[UDK] Autumn Park
Hey people!
These last 3 weeks I've been working on an environment for my portfolio before I graduate and I'd really appreciate some harsh critique or comments. I really want to take this scene as far as I can so please feel free to crit on anything, even on the smallest of things.
It's still a work in progress and a few things I consider changing is the wall entrance. It's looking kinda cluttered right now and doesn't read that well. I would also like to add a larger park square and a few more places of interest.
I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to stop by and comment!
EDIT: Latest Image
These last 3 weeks I've been working on an environment for my portfolio before I graduate and I'd really appreciate some harsh critique or comments. I really want to take this scene as far as I can so please feel free to crit on anything, even on the smallest of things.
It's still a work in progress and a few things I consider changing is the wall entrance. It's looking kinda cluttered right now and doesn't read that well. I would also like to add a larger park square and a few more places of interest.
I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to stop by and comment!
EDIT: Latest Image
Replies
Looks really good. Like the colours of the leaves and trees.
I noticed a couple of minor things. First was the bin- is that unfinished? It looks like it doesnt have a material in the third picture.
Second was that the path is maybe a little too clear of leaves. It could do with a few more piles here and there. But that could just be a preference.
Overall looks fantastic to me!
Secondly, I feel as though some of the shadows are very dark, like in the bushes and on some of the trees themselves.
I would also love to see some wireframes on some of the assets if you could, along with some of the texture maps.
Besides those small things I really like the scene and would love to see a larger version of it!
I would take out the second shot, or do a more subtle glow. The overblown look in that picture is not doing you any good.
The lighting has a few contradictions:
Sky dome is very cloudy yet the shadows are very sharp. Either bake softer shadows, or make a clearer sky.
Color of the lighting in the sky does not match with the color of the actual light. (Changed color on paint over)
Cloudy day would have more apparent AO. (Added on paint over)
There are other things that come to mind that could take this to the next level
As seen in the paint over, following a color palette makes the lighting more appealing. Ambient occlusion also helps the props look more grounded, and match the sky better. It also shows how a slight hue shift can separate the trees and create a readable composition. Having the foreground have the same contrast as background makes everything look flat, so in the paint over I made the background elements less contrast, mid-ground elements medium contrast, and foreground elements with highest contrast. Overall you doing a solid job, keep up the good work!
Best Regards,
i'm sorry the overapint is so clumsy but I tried to be reaaal fast.
1.Because plants come in all forms and sizes, the benches are your size reference in this scene. And for me it felt a bit lost by those huge yellow leaves. I think that if you generally scale down the leaves a bit you'll get more small scale details that won't interfere with middle scale details and appear a bit more uniform, as bushes and not sets of leaves.
2.The road is pretty sterile, making it pretty boring. Cracks, patches, pebbles, puddles, dirt, some slight color variations - plenty of stuff to choose from to bring more life to it.
4.This one is probably the most important and I regret I didn't make it first.
Right now your scene is lit as if the leaves are fully opaque but it's not the case in real life. Leaves are translucent and they let a lot of light bounce through. That's why your shadows seem too dark.
I doubt you'll be hooking a real transluscnet material, but polycount wiki has a great hint on faking it, just scroll down a bit to "back lighting example"
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap
As for the shadows you can just put little point lights beneath the tress and bushes to make it seem like light passes through. You might also want to fiddle with screenspace AO settings and set it to a brighter color to avoid those unrealistic blacks.
5.On some other pictures the seam between the ground and the stones is pretty obvious. You could set up a simple vertex blending material to create some moss along the bottom.
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Advanced_Vertex_Painting.html or
http://www.3dmotive.com/training/udk/advanced-mesh-paint-with-udk/
6.Speaking of vertex blending. It looks as if you tree color are generally uniform. But that's no the case in real life either, you could have a part of the tree being yellow, some green and some red. This is also easily achievable with vertex painting - just use greyscale leaf texture and multiply it by vertex color and then you can paint some richer variety to your scene.
7.This basically comes out from point 4. Since the leaves are translucent they let some light pass through, but while they do they also color it. So some tinted fog would allow you to establish proper perspective while also contributing to the mood. You might also consider some volumetric lighting effects.
9.You should also consider some falling leaves particles 'cause those would be right at home here.
there. best of luck to you.)
salacious_Crumb: Thank you! Yeah, that bin is still being worked on as it doesn't even have a UV-layout yet, haha. And I agree with you about the road.
