UDK – Demon’s Souls Based Environment

Chriss

Hello everyone!

I’m a third year university student that should be graduating in a couple of months and I’m trying to get my portfolio together. Here is an environment I’m building at the moment, it’s based on a piece of concept art from demon’s souls. The main things it’s missing at the moment are landscape textures and foliage and the lighting is far from right. Let me know what you think, any comments/crits would be much appreciated, thanks!

Concept:


Screenshots:

onionhead_o

tree branches look a bit thick

Iciban

could i see the wireframe?
and I agree with the branches. Its really thick

UnrealAnimation3D

damn that tree branch is fine its thick! LOL great seen bro!

iniside

Branches should be thick. But also should be longer.

Chriss

Been working on my dissertation for the past few days but I’ve had a play with the trees and hopefully they are better now. Looking back at them now I completely agree they were way too thick. Fresh pair of eyes was exactly what I needed thanks guys!

SirCalalot

Your modelling work is great!

As I've asked in a few threads lately, how close are you wanting to mimic the style and feel of the concept?



If you look at the lighting of the original image, it is quite pale and cold - almost white (with a slight twinge of yellow). This picks up the greens and greys in the foreground and contrasts the cool (very pale) blue/greys of the background.
You current set-up looks a little bit too warm, further accentuated by your tree and leaf textures that contain a lot of red. Maybe desaturating your textures to be a lot more grey/brown will help this.

The lighting also comes at a bit more of a shallow angle in the concept, which seems to be a bit earlier on a grim morning than in your scene. As it is very overcast, this is creating very soft shadows too, rather than your current sharp ones.

The concept also has a thicker fog than you currently have with a white colour that has ever so slightly a hint of blue in it to compliment the scene greens.
Maybe make your own fog thicker and at a very-close-to-white blue colour, then up the contrast and intensity of your Light Shafts from your DominantDirectionalLight (maybe making them a bit yellow too, emphasising the light colour).
If you also add a lot more geometry to the side of the scene where the light is coming from, such as thin branches, you'll be able to notice the effect better. Similar to how the dead tree on the left side of the concept breaks up the fog, creating loads of little light shafts in the process.

I hope that helps, as this scene is looking really promising

*Subscribed*

Chriss

Thanks for the feedback SirCalalot!

To answer your question I’m not exactly looking to mimic the concept. Primarily I want just want something that looks good, so I’ll play around with different lighting and effects as I go and if mimicking it turns out to look the best then so be it.

Thanks again for the comments, I’ll keep your advice in mind and I’m sure it will help!

Chriss

I’ve changed the post possessing quite a bit and I think I’m liking it more this way, I decided that I want to go for more of a dead feel than the concept art. I’m curious to know which version other people like more, both of them would need tweaking to be right but I’m trying to decide which way to take it.

Other than that I’ve finally done a first pass on the landscape textures and added a little bit of foliage. Currently I have 3 variations of grass and a rocky rubble texture and I plan to add dead leaves to the ground as they are falling from the sky. I seem to have reached the texture sample limit on my landscape material though so I’m going to have do that a different way. I’m thinking decals at the moment.

SirCalalot

How are you reaching the texture samples limit?
I can see two, maybe three diffuse textures. Assuming that they all have Normal maps, then that's six.

If you are using black and white specular maps, are they assigned to the Alpha channel of your Diffuse textures?

Chriss

I was using slightly colored spec maps for the grass and there are 4 diffuse textures the extra one is another variation on the grass texture with more rocky parts and a bit more color its subtle but I think it helps.

What you said did make me rethink the material though and I have gone back and derived the spec maps from the diffuses and it looks almost no different, so now I guess I have room for the leaves, thank you!

Amadreaus

Those trees could use some more lovin'. Also, it might be interesting to see a burned out fire pit or something to help add to the focal point with the tent in the center.

Chriss

Burnt out fire pit was the plan! Thanks for the comments.

And some updates, redone the aqueducts, more lighting changes and I’ve worked on the light shafts some.

SirCalalot

As you're quite obviously moving away from the colours of the original image, perhaps you should adjust the concept to better suit what you are trying to achieve?
That way you can keep similar colour harmonies and keep the same sort of subtle composition

Edit: Something like this?



Or if you are really wanting to change the mood :P



Having a concept image in-line with what you want to achieve is paramount. A lot of my own work has suffered from lack of reference, but I know it can be hard to realise that when working

Chriss

That’s a clever idea there, thank you! I had a go and came out with this, then tried to push it more towards that in UDK.



I’m having to call this finished for now other than minor tweaks if anyone notices anything, I’ll come back to it later if I have the time but deadlines are calling me!





and a little video
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDCO_ISLLKA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDCO_ISLLKA&hd=1[/ame]