Bioshock and Prey inspired Sci-fi Lab

Kainkun · May 2019

This is a Sci-fi lab game environment made in Unreal 4.
It was Inspired by Bioshock and Prey.
The server design is based on Coleman Mayhall's work but I still made it myself
I'd love some critique on how I can get to the level of landing job or internship.

Heres a video of a cutscene and a walkthrough of the scene
https://youtu.be/omcX_SL6FyA

TheGabmeister · May 2019

Hmmm...... There's some room for improvement on the lighting. Are you using only Dynamic Lights? There seems to be an absence of bounced lighting and occlusion in some sections. Also, the part below has some sort of invisible light source. You might want to add an emissive light bulb over there to make it more believable.

Kainkun · May 2019

@TheGabmeister
Thanks, that light is static so I'm not sure what's going on. Any idea what else can be wrong? Some of the lights are dynamic because the shadows look better for dynamic lights. Like the one on the floor pointing at the fence. Yeah I could use some light models, I overlooked that

TheGabmeister · May 2019

Try playing around with Stationary Lights as well. They give nice shadows while still having baked indirect lighting.

In your scene below for example, there's a sharp contrast between the floor and the wall, which I believe is caused by a lack of bounced lighting.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/7m/ajfdc9g3e49d.png

Aside from the one I pointed out earlier, how many static and stationary lights do you have in your scene?

fullpinkdog · May 2019

I might be wrong, but seems likely that you did not uncheck sRGB in _OcclusionRoughnessMetallic map(or what maps did you use?), it may be the couse of problem that your materials looks a bit too shiny and a bit "wet"

Kainkun · May 2019

@TheGabmeister
Thanks, hows this? I think that helped brighten up the scene but now there's a seam in the ceiling do you know what's up with that? It is a seamless texture.
oh and there was 3 stationary lights, 5 moving lights and 3 static lights

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ge/dj30y0b4pdf4.png

Kainkun · May 2019

@fullpinkdog
I'm pretty sure I've unchecked sRGB for all of the OcclusionRoughnessMetallic maps. What made you ask that? Is there a specific model that looks wrong?
here's one of my OcclusionRoughnessMetallic maps (The server)

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/03/z40axvzxp9w6.png

TheGabmeister · May 2019

Kainkun said:

@TheGabmeister
Thanks, hows this? I think that helped brighten up the scene but now there's a seam in the ceiling do you know what's up with that? It is a seamless texture.
oh and there was 3 stationary lights, 5 moving lights and 3 static lights

Ok, thanks for the information. For the seam, that's probably caused by having two flat meshes side-by-side. That's a very common issue especially in interior scenes when you bake lights. You can try the following:

1. Increase lightmap resolution

2. Adjust Lightmass settings. I forgot which parameter you should change to mitigate this issue.
3. Replace the ceiling with a single mesh with 2 UV sets: 1 for the texture, and 1 for the lightmap.

Also, you might want to add a baseboard covering the lowest part of the wall.

fullpinkdog · May 2019

@Kainkun
yeah, this spots looks a bit wierd to me. But again, i might be wrong

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/9o/v107gdzdbcqq.png

Also, you can fix the seams between modular pieces by enter this values in the world settings:

if it doesn't work for you - try to make lightmaps by yourself with good amont pixels between uv pieces, also between uv pieces and board of uv space. Also you can set static lighting level scale to ~0.2-0.4, but this greatly increase bake time and usually it's enough to set up your values like on the screenshot

and yeah, increase lightmap resolution if it all does not work

Kainkun · May 2019

@TheGabmeister Thanks, I don't know much about lightmass so ill look into that

Kainkun · May 2019

@fullpinkdog Yeah that concrete texture used to be correct but I've been messing with substance and I messed it up without realizing.
I tried those settings but I dont notice any change, the seams are definitely still there. I assume the commas are the same as periods? 1.0 4.0 0.75

fullpinkdog · May 2019

@Kainkun after changing those values, you need to rebake lightmaps and make sure you bake in production quality

TheGabmeister · May 2019

Kainkun said:

Anyway, just wanted to add this comment. I think you can improve the floor material by blending it with some grunges and adding more decals. This can produce a more cohesive scene since most of the objects you created are pretty grungy,

Kainkun · May 2019

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help

jStins · May 2019

The scale of the wear, damage and dirt texture is too large across many of your props, which hurts the overall sense of scale for the space. Damage, dirt and wear and tear have a scale hierarchy of large, medium and small shapes similarly to how there is a hierarchy of large, medium and small forms in an environment. Try to avoid the temptation to overdo these details in an attempt to make the environment feel detailed. Another consideration is the overall visual impact of any wear or damages detail. There are instances where subtly applying these details in the roughness map may be more effective than applying the detail uniformly across all your texture maps.

Kainkun · May 2019

@jStins Thanks

Yeah I need to learn more about weathering. I appreciate the feedback

Bioshock and Prey inspired Sci-fi Lab

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