New Life Scientific Corridor
sublime tool
First time posting some work here so should be interesting. This is my second project using UDK and started out as a large scene inspired by the Hideout from Assassin's Creed 2. I started fleshing out a layout for the hallway and wasn't planning on just doing this corridor however I had to cut a lot of planned content just to get this small scene done.
I spent quite a lot of time on this because learning UDK took up a lot of time and I learnt so much since I started this. I'm glad I did this project now.
Anyway the story with this scene is as follows:
"In the near future a scientist at the New Life corporation building has snuck into the complex after being banned for experimenting with portal technology. In order to test his portal machine he conected a large cable into the buildings main power supply generator in the basement."
This scene shows the world outside and the hallway that leads to the main room where the portal machine is.
In my last project I wanted to learn UDK using assets that came with the program and made a quick story where an alien civilisation used portals to travel. Therefore I continued that universe back on Earth to give life to my scene. The visuals combine references from the present day in Assassin's Creed 2 and Mirror's Edge. I was planning to do a lot more but in order to get this done by Christmas I focused on this one angle to reduce work and allow the viewers to make up their own stories for what they think is happening around the corner.
You may have noticed the computer terminal on the ceiling which is normally used for showing the corporations promotional messages. The scientist hooked the computer system to his machine hence the warning message. There's also a clipboard and pen on the sofa nearby which suggests someone else is there as a test subject maybe? There's also a slight bum mark as well that backs this theory.
Anyway here's the picture:
Any tips for improving it? I'd like to avoid changing too much cause the vignette effect doesn't work when I use tiledshot 0-4 so this is a Photoshop hack job using the same texture but the problem is that I can't set-up a camera for the same angle (I really, really tried and followed tuts) so I have to manually position the spectator camera.
I spent quite a lot of time on this because learning UDK took up a lot of time and I learnt so much since I started this. I'm glad I did this project now.
Anyway the story with this scene is as follows:
"In the near future a scientist at the New Life corporation building has snuck into the complex after being banned for experimenting with portal technology. In order to test his portal machine he conected a large cable into the buildings main power supply generator in the basement."
This scene shows the world outside and the hallway that leads to the main room where the portal machine is.
In my last project I wanted to learn UDK using assets that came with the program and made a quick story where an alien civilisation used portals to travel. Therefore I continued that universe back on Earth to give life to my scene. The visuals combine references from the present day in Assassin's Creed 2 and Mirror's Edge. I was planning to do a lot more but in order to get this done by Christmas I focused on this one angle to reduce work and allow the viewers to make up their own stories for what they think is happening around the corner.
You may have noticed the computer terminal on the ceiling which is normally used for showing the corporations promotional messages. The scientist hooked the computer system to his machine hence the warning message. There's also a clipboard and pen on the sofa nearby which suggests someone else is there as a test subject maybe? There's also a slight bum mark as well that backs this theory.
Anyway here's the picture:
Any tips for improving it? I'd like to avoid changing too much cause the vignette effect doesn't work when I use tiledshot 0-4 so this is a Photoshop hack job using the same texture but the problem is that I can't set-up a camera for the same angle (I really, really tried and followed tuts) so I have to manually position the spectator camera.
Replies
Overall u've got too much redundant brown, this is most noticeable at the far wall (Above the door) so i'd say put something there, a sign of some sort maybe telling what's inside. Also i'd like to see what the pipe is doing there without reading ur story, the scene should tell it. Admittedly, it's a hard one to pull off; too many elements out of the equation. U'd have to change ur story, i guess, it's not like it would affect the scene much cuz we just don't know most of it.
I thought the alert sign was placed too high and off-the-center (its about the last thing on the composition i noticed), unrelated to ppl down on the floor.
Palette-ly, background (city scape) could use more color, shapes-wise it could be more interesting too. Maybe implement the pipe-curve to reappear there somewhere and send the viewer to the left.
I would say you need more woods in here, wooden shelves, window shelf frames, tone down the blue a little bit and border the shit out of everything, you bordered up the ceilings which looks nice, now do some trim work to the lower bricks to get some more silhoutte against the floor.
Other then that my man I really like it, give me a video fly through asap!
I should probably post the reference picture that inspired this scene.
When I look at it the thing I notice is how brighter and less brown it is. Perhaps I should focus on desaturating the materials and aiming for less orange and more pale yellow. As for the brick structure arches I had trouble following the reference shape and ended up with what you see. I posted it despite knowing it might raise some eyebrows in case I could get away with it. Looks like I might have to remake it.
