Prague Square Enviorment WIP

Kylen

Hello,

This is my first environment implemented into the Unreal Engine. It is based it off a photo a friend of mine took in Prague. So far I have modeled all the low poly assets in Maya and created diffuse texture sheets for each building. Only what is seen from the camera angle has been modeled.





Things to do:
-High poly geometry pass on the building in the foreground
-Specular and normal maps
-Textures for the street and sidewalk
-Improve lighting and shadows

Comments are most appreciated. Some areas of knowledge I am looking to improve with this project are a proper workflow from low poly to zbrush and improved texturing techniques (specifically proper utilization of spec maps). I am experiencing issues with maintaining hardsurface form when I subdivide in zbrush. Also I am new to normal map creation and will be working to gain a better handle on them.

SouthpawSid

the modeling looks great to me. Should be a cool scene! Some HP work and a good normals map on the foreground building will for sure add the pop it needs. As will the detail on the sidewalk. I'm not sure how you taking the lighting but I would push more contrast in the lighting a bit and some stronger shadows. Is this a view port grab or baked out lighting?

duxun

add more polys to the building in the foreground to pop out the shapes like in your reference image. keep at it .

TheBat

Looks awesome! I even recognize the place because i've been to Prague 5 times or something (this is a good thing).

The scale seems a bit off on some things, The building on the right hand side has a slight curve in it which doesn't seem to be in your model, guess all those things will be taken care of later!

Keep those updates coming!

tyl3r

Looking great thus far! One thing I would maybe change is to add a few more polys to that sidewalk to get a more curved silhouette. Looking forward to the Hi-Poly bake!

Kylen

Thanks for the comments guys.

SouthpawSid, the screen shot is in game. The lighting is baked however none of my objects are set up to receive or cast shadows I think. I'm still very new to UE.

TheBat, yeah I noticed late into modeling that building on the right that it had a slight curve to it haha. I'm not sure if I will go back and adjust that, we'll see.

tyl3r, I agree. The current geometry for the sidewalk is a placeholder until I can get something better in. Thanks for the tip.

Kovac

Looking good, Kylen. That's a really nice photo, and the first thing that caught my eye was the really natural curves in it. After looking back up at your wip I felt the key thing that was making it feel static was the lack of this. The road in the photo feels almost like a rally car course, causing the buildings to flow with the beat the mood the road is setting.



Keep on at it!

Kylen

You raise a solid point Kovac. My rendering does feel pretty static due to the lack of curves. I will have to go back and make adjustments as per your and TheBat's comments. Thanks!

Kylen

Finished my first pass at the high poly version of the rounded building in the foreground. Created it with the intention of bringing it into Zbrush to add subtle stucco/concrete details but have been experiencing some difficulty with getting the normal maps to bake out properly and getting enough resolution to add the detail in Zbrush. I might end up baking the normals from this high poly to my low poly cage, then add extra bump through either CrazyBump or Nvidia's Normal filter. For now, I continue to research how to wrangle the whole normal baking process.



Next step: Begin creating materials for all the buildings with proper specular settings. Also, create sidewalk geometry.

Kylen

Here is my current progress with normal map baking. I have gone through quite a bit of different methods and techniques for getting a decent map, and this is my best result.




My workflow so far:
-Create poly mesh in Maya designing around the results of the smooth proxy preview adding edgeloops and beveling when needed to maintain a hard edge.
-Converting smooth proxy into geomety, import into Zbrush and sculpt (test concrete detail for now)
-Use decimation master on Zbrush tool, export obj, import into Maya.
-Delete extra edge loops from original low poly mesh. Unwrap UVs.
-Bake normal map using Maya's transfer maps.