[UE4] [Finished] Ancient Ruins
polycounter lvl 6
Hey Polycount community 
I decided to share my progress here and hoping to get some comments and critiques for my environment.
When I started the main goal was to make a modular pack of ruins to sell it in the marketplace. After creating some pieces I changed my mind and started to make the full game environment in UE4. But that doesn't mean that I won't sell it anymore.
One week of hard working I have modular ruins with 30-40 pieces. (Maybe I will add more pieces later)
Here are some screenshots from the current period.
And all of these made by using these little pieces below.
I used 3Ds Max for base meshes and Zbrush for sculpting.
I'm planning to make some foliage and tiled materials I will post them later.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks for attention!
I decided to share my progress here and hoping to get some comments and critiques for my environment.
When I started the main goal was to make a modular pack of ruins to sell it in the marketplace. After creating some pieces I changed my mind and started to make the full game environment in UE4. But that doesn't mean that I won't sell it anymore.
One week of hard working I have modular ruins with 30-40 pieces. (Maybe I will add more pieces later)
Here are some screenshots from the current period.
And all of these made by using these little pieces below.
I used 3Ds Max for base meshes and Zbrush for sculpting.
I'm planning to make some foliage and tiled materials I will post them later.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks for attention!
Replies
I think more variation wiht your materials could go a long way. Gray rocks gets a bit boring to look at. Check out images of famous ruins all over the world to get a sense of the different colors you might play with. Pompeii, Machu Picchu, Sukhothai..... all different types of stones with different types of stuff growing on them.
Before creating the moss I tested with basic green color. I think it should look better with the final texture.
Let me know if you know another option.
Thanks.
Try one of those in tandem with your AO mask as well as lerping in some kind of grunge to break up the soft generated feel of the precomputed Ao
After a long period of time, I finally found enough time to make ivy leaves.
I made 11 types of ivy to add variation in the scene. For the Ivys I used amazing Guruware Ivy generator plugin in 3ds max to simulate the branches and scatter my custom created leaves. To reduce polygon count I baked the opacity map from high poly branches on simple low poly planes. Now I have 11 mesh of ivy with 2 materials, one for all branches and one for leaves.
So I placed them in my environment very fast. Right now the lighting is very simple and it's looking weird I know
And yeah I also added some new thick wall elements.
For the next update maybe I will try to make the lighting better.
Thanks for watching!
Figured out a little bit of lighting and added custom field grass.
I want to share with you my workflow that how I made the grass.
First of all, I made a simple 4 planes which I imported into Zbrush and used Fibers to generate grass meshes. Then I exported them to 3ds max. When I was happy with the mesh I created this grass textures in photoshop
So when I had the grass meshes with a nice texture I made 4 planes again but this time for baking purposes.
For Baking I used Substance Designer baker.
I baked there Opacity and color maps.
Now I have I grass to use in the engine.
I hope this tip helps someone too!
Thank you again and let me know if you have questions!
I made custom clouds light material function. It's making the environment more liveable and believable. I think these small touches are making the work more realistic.
It's done simply. I generated one tileable noise texture in substance designer and then using two different panner nodes in unreal it makes movable. And of course, there are some scalar parameters to control them in real time.
Here is the graph:
Let me know if you are finding something useful or if you have questions.
Thank you.
Thanks for the grass tutorial!
I will try to share some more stuff and tips later!
Yesterday I saw this image and noticed some smooth wet smooth transition between moss and the rock.
And of course, decided to challenge me and try to achieve it completely in unreal material editor
And I have this now.
It's very simple but it gives the scene a little more natural look.
This can be achieved by using Precomputed AO. Simply I'm adding 0.6 to the main mask power.
Also I made 2 trees and one bush using speedtree
To be honest, I didn't like old Ivys
Thanks for comments and attention.
Some tasks remaining until rebuilding the level with finished kits. As I said this map is for testing a kit I will make the final map with good design and composition at the end.
Stay tuned! Ending soon
Are you planning to do any variation for the ivy or just do one for every column?
How does it work with speedtree? do you import the mesh?
Sorry for this noob question
Finally found free time to continue my environment ( freelance jobs disturbing
I started to make the final level as I said in my last post. There is some tweaking left to change. I recorded a little gameplay test to demonstrate how it looks like while gaming.
I want to finish this week. So stay tuned and thanks to everyone for feedbacks!
I'm glad to show final screenshots of my ruins project. I uploaded a new gameplay test too.
Before uploading this in my portfolio I will make some breakdowns. Also, I have the opportunity to share my environment on 80 level. I will show some tips and tricks about how I did my environment. Once it's done I will share it here again.
And here is the gameplay test
Thanks everyone!
I want to share a short showcase video of my environment.
Soon It will available on UE4 marketplace.
Here is the 80 level article check it out! https://80.lv/articles/001agt-002mrs-crafting-modular-ancient-ruins-in-ue4/
Thank you!
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/slug/ancient-ruins-pack