Abandoned room Unreal 4
Hey, this is my first time posting on Polycount so forgive me for being a total noob.
I've just gotten Unreal 4 and wanted to try a small simple scene to get to grips with the advances and changes so I'm making a little room based from a photo from Artofurbex.smugmug.com some people are probably familiar with this stuff.
I'm not too fussed about getting it exactly like the photo but just using it as a base to have some fun and hopefully create a nice scene.
Is what I've done so far, just getting the 4 walls in and looking ok so I can focus on the assets and then I can go back over it if something stands out. I'm fairly happy with how its coming along but something doesn't quite feel right. Happy to accept feedback and constructive criticism.
A lot of people I know come here often and get good results from the help so hopefully I can use this too and get my portfolio good enough for employment!
I've just gotten Unreal 4 and wanted to try a small simple scene to get to grips with the advances and changes so I'm making a little room based from a photo from Artofurbex.smugmug.com some people are probably familiar with this stuff.
I'm not too fussed about getting it exactly like the photo but just using it as a base to have some fun and hopefully create a nice scene.
Is what I've done so far, just getting the 4 walls in and looking ok so I can focus on the assets and then I can go back over it if something stands out. I'm fairly happy with how its coming along but something doesn't quite feel right. Happy to accept feedback and constructive criticism.
A lot of people I know come here often and get good results from the help so hopefully I can use this too and get my portfolio good enough for employment!
Replies
DavidJones3D.Weebly.com
Also I would add some damaged/missing tiles on the bottom section of the walls.
Also am going to work on the ceiling a bit more, the cracks and detail so far are decals but are looking a little flat so I want to get the cracked paint from water damage above the door to look more 3D.
Again thanks for the feedback!
Small update just on tweaks and blockout furniture. Still planning out certain things.
I agree with the tiling, but lets see what happens when you add in the plots/details.
It seems that in the right corner, the wallpaper & tiels are really out of alignment. There'e something weight going on with the light coming in through the window on the right, where half of the window's light is blocked off?
For the grunge on the wallpaper, what you could do is to remove it from the texture and apply it as decals instead? That might also address the tiling issues. The tiles don't have any normal map applied by the looks of things, which makes them look very flat.
Keep at it and welcome to Polycount!
Doing the damage on the wallpaper as a decal might be a good idea and less costly than creating a vertex paint shader so I may try that, thank you.
About the lighting/misalignment on the right side I'm not sure I follow what you mean, can you point out what you mean?
As for the tiles they do have a normal map but its pretty subtle. Following my reference they are pretty flat tiles and don't have a lot of depth to them or light reflecting off them to show their shape but I will try to rework this to get a better material definition on them.
Where ever you put damage there probably needs to be a lot of crap on the floor. When you get to that point you really have to think through the decaying process and how different substances and materials react.
Spectacular and shine often are the first casualties to go thanks to dust/debris/mold/fungus and water damage it can be good to designate some areas that survive and show someone did care for the place once and those areas that aren't touched make the areas that are, look even worse. There is a real danger to environment art to treat all surfaces the same and put the same level of noise and crap all over everything but it starts to erode away at the story of the scene so use those things to your advantage.
Looking great, keep up the good work!
Base mesh;
Basic high poly;
First pass at Zbrush (Not satisfied with this first attempt)
The seat pillow seems to be sticking out too much. Where the back pillow meets the seat pillow, there's two narrow half circles? I'm not quite sure what's going on there but it might be that the mesh is breaking there? Or are those going to be tears in the fabric?
The back pillow appears to be intersecting with the arm rest.
Keep at it!
Took another crack at this and took it through to a first pass texture but I think I'm gona add some cracked leather and give it a bit more character before it goes into the scene.
Haha yea, about that post.. I kind of started to doubt myself after I posted it and edited my comment. Sorry for that!
Best of luck!
Good start though, I'll be keeping an eye on this
Update on the chair, think I'm fairly happy with it at this point. Don't want to spend forever remodelling the chair so if need be I can come back to it so I can move on.
Also you might want to link to the reference image instead of embed the image, it seems to be confusing people?
Just saw that, oops...
I wish I was that good...? Hah
First pass of the stove/log burner/thing for my scene, not happy with it so far.
Unsure if I should go further away from the original photo to make a more impressive stove but either way I'll experiment to get this looking better.
Update of stuff in Unreal 4 looking terrible due to the lighting.
Not much of an update, will do more props soon.
I'd have to agree, the scale seems off, and it really does seem to be because of the couch. the couch is at the same level as a standard chair, and it really shouldn't be. i don't know about the actual sizing but, the back of the couch should be higher, the arms should come up more. the size from the coushin down is fine though.
Edit: actually, the coushins could be a bit shorter. right now they are pretty tall, i think if you just fix that, then the rest of the couch would make more sense.
I think this has some potential to turn into something pretty creepy.
Your color choice is nice, pretty unsettling. That pale green wallpaper is gross.
I'd start to really think about your lighting here. You admitted earlier that you weren't fond of it. However, it doesn't have to be an afterthought, you can start giving it a solid pass now
The big thing for me is that there appears to be two directions of lighting - one obviously coming from the back windows but also a phantom light that's coming from the foreground. This foreground light is especially strong as it's casting shadows of the chair back into the room.
Kill that phantom light, or at least give it reason to exist. Either way, the mixed directionality is hurting this piece.
