage to the scene, made edits to some meshes to look more damaged, and made some lighting adjustments. I tried to make it all look a little more damaged.

ThisisVictoriaZ

Hi, this is looking cool, really loving the foliage! Currently I think your statue is getting lost in this scene, and there is no obvious focal point. Everything is just consistently very noisy, so my eye doesn't know where its supposed to go, or what I'm supposed to focus on. Assuming you want the viewer to focus on the statues I would make some adjustments so that it stands out from the background. You could do this by adjusting your camera settings ( mess with depth of field and field of view), adjusting the lighting with a soft spotlight and/or rim lighting on the statue, having a heavier background fog, or maybe having the stone the statue be a slightly different color that contrasts the colors behind it. There's a lot of way to do it, and it think it would help your environment a lot!

shabba

I agree with this is Victoria above.

scene is too noisy, and has an undefined focal point.

- there are no shapes helping to draw your eye to the focal point
- no contrast in lighting or contrast in colour/etc that help push you to the focal point
- there is foliage everywhere and no variation or breakup. 

In an image like this, you could use areas of eye rest to draw attention where you want the viewer to look because you have so much noise everywhere else

i would pull the camera out a bit and use the triangular shapes of the structure to draw the eye down toward the statue, and use foliage to cover areas for the eye to avoid, and non foliage areas to provide contrast to help push the eye through the scene. 

Consider rule of thirds, and composition “rules” to help structure your image.

you also lack depth, so I’d provide a foreground element to help you middle ground focal point, and allow the background to help push depth, think about value ranges, and utilize lighting to help, right now your scene is still very uniformly lit, maybe that’s just a light angle direction adjustment because you obviously have good shadows in the dark openings.

 

KadenBurke

Thanks for the feedback about the image being noisy. I had a feeling that the focus of the scene was being lost but I was unsure so the feedback helped a lot. I am going to make some adjustments to help guide the eye where I want the viewer to look. I am going to make some lighting adjustments, change the foliage, and see if I can get a more pleaseing image based off what shabba said above. I think the rule of thirds will help me when I am makeing these adjustments because it is sometimes hard to make a decision on where in the shot a asset should be placed.

KadenBurke

I have made some changes based on feedback that I am very happy with. I changed the lighting to help guide the eye towards the statue. Some foliage has also been removed. I definitely put too much foliage in the scene previously. Shabba sugested to remove some foliage to give the eye an area to rest, I did this in combination with the lighting to try and draw the eye to where I want the viewer to look. I tried to move the camera back to get a larger shot but I was not happy with the results.