What sort of trim should I add? A wooden trim? The room I'm in now has a white wood trim similar to this:
Finally I think it'd help me greatly if you could maybe do a quick photoshop edit to show me what you're thinking because I'm having a hard time working out how to break the scene into more interesting, less tiled bricks. Thanks again!
Since it's Christmas tommorow for me I won't be online for the day but that doesn't mean I'm ignoring any more feedback so feel free to let loose!
Edit: Any interior mags that you highly sugest?
I personally don't use tiled shot (I use tiledshot 0 or tiledshot 1 on rare occasions) because it kills post-processing fx and in games we play at normal resolution.
To set up a camera you need to have a camera actor in game, and use that to hook up into a kismet sequence which boots the player up into cinematic mode as soon as you hit play. It was one of those things for me which I understood when I was shown by a friend.
I believe hourences has a tutorial on cameras, if not this tutorial is the one I got helped by for cameras,
http://www.youtube.com/user/CGUOD#p/u/7/JhGxdLm9Yqk
To improve on the scene think about doing the following:
- Extending it so you can get a camera sequence (another hallway to the side maybe)
- Add wood borders / trims to the bottom of the walls
- Enable lightrays and see how ther interact with the level
- Radiators, vending machines, stylized in the way of your sofas, props in general to dress the set with
The environment is nice, I see no problems other then the arches. Play around on Assassins Creed 2 more and see what they've done, maybe making a full interior environment is the key? That way your hallway will be one of many renders of a whole playable interior.
Goodluck and good stuff!
I've still got one or two crits though! Firstly, I agree with shotgun now he pointed it out, that the TV screen is too small/too high. I would scale it up a tad and lower it slightly - you can push realism away a little here as its not so noticeable. Secondly, I think the brick texture tiles a bit to much and gets noisy at the back.
Finally, I would lower the bloom on the cable a tad and give a hint of blue lighting along the floor, with a touch of soft blue light on the doors coming from the back room. Maybe more light spilling from the back room in fact, hinting at something else going on...
I keep saying a tad and a little and a bit because I think it's all just tweaking, this is so close to finished in my eyes!
e: oh yeah! there's lots of light coming into the room through big windows... but its so dark in the left corner! and it covers up that lovely vent! :P
Right I'm back and I thank you all for your advice because back when I posted that first picture I didn't think there was much more I could have done but boy was I wrong.
I've done my best to follow everyone's advice but I think the main one that was difficult to do was reducing the brown. I added more tan to the arch walls and tried removing the orange spec but it caused horrible lighting issues that were inconsistant with everything else. The difference was minor however so I returned them to the way they were.
I reduced the arches so they didn't look so...weird and googled some references to make sure they were acceptable in the real world. Seems there are some brick structures that are built this way but they're usually on the outside. I've decided to stick with it because it's more eye catching and defines the scene.
I removed the vignette effect because fearian is right, there's tons of light and I should't be darkening the left corner. I lowered the central computer and added a sign above the door. I also added small lights under the blue wire and removed certain shadows with faint light because they looked odd.
I lowered saturation on the bricks by .4 but it didn't have that much of an effect. The city also uses a purple colour for it's environment but that causes slight purple on darker areas. I have decided to leave it that way because using the sky colour just makes it look too orange.
I added more props, more story but I've decided not to add to the scene / level for many reasons but the biggest one is lack of RAM to compute any more than this scene. I have 4 GB Ram but on a 32 bit system and to get this scene rendered I had to really tweak it so that only this angle would be possible. I had planned a lot more in the past but it seems it is my time to look for a job therefore I'm calling finished on this unless anyone has other stuff to add.
Later on I'll be making a timelapse video. It won't be perfect but it might interest some people.
Special thanks to Remus for his Skydome texture which he released for free. Link:
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=603122&highlight=skydome
The city line and the horizontal support in the window being on the same plane really hurts the backdrop. Raise up the background skyline just a bit to fix that.
What about making the pillar and window frame bricks a different color or saturation at least?
Also play with/turn off the SSAO options in UDK. Those dark shadows aren't helping much.
Anyway I was happy with the end result and put it up on the portfolio etc. I also got around to making that timelapse today. It's not much but some people might enjoy it.
[ame]
Thanks again!