I think you should try to achieve a certain mood. Being abandoned doesn't make it feel especially cozy, so you should look for ways to compliment this.
I think you can get by with directional lighting coming in from the back window but you'll need to balance the angle and the indirect lighting. It almost looks like you have a spot light shining in, especially in the old image where the shadow is fanning out. A directional light will give you a more orthographic look to the shadow.
Might be cool to try a sunset look. Something golden/orange that sifts into your space with more intensity at impact and just enough bounce strength to illuminate the space without overdoing it. Think 'Last of Us' here, directional only with lots of great bounced light. You could try and get some volumetric fog and atmosphere toward the windows to give the impression of a dusty interior.
You might need to supplement a spot light at the impact point of the directional light so that you get a tiny bit more throw if the directional isn't cutting it by itself. However, really try to push your directional light as far as you possibly can before moving on to accenting.
Holler if you have any questions. Keep at it!
Love,
-Jon
I'm having some trouble getting to grips with Unreal 4s lighting, you were right there was a backlight in the scene mainly so I could see while the scene is WIP as with just the directional light if you move anywhere in the scene that isn't looking directly at the window the autobloom thing causes the entire scene to go almost black even with a sky light?
Here's a quick update on the lighting, now removed the backlight so there's just a skylight and a directional light set to a kind of sunset/rise time of day.
My main problem with the lighting like this is to get the lighting at a decent brightness the shine on the floor and shadows become so harsh and it doesn't look good. I want the lighting to be more subtle but have no idea how to achieve this with a directional light in Unreal 4 other than perhaps reducing the light map resolution on the floor...? :S Which isn't really what I want to do.
Looking back at the original photo I'm working from;
I want the lighting to be subtle and feint on the floor but the scene is still totally lit by the window (and probably the photographer judging by the chairs spec)
if anyone can give me some pointers on how to possibly achieve this in Unreal 4 I'd appreciate it as I'm still learning how to best get lights to work how you want.
Also I attempted to address the size concerns on the chair so if anyone wants to give further comment on that then feel free.
On top of this, this is probably an HDR photo, IE a fake photo. Using multiple exposures to create a composite image that creates fake looking lighting. So matching the lighting of this ref will require a similar workflow of lots of post processing, or just the realization that this is fake lighting and you will have to add some low powered fill lights around your scene to get the similar values.
Your reference is the recipient of a lot of diffused lighting. Lots of indirect/bounce splashing about. It looks like there might be a window in the foreground, you'd have to guess there. The chair is receiving light from the camera side and the jacket hanging from the chair has a response as well as the wall above it.
There's no real solution to lighting. It's a slow and patient and methodical art. If you want to have the same feel as what you see in the reference, you'll need to take a different approach.
Less direct light, and more soft fill and bounce. I haven't played a lot with UE4 just yet, but let your skylight inject a bit more into the scene, let your directional be of softer intensity but of significantly higher bounce strength - add a few more bounces if need be (in the world properties). Try to boost the strength of the environment color so that the shadows aren't as harsh. Not sure if the directional light has a bounce strength control, but in UE3 it would have been called Indirect Lighting Scale. This control would allow the bounce to have more impact on the scene. Not sure if it exists in UE4? However, I'm pretty sure you can turn off that auto-exposure adjustment in a post process drop down.
Might have to get creative with some well placed fill lights. Make sure that they don't feel like floating lights in the scene without a motivated source, make them feel as if they're sifting in from the window giving that softened look. Some super soft spots might net you this look.
-Jon
Some useful information about lighting that I'll try to implement, I understand that I might not be able to get the lighting the same as the picture but I'd like to fix the harsh lighting so I'll see what I can do.
Also there is a back door to the scene but not a lot of light is coming through it from the sky dome so I'll use that eventually too.
The new version looks so much better! Really like it.
How big are your maps at the moment?
Also thanks guys.
Currently everything is about 2048, I can scale stuff down later if need be
unless you mean lightmaps which vary from 64-256 but again I can increase that later as its coming closer to being finished.
Don't forget about the foreground light source that is behind and to the left of the camera. What you had before was way too much and it was flooding the scene, but don't neglect it entirely. In general try to keep lights away from being directly behind the camera, unless you're going for the flashlight look. With it directly behind the camera shadows are directly behind the objects, in areas you can't see and they lose a lot of their dynamic punch.
But with it off to the side it's lighting up that chair, helping to make a focal point and some interesting lighting with it's opposing direction to the main light coming in from the window.
Also yeah the shot is a little far back but its not a final beauty shot so
I do intend to try and create a better lighting environment because the light on the chair in the original shot is a good focal point and the chair is a nice asset
Will hopefully be able to post another update today.
There are some lightmass seams and light leaking through the walls at the back near the door as well as other problems I need to fix.
Lighting, why you no do what I want?! Hah
Made the room a little thinner, it could probably be made more narrow (perhaps taller?) but what do people think?
I like where this is heading, keep it up
I think the way I'm going to approach it is I'm going to get everything in to a sort of regular weathered look and then decide how much additional degradation I want to add it.
While its probably not as ambition or as exciting as something that's been open to the elements for years I still want it to feel like this was where someone lived not to long ago. That said I will think about ways to portray more of that in the environment as I go along. X)
I'm also open to suggestions for environmental storytelling or things to give the scene more interest
In my opinion the Chair with the more "red" color looks nicer then the brownish one!
But anyway: Nice job!