I promise you I'll fix that in the near future
Andrew Mackie: Thanks! You're right about the dark shadows.
I'm gonna have to tweak a few things to brighten them up although I don't want to brighten them up too much since I like some of that contrast. I guess it's a fine balancing act
riddlaz: Thank you for this very well thought-out post, everything you say is pretty spot on and I appreciate it! You've given me a lot to work with and I will keep everything you mentioned in mind
Walrus: Haha cheers!
Alberto Rdrgz: I completely agree. I've already learnt a lot and hopefully I'll learn even more as I continue working on this!
d1ver: As if one great paintover isn't enough, you're giving me a second one, thanks. Leaf sizes and more dirt&stuff on the road, got it. Now that's one nifty trick for faking translucency, I am going to give it a try today and see if it turns out well. Same with the vertex blending, thanks for the links.
Falling leaves and white butterflys are on my to-do list once I get closer to finalizing the scene. I haven't dabbled much with particle effects yet so I'm really looking forward to that
Best Regards,
I am going to fix the flatness of those orange bushes, finish the lamppost and trash bin, add some leaves lying on the benches and maybe add some more decals of stuff on the road.
Falling leaves, animating those white butterflies and adding some wind for my foliage are things that are on my to-do list as well. Right now I'm basing my foliage movement on the shaders by Epic in the foliage demo but I'd like to replace them with my own. Currently, the leaves and bushes are kind of "breathing" more than swaying so it looks slightly strange but hopefully that will be fixed soon
I never got that translucency trick to work so I used a workaround by multiplying the texture by a constant and plugging it into the emissive slot instead. And the vertex blending wasn't really working well with my trees as the paintbrush would paint everything horizontally across the entire mesh. But it worked really well with the bushes next to the benches though, gave them some nice gradients.
I'm still open for suggestions to the entrance and anything else I might've forgot to mention or notice
No crits from me. I'd be proud of a portfolio piece like that.
- Cool trick with just emissive. You should also consider some Emissive for the flowers upfront-too dark right now.
- A little point light for the lower right part of the pic(under the tree)
- Also UDK->View->World Properties->Lightmass->Environment Color to color or brighten up your shadows a bit. Seems like it's black now.
- How about a more interesting sky? A sky's a sky but it's a huge and bright chunk of your image that most people tend to overlook since they just download it. You could find or paint a bit more interesting moody cloud pattern that would accentuate your scene better. Might also tint a bit with violet or yellow for more color integrity. The shadows seem pretty long, so it could be close to sunset.
- Slight volumetric lightbeams coming through the trees if placed subtly and strategically could make the scene much more magical. There are already are a bunch premade in udk so you just take one, make your own material instance, quickly adjust it and you're good to go. Shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VolumetricLightingGuide.html
-Butterflies:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-77792.html
-A a little flock of birds flying off in the distance to add a little bit of a story and accentuate the autumn mood? They are done the same as butterflies pretty much so it's no extra workload.
-A little patch for the road?
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/blogs/gallery/Bridge.rd.patch.JPG
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2583/3703758839_e337277a3e_d.jpg
- also if you come up with some other little details to tell a story it would make scene that much more interesting too look at. Maybe some crayon drawings on the asphalt or something?
d1ver: You're truly one untapped source of knowledge for me, aren't you
Yeah, you are probably right about that corner being too dark and I think one contributing factor is the vignette I've got going on. I'm not sure if I want to brighten the shadows up too much as I like the contrast of light/dark right now but I'll experiment some more.
I've totally been neglecting the sky as it's still the default one and it's been working kinda well this far but I can give it a try! Painting's fun and it's a good practice making your own
Actually, there are some lightbeams placed there already but I guess they need changing. Wouldn't want to miss out on the magical feeling
That's a great idea, I'll try to implement some more story elements into the scene. Right now there isn't really much space to do it on so if I get the time I'll try to make this an entire level and not just a corner of a park. I need to start sending out applications for my internship soon though so I'm running out of time, which is both a blessing and a curse haha.
[ame]
wasnt too fond of the flowers in the screenshots but they work well in the video. great job
Other than that, wonderful execution. Good luck with graduation.
divi: Haha, thanks
darbeenbo: Oh wow, I never really noticed it lol. It kinda looks like the foliage brush painted that grass mesh beneath the ground =/ If I get the time I'll try and fix that and the camera movements but for now I'll just leave them be. But thank you nevertheless