Looking for Honest Feedback on My Stylized Game Environment!

Filipp

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a stylized game environment inspired by League of Legends and Arcane, and I’d love to get some harsh, no-holds-barred feedback from the talented folks here. Whether it’s about modeling, texturing, lighting, or anything else, I’m open to all critiques—big or small.

Here are a few areas I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

1. Does the environment reflect the hand-painted, stylized art style well?
2. Are the ground textures, vegetation, and assets visually cohesive?
3. Any tips to enhance the scene overall?
   
   

I’ve uploaded additionally:

• A PDF (3.6 MB) with an overview of the project.
  
  

I’m happy to discuss any feedback—no matter how tough it might be! Your insights are invaluable, and I’m excited to improve based on your suggestions.

Thanks a ton in advance for your time and thoughts!

Cheers,
Filipp

Fabi_G

Hi, cool project!

I would say if the goal is to support a moba/ rts style gameplay, the environment has to much contrast overall. Ideally have some units/ heroes in there throughout the creation process, so you can balance everything in a way so the gameplay elements read well. Perhaps you can add some parameters to your materials so you can dial it in in-engine. Generally vertical gradients can help to make things more readable (for example make trees stand out from ground).

Regarding style, I believe it currently looks more bumpy pbr than hand-painted, with some textures looking like sourced from photos.

The grass being distributes so evenly introduces noise/ contrast, especially with the colors being so different to the underlying ground texture. I would try having some groups of gras in select places. Particular where assets like rocks intersect with the ground, so the intersection appears detailed.

The paths currently seem backward to me: I would expect stone slates being placed in the middle of the path, where's frequently traffic. Perhaps look into mixing a mask into the blend (heightmap?) to achieve a more interesting/ varied transitions, currently the blends borders look repetitive.

For the final presentation, I would add some beauty shots without any OS UI. I don't know if you did this, but through-out the process, it can help to take screenshots and paint on top to quickly explore options.

Keep it up!

Filipp

Fabi_G said:

Hi, cool project!

I would say if the goal is to support a moba/ rts style gameplay, the environment has to much contrast overall. Ideally have some units/ heroes in there throughout the creation process, so you can balance everything in a way so the gameplay elements read well. Perhaps you can add some parameters to your materials so you can dial it in in-engine. Generally vertical gradients can help to make things more readable (for example make trees stand out from ground).

Regarding style, I believe it currently looks more bumpy pbr than hand-painted, with some textures looking like sourced from photos.

The grass being distributes so evenly introduces noise/ contrast, especially with the colors being so different to the underlying ground texture. I would try having some groups of gras in select places. Particular where assets like rocks intersect with the ground, so the intersection appears detailed.

The paths currently seem backward to me: I would expect stone slates being placed in the middle of the path, where's frequently traffic. Perhaps look into mixing a mask into the blend (heightmap?) to achieve a more interesting/ varied transitions, currently the blends borders look repetitive.

For the final presentation, I would add some beauty shots without any OS UI. I don't know if you did this, but through-out the process, it can help to take screenshots and paint on top to quickly explore options.

Keep it up!

Thank you very much for your honest and detailed feedback! I appreciate it a lot.

Regarding the vertical gradients, I completely agree with you that they would make the overall look much better and more distinguishable. However, I'm not sure which gradient colours to choose and if I need to keep the gradient colour consistent through-out all other assets. Could you please advise me which gradient would work the best in my case for the trees and maybe rocks?

Thanks for the feedback about my materials. I'll try to make it more obvious that my materials are hand-painted.

That's a great idea to cut out grass where it should be placed, intersected and put the same colour as the ground colour (green). I'll certainly do that.

I see what you mean by backwards, and your idea about having a stone road in the middle of the paths could work amazingly well! 

Thank you for the last tip as well! I'll keep this thing in mind for the final presentation.

Fabi_G

Hi! Multiple ways to get a gradient mask across meshes, to then use in the shader to modulate values/colors. For example the gradient could be stored in a UV set, vertex color, generated from the y-pos in the shader, ... The way to go is something you have to decide on.