Caldeum UDK environment

GavinUnit

Hello Polycounters,
I've been working on a piece for my portfolio and was wondering if I could get some input on things to change/add/remove.

Unfortunately, I need to have this thing completely wrapped up in 2 weeks and I'm not entirely happy with the way everything is looking.
Right now I'm just working on rejigging my messy lightmap UV's to get rid of the shadow bleeding. After that I need to finish my textures, considering none of them are done, and lots are just colour blocks. Also, as you can see on the backside of my walls I need to move around some of my UV's due to some weirdness.

I've been wanting to change something/add something with the cloth to make it look better because I'm really not liking how it looks right now. I planned on having it blowing in the breeze, but could not for the life of me figure out how to get it to work. I figured I could just bake out a sim in Maya then export that somehow...

Anywho, I'd appreciate any input I can get!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4075/4817411719_ec1dca87e3_b.jpg
This is the image I've been working from mostly. I started off wanted to recreate it, but ended off drifting a bit into making my own environment out of it. I guess that it's kind of a Diablo-style environment.











Thanks for checking it out

Oniram

if you are trying to match the lighting from the concept, id definitely say you would need to darken your environment color and maybe put in some slight desaturation in a post process volume/chain.

personally i think its a bit too bright and over exposed. also its looking very diffuse, not sure if thats what you're aiming for but it is sort of a nice look for it.

ParoXum

Really nice. What I would add?

Foam on water's collision with walls, increase lightmaps resolution or go the dominant light route to get sharper shadows.

Sephez

It is indeed very nice ! But it's looking really orange and yellow right now A few quick changes to add some color variation;

Purple shadows to add some cold to it.
A post effect overlay on the top with a rich blue color to simulate the sky and a darker green on the bottom for more color !

GavinUnit

Thanks a bunch for the input you guys, I'm just heading out so hopefully I can try to implement your suggestions tonight or tomorrow.


Oniram - Yeh, the only material that has a spec and normal is the ground right now (and even that is pretty subtle). Once I get all the diffuse textures done I will play with spec/normal on the other parts of the scene and see how it goes. Like you said, I kind of like the softness of just diffuse tho. We'll see.

ParoXum - Some of the blurryness of the shadows is due to the insane mipmapping of the shadow maps. Is there some way I can turn that down? I've tried digging around for info on the net but can't find anything solid. I was actually looking into doing an edge-detect style thing for the water in a previous scene that I did but couldn't find much info on how to go about creating it. I'm pretty new to UDK so sometimes the simplest things slip by me :P

Sephez - I really like the look of your image! I tried making the environment colour more blue-purple to bring out the colour in the shadows but that washed the whole scene in a gross green when it mixed with the yellow light. I'm guessing it would be best to try to do this in the post volume?
And when you mention overlaying a richer blue in the sky and darker green at the bottom, do you suggest I try doing that within the sky texture and fog actor itself, or actually just overlaying the two colours as a gradient over the camera or something?


Thanks again, greatly appreciated!

Sephez

I'm fairly new to the UDK as well, only ever done a small environment for my portfolio so far. However, you should be able to adjust each light's individual shadow color instead of changing the environment color, not resulting in a green mess, as far as I know !

A basic camera overlay with a transparent picture should do the trick Just take a look at Epic's own vignette found in the post_process_console thingie and make your own version of that. It's a subtle but neat little effect, at least for limited camera movement

GavinUnit

I do have quite a bit of camera movement, so I figured the gradient overlay might not work to well, but after testing it out with the other images it actually looks pretty nice.

Because I'm going to be rendering this out and then bringing it together in After Effects for my reel, do you think it is, I don't know, acceptable to do post on the sequence? By post I just mean levels, Colour Balance and stuff like that. Nothing heavy. I ask because I don't know if that would be something that someone viewing the reel would frown upon, as apposed to doing EVERYTHING in engine.

Computron

Looks very cool.

It looks like it is floating pretty high up in the sky, so I would assume it's maybe a little windy up there. That might be a good effect to add and would work nicely with your cloth and vegetation. Also Looks a little dusty in the surroundings, so maybe add some sand piling up in crevices and some dusty particle effects floating in the air?

Sephez

As long as you don't overdo it and just stick to making some slight changes it should be fine I think. You mentioned you have about 2 weeks until it has to be done, what are the next couple of things to do left ?

Also, I'd love to see the finished reel once you're done with it and perhaps even critique it as well

GavinUnit

I hav'nt been able to do much work in UDK the last couple of days due to rendering in Maya, but I played with post fx in photoshop, based heavily on Sephez's paintover and other suggestions, and this is where it ended up. I really like the colours a lot more, it's easier on the eyes, but at the same time I feel that it loses a lot of its warmness, which is a pretty important aspect of the image. Maybe a made it a bit too washed-out, because the "heat" looks more "smokey".
BUT, I'd like to hear a couple more opinions because I sure as hell know not to just go by my own!
Thanks for the help so far! Hopefully I can start laying down more diffuse textures so the blank pieces arnt so blown out and misrepresenting.

Computron

Great contrast with the new lighing. The pool of water could use some work, to bottom of the pool is not as green as other parts.

cptincognito

You might try darkening the walls of the pool where the water would make it wet. I think it would do a lot to integrate the water into the scene. (maybe some wet specular too)

GavinUnit

I've been busy working on touching up my other scenes and mostly rendering stuff, but I've been finishing the textures for this scene too.

Computron - I'm looking into adding a wave-like effect to the cloth, be it animated or just an animated normal, and possibly adding some dust in the air along with more sand on the ground. When you mention the green of the pool, are you saying you think that the large pool should have more green in it to fit with the river and fountains? That might just be because the placeholder texture on the pool is so bright, but I'll look into it.

cptincognito - Darkening the walls of the pool where it is wet sounds great, ill give that a shot.

Sephez - For sure, I'll post up a link to my reel when it's done.

Thanks guys! I'll try to get some more pics up soon! Grad in like a week!

Computron

Good luck with grad

GavinUnit

Helloooo again.
My next project (have yet to decide on it, I plan on taking a couple day mental break from everything computer after tonight...) I hope to do completely within Polycount to get more feedback from you guys and the rest of the community that is interested. Just posting my project up near finishing it you guys were more than helpful!

Anyways, I've been in lockdown at school the past week putting things together and tonight is the final portfolio show, then we're free! (whatever that means).

For those interested, here is my website along with the reel. I'm fully open to crits, tho I definitely can't guarantee I'll go back to change anything on my now finished projects, as I want to keep moving forward. The imbedded video it ultra super-duper low-res, so I'm thinking of possibly making a higher quality H264 and putting that onto Youtube, then imbedding that. What do you guys think is best?

...and for the record, my website is loosely based off of Jonathan's (one of my favorite artists I've seen round these parts). Better I point it out than someone else!

toxic_h2o

Wow I really enjoy your work, looking forward to more!