[UE4] High Tech Environment
polycounter lvl 7
Latest Update "Scroll down for more."
Introduction
Hi Polycount! Welcome to the start of my environment thread. Over the next 10 weeks I will be posting my progress on my environment project. For this project I will be using the Unreal Engine 4 to layout and render my work.
Throughout the course of this project I hope to gain a better understanding of environment creation workflows and techniques. I look forward to any feedback or advice from the community.
Concept
I will be basing this project off a piece of concept art done by Unidcolor. I will try to stick to the concept as close as possible, not sure I i will be able to recreate the same perspective.
Goals
Basic Planning
First Block Out
Here is my current progress in the block out. Mostly just BSP brushes and some placeholder geometry. And a quick and simple light setup.
Introduction
Hi Polycount! Welcome to the start of my environment thread. Over the next 10 weeks I will be posting my progress on my environment project. For this project I will be using the Unreal Engine 4 to layout and render my work.
Throughout the course of this project I hope to gain a better understanding of environment creation workflows and techniques. I look forward to any feedback or advice from the community.
Concept
I will be basing this project off a piece of concept art done by Unidcolor. I will try to stick to the concept as close as possible, not sure I i will be able to recreate the same perspective.
Goals
- Practice modular asset creation.
- Learn PBR workflow.
- Explore UE4 new features.
- Learn how to save time on normals by using nDo2
Basic Planning
- Block out space. [Due Week 2]
- Refine block out with modular placeholders.[Due Week 2]
- Model High poly and low poly assets. [Due Week 4]
- Block out basic lighting. [Due Week 5]
- Texture / Shader creation. [Due Week 6]
- Refine lighting setup [Due Week 8]
- Final texture and shader tweaks. [Due Week 10]
- Renders. [Due Week 10]
First Block Out
Here is my current progress in the block out. Mostly just BSP brushes and some placeholder geometry. And a quick and simple light setup.
Replies
I would make that area twice as wide as it's now.
Good luck!!
Keep it up!
Alex
@Dralex - Thanks for the input. I can't wait to start playing around with the new physically based materials.
I will be posting another update later today.
Here are some pattern tests for the more complex wall pieces. I will end up baking it into a selection mask and creating the normal map pattern with ndo2.
Thanks again for the feedback so far.
:thumbup:
*subscribed*
@_Kratos_ - Glad you like it so far, more to come.
@iangoold3d - Thanks man.
Small Update :
Still lots of little things to model.
Here is a couple progress shots. More to come later tonight.
Side by side comparison.
Any and all feedback is welcome.
If I'm judging it correctly: the concept shows a grate that runs underneath the stairs and it looks like it has glass inserts. In your scene that area is empty, are you going to incorporate that?
Keep going!
Known Issue : overlapping light maps on hallway walls.
Feedback is always welcome.
That's just my opinion, though.
@oxblood - Thanks man!
Worked on this for most of the day. I concentrated on creating some master materials and rebaking some normal map issues. Spent some time playing around with masks to separate materials in the shader so I can make changes to the materials quickly. I have been dissecting the new SciFi Hallway scene on the Unreal Marketplace. Lots of cool materials and techniques.
Most the materials are just flat base colors and parameter values for roughness and metallic. Trying to get the feel for the Physically based material workflow. Some of the elements in the scene are really bright from this angle. I might have to play with the Fresnel on some of the materials.
All feedback and comments are welcome!
I am still getting a few lighting seams seams when I build my lights. Most notably on the floor panels near the stairs on the left. Any Suggestions would be great.
Any feedback is appreciated. Don't hold back.
Feedback would be awesome, PLEASE DON'T HOLD BACK!!!
I'd say you're off to a good start. Here's some crit:
I have no idea where I'm supposed to look. There is no focal point. My eye goes straight to the brightest point, which is the door with the strong blue emissive. If you want that as your focal point, you'd need to shift your camera so that it's in one of the hotspots of your composition, and emphasise that area with all of your artistic tools at your disposal (lighting, contrast, contrast of hue, shape etc).
My second piece of advice is that some of your hard surface doesn't indicate function. The walls for example: it just looks like a "it's a cool shape, let me model that" instead, I'd think about why that shape is there and what function does it serve? Is there a small vent underneath? Does it also double up and store weapons? And the room as a whole? I don't really know what it's function is either. Hallway with some kind of control area? If you have lights on the sides of your walk area, i'd imagine that their function would be to light up your path, so perhaps you could use that to guide the viewer's eye to that door at the end and have that be your focal point?
Also, I'd strongly consider, once you get more into your scene, is to add a bit of visual story telling element into it. What happened in the scene? Who does this place belong to?
On a more technical point: Maybe you haven't gotten there but I don't believe a lot of your materials. I'd work on your material detention. White plastic? Painted metal?
Your lighting is also flattening out the scene. Leave room for darker areas and save your brightest areas for your focal point or to lead the eye.
Hope that helps!
edit and note: This is completely disregarding that you are following a concept piece. Personally? I'd throw your own artistic brush stroke to it.
I am definitely struggling with the material definition, this my first attempt at using PBR. I think I am going to try my hand at making some different materials like plastic, rubber and painted metal. So I can get the hang of the workflow. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated.
-Lucas
First up is the Master Roughness Blend material. At the moment I use this on most of the assets in the scene. It's full of static switch parameters to add flexibility. The fun thing about this material is it overlays a noise/grunge texture in the material channel with its own scale controls.
Next is the master masked material. Nothing to crazy on this one, Just some parameters and uv scaling and rotation controls.
Last up is the master plastic material. I recently made this material and it has not made its way into the scene. I am going for more of a rough plastic In the roughness I blending between a min and max value using a noise mask. Lerping between values with a mask offers more control and fine tuning in the material instance.
If you have any question's let me know, or if you have any advice or critique its more then welcome.