UDK Beach Scene

feliponz

Hi there, I just wanted to post some stuff I've been working on. I'm trying to learn how to use UDK and a while ago I made a sci-fi scene (it didn't come out all that great, IMO). I got burned out after spending too much time on it, so I started something new. The feedback I got on this site was excellent. The thing is, the way I went about modeling and texturing some stuff made it really difficult to go back and fix it. So I left it and moved on. The point is to learn and be better, right?

Anyway, here are some screenshots of what I've been working on for the last few weeks, it's an outdoor environment (an abandoned island):













Anyway, I did this mostly because I'm trying to learn UDK and build a portfolio at the same time.
I appreciate any thoughts on how I can improve it / optimize / or just plain make it better

Thanks in advance!

hollywood-north

Alright, I'm liking those palm trees and the dinghy.

What exactly is the grey stuff at the bottom. Are they shadows or plants? Looks weird to me. Probably because most the scene uses vibrant colours and the desaturated colour of the plants just doesn't seem to fit in.

I assume there is only one grass bundle because they all look the same. I'd suggest making a couple more or different variations. It looks like they are in some weird crop field in the 2nd picture. Very unnatural. Also the shadows around those plants are way too opaque.

With some more work this could turn out to be a cool scene! Good luck!

KyleJensen

What's the whited-out part in the fourth picture?

tesher07

It looks good so far but the vegetation seems out of place. Maybe it's the color or it looks to repetative.

feliponz

Thanks for the input!

@hollywood-north: I took the palm tree leaf texture and sorta desaturated it so I can spread it around at the base of the palm trees. I guess I was going for a bit of realism, since who would clean up the fallen leaves? If it's not obvious then perhaps I should remove it?

About the grass: I was testing out how it would look, so I do plan on making more.
How would you go about making their shadows less opaque? I'm relatively new to UDK.


@Shad0wForce: It's the reflection of the sun on the water shader (I followed a tutorial on outdoor water shaders from hourences.com). Any ideas on how to make it look better?

Thanks guys for the input, it's greatly appreciated.

vofff

you could adjust the shadow color to dark blue grey than black.

feliponz

@voff: You mean adjust the shadow for the whole scene or just the one object? (sorry, I'm away from my main computer and cant fiddle with UDK right now to test it.)

Heartless

The fallen palm leaves are a bit too desaturated. And there are a lot of 'em. They'd surely have been mostly covered with sand at that point. Also, I agree a lot of the shadows are too harsh.

I haven't played around with UDK lately so I can't give any specific tips, sorry.

feliponz

@Heartless: Yeah, you're not the first one to comment on that. I mean to change them a bit, but I wonder if there's a way to just paint some sand on it through UDK itself, because it's a deco-layer and if I change the whole texture, then it would just look extra repetitive. Any ideas?

Habboi

First thing that stands out to me is the vegetation. It's too vibrant for that level of sunlight. Again those grey shadows? Look weird.

Anyway the theme concerns me. If it's abandoned then what's with all the props like boats and barrels?

I'd research and gather lots of beach pictures if you haven't already and get some ideas as to what you can create to fill the scene up. It's too empty on the mainland and needs shrubs and bushes. Hell I always expect mountains when it comes to islands.

Overall it's going in the right direction. I just wish you'd share more of your thoughts on your scene. For example a story, what you plan to do next , maybe a simple sketch? What about a focus for the scene like a crashed ship out at sea. Keep going.

feliponz

@Habboi: thanks for your input!

The main idea is to build a small fishing village in the bay part of the island. I have some rough sketches but I never scanned them (I'll post them when I get access to a scanner ). In any case, here's the story of the scene:

It's a small island that is home to a small fishing community. The only real way to get to the mainland is by seaplane, but there are a couple of similar islands nearby with whom they trade with. The town consists of a small dock, a small market and a couple of rustic-looking houses.

This is my first attempt at an outdoor environment using UDK so I wanted to focus on that first. Then slowly insert the village elements. My inspiration for the boats came from a fishing town on the central coast of Peru called Pucusana. The town itself is way more sophisticated, but the people there still use these boats to fish and sell it on the market/port.

I'll post more stuff as I go, since I keep fiddling with the settings to try and figure out what they do.

Thanks again for the input, I'll definitely take it to heart

hollywood-north

I'd say dead palm leaves are more brown than grey or depending how long they have been dead for I'd say more greyish with some brown in it. Just look up a bunch of reference for dead palm trees.

Also is there any normals on the palm trees yet because they are looking kind of like mechanical smooth cylinders up close. Also on the top of the trees model those husky ball things palm trees have where all the leaves come out of.

feliponz

I changed the grass to look a bit less like green blobs... I'm still learning my way around UDK, so my progress is a lot slower that I would like.
I've been having some issues with the shadows on the palm trees... I'm pretty sure it's due to lightmass settings because when I move some sliders around the shadows look way more defined, but as soon as I build the lighting, they turn into greyish blobs. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Before building lights:



After:



I added some different grass:



I would've uploaded these sooner, but AT&T decided to mess up the internet connection, so we switched to a different service.


Anyway, I would really appreciate the input,

Thanks!

DDuckworth

Overall it's come a long way and definitely getting there, the grass is very very bright and green, most beach grass has the dried out color at the bottom of it like here



And for the fallen palm leaves they shouldn't be all brown, they usually have center green with brown tips, it will help it blend a lot better with the beach instead of looking so set on top.

Keep it up!

feliponz

thanks! awesome reference photo! Since I was without internet I just took some pics with my phone of some plants around my house, which are super green this time of year haha.

Harbinger

The issue you're seeing with your tree shadows is completely normal when they get baked into lightmaps. What's happening is prior to your bake, Unreal uses a true dynamic light to preview your lighting, so you get nice crisp shadows. There are a couple of ways to improve those shadows 1)Increase the lightmap resolution of your terrain actor 2) Even better, use a dominant directional light. Check out the GDC features map that comes with UDK to get an idea of how to use one.

feliponz

Sorry for the delay on posting. Lots of stuff going on.
Anyway, here's an update of what I've been doing.



I discovered that UDK comes with speedtree in it. Which was an awesome revelation. My only issue is, the default settings for when the speedtrees become billboards were giving me an error, so I followed a tutorial. In any case, does anyone know what distance would be appropriate so that they dont end up looking like the trees in the background? The come out all stretched out.

Again, thanks everyone for the input. I definitely learned a lot by "doing". It's still my 2nd UDK environment ever, so I'm not too concerned that it didn't come out 100% like I wanted.
I kind of want to move on to a new environment and use what I learned from my 1st environment and with this one and make something a lot nicer. Making a huge environment was pretty daunting, so from now on: smaller, more detailed and more stylized environments are going to be what I shoot for.