Celtic Village UDK Environment

Alex3d

Hey guys, I didn't post here while I was working on this. For my final project I tackled a game level and was inspired to make it in UDK. I based this off Age Of Conan and soon to be released Skyrim. This was designed as a possible addition to one of these games.
Realtime Viewport

Realtime screen grab:
http://youtu.be/ZXIkR9GtjU4?hd=1

Quite a few people I showed it to asked me questions about my grass and how I made it. So here is a breakdown on geometry and materials in UDK.

As you can see, these are just planes with alpha on them. The grass is also animated through Unreal material editor:


I will continue working on this piece as I wish to develop more assets and particularly trees. I will post my texture maps (all current maps are 512x512) later on as well. I will really appreciate if you leave suggestions on improvement Particularly if you know a good tree foliage tutorial to share :P

LMP

Looks like an excellent start, I'd do a little more work on your lighting it's feeling a little muted right now, I'd try to get more contrast of light and dark areas in your scene. Your torches are so saturated and bright that they just draw my eyes right to them, and I'm not given the opportunity to appreciate your other assets.
I would also try to get more atmospheric depth into your scene, right now everything is sitting on the same plane in your composition

Mistry10

good start, ur using UDK great !!
the biggest problem (IMO) is the composition
you have your focal point way too far in the back, using the rule of thirds will help sell your scene alot more

Alex3d

Wow thanks guys!
@LMP - I know what you mean, I'll try to correct this issue by giving skydome texture a correct perspective (right now its just generic clouds with a rotator node) and better lighting.
@Mistry10 - That's an interesting idea. Yeah I'll try moving my stonehenge closer and I guess it will look more like a village center hehe

InMOP

How did you go about setting up your grass material in the material editor?
That looks way to complex for me to be able to look at and just make, is there a guide on how and why it is the way you have set it up to be.

also do you have a higher resolution screenshot of that material Im just so baffled by looking at it.

Alex3d

The reason I had to animate my grass using a material editor, is because I'm using march beta of UDK. There is no foliage volume or foliage in terrain material in this version, therefore I had to do the physics manually. Sorry but even if I post 1920X1080, you wont be able to see the node names or more importantly you won't be able to see the settings :P. The easy way to learn it is to open UDK preset grass material and check out the nodes. What you essentially need is a combination of FoliageImpulseDirection(for interactive grass), WindDirectionAndSpeed (in combination of vectors and Sine that would rock your foliage back and forth). Also use UDN to search material nodes for examples of how to get them to work. I'm just a beginner to UDK, so I don't wish to give you wrong advice. I'm sure if you create your own thread and ask for help on materials, quite a few ppl will help you

Alex3d

Hey guys, haven't updated this in a while (was working on my demo reel). I've decided to clean up my textures to make my Environment more efficient. I've got here a diffuse I'm using on my huts:

And as you can see I only require opacity map for the Roof and Fur piece, while the rest of this map is a waste of space:


Is there a way I can utilize 2nd Unwrap channel and make 2 different unwraps(1 for diffuse and 1 for Opacity), to increase efficiency? Note that I've already unwrapped 2 channels, and tried applying textures to 2 different channels, however the polygons themselves still remain ID1, and only read 1st channel

synergy11

Personally I like the Light Beam further back like in your original shot.

If you want to follow the rule of thirds slide it over but keep it back. It's more mysterious. : )