Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

Library Room Environment Critique

polycounter lvl 2
Offline / Send Message
b_beauchamp polycounter lvl 2
Hi everyone, I recently finished this environment and I'm hoping to add it to my portfolio. The scene is rendered in UE4. I created it to reuse a lot of old assets (including the lamps, chair, and table) from an earlier failed project. I also reused a trim sculpt from a different previous project to save some time. Currently I'm really unsure about how to optimize meshes for game environments. The older assets I made have problems because I modeled them all as one cohesive mesh, but I am uncertain if there are other things I need to keep in mind while optimizing. It is difficult to find information about the current industry standards for this. I'd appreciate any feedback or portfolio presentation tips you may have. Thank you!




Replies

  • Ashervisalis
    Offline / Send Message
    Ashervisalis grand marshal polycounter
    This looks solid! I think your use of your old props into this environment was a total upgrade. On recommendation I would have is to drop the opacity on your artstation signature so it fits in the image a bit nicer. In this image, you could give the text a gold tint and the signature would fit with the image colours a bit more. I also believe the opacity of the moonrays could be drastically dropped, as it is brighter inside the room than it is outside.

    Good job!!
  • b_beauchamp
    Offline / Send Message
    b_beauchamp polycounter lvl 2
    @Ashervisalis Thank you for the compliments! I'll be fixing the signature and moonrays in my next update.
  • Ashervisalis
    Offline / Send Message
    Ashervisalis grand marshal polycounter
    Cool! Maybe also push the signature url tighter into the corner, and keep it in same corner for each image.
  • Brickshift
    Offline / Send Message
    Brickshift polycounter lvl 2
    Really nice! I love the overall layout of the scene and all the details you added in for each of the props. Personally, one thing that I would change along with the moon rays suggestion is darkening the sky color outside to a more deeper blue for a bit extra contrast from the windows. 

    Great work overall though!
  • teodar23
    Offline / Send Message
    teodar23 sublime tool
    Looks good.
    One thing that bugs me is the high contrast in the lighting - i would suggest using an ambient cubemap to raise the dark spots and make the lighting more natural.
    Also, those desk lamps should have the corresponding lights slightly tinted towards green and the ceiling ones tinted orange. Its not accurate but its what you would expect the overall outcome to be.
  • JosephIV
    Offline / Send Message
    JosephIV polycounter lvl 4
    Look good but I think that the top is too illuminated, more than the floor; and the table height is too short for the chairs or inverse. The glossiness of the wall/columns and top could be more subtle?

  • b_beauchamp
    Offline / Send Message
    b_beauchamp polycounter lvl 2
    Hi everyone, I went through and made the updates you all suggested. I will be posting the scene on my portfolio shortly. Thank you for all the help! If there are any additional issues with the environment just let me know.  =)

  • Ashervisalis
    Offline / Send Message
    Ashervisalis grand marshal polycounter
  • sympatik
    Offline / Send Message
    sympatik polycounter lvl 10
    Brava. Look anyway that the books on the shelves are visibily repeating, from shelf to shelf.
  • Aionard
    Offline / Send Message
    Aionard polycounter lvl 2
    Can't really comment on colour light and composition, that's far beyond what I can produce and, quite frankly beautiful, I can almost hear the wind outside and smell the books, well done.

    The models however, are very heavy in my personal opinion (I'm a fan of limited geo). Some places you'd of course need supporting loops and insets to make sure your bakes are not skewed, but you can delete those once you're done baking (planar ones at least). Otherwise a good rule of thumb is that if it doesn't support the silhouette, it might not need to be there. Also consider how close you'd get to the object, as subtle curvatures may be lost completely at a distance of 1m away. Exceptions of course apply to trim sheets or if you intend to use vertex paint extensively, but seems you've got that bit down ;) 

    As for separate pieces VS continuous mesh, there is a thread in one of the technical forums saying that continuous mesh may be better for optimisation (something to do with tri overdraw)at the cost of larger tris count (which is less of an issue on current hardware) but it seemed an inconclusive conversation and "it depends".
  • b_beauchamp
    Offline / Send Message
    b_beauchamp polycounter lvl 2
    @sympatik @Aionard Thank you for the feedback. I can't believe I didn't see the obvious repetition in the library shelves before. As for the geometry, the wireframes I showed off are older models that I made some time ago for a failed project, so they have quite a few issues. I thought they looked good enough to be reused, so I made this scene for them. Thank you for the modeling advice. I'll be keeping it in mind for my current project!

  • Aionard
    Offline / Send Message
    Aionard polycounter lvl 2
    I was just looking at the shelves and noticed the repetition, but I thought the opposite (since I always try too hard  to break it), there is so much "noise" in the amount of books, that the repetition gets lost to my eye, it's only that slanted white book that clearly stands out due to brightness (to me). As for model re-use, man do I feel you, I opened an older scene the other day and laughed at my own modelling from a few months back^^
  • pixelpatron
    Offline / Send Message
    pixelpatron polycounter
    Love the scene, lighting seems a bit flat. Almost blown out. I'd re-set and approach the lighting with allowing more dark spots - meaning not everything in the scene is fully illuminated. Something more like this....

    There is a lot more contrast happening here, and it's a lot more interesting to look at, there are different elements, and shapes. The lighting is a little less uniform. (note the bulb on the back wall second level...one is more yellow than the other almost indicating one bulb is newer than the other).

    Your green dome lights (while very cool looking) are very overpowering visually, as they are really the only pop of color in the scene. I'd reserve those for the main table, and use something more subtle for the others; also an opportunity to introduce a different material/color/light-source. I'm also not picking up on any bounce light from the green dome lights. It needs more work to be convincing.

    The lamps you're attempting to convey would show a stronger light source coming from the center, and becoming more subdued as it reaches the edges (left lamp in image), also note the influence of the shade itself, they subtle yellowing of the hue bouncing off the table (global illumination). I'd introduce a little green to these (point lights?) sources in your scene to emulate that. 

    You have a lot of repeating shapes/features/lights giving the overall scene a more sterile atmosphere. 

    Good luck.
  • sympatik
    Offline / Send Message
    sympatik polycounter lvl 10
    Love the scene, lighting seems a bit flat.

    Agree. As for in the real-life photo, that realistic look may be achieved placing some tenuous (area or point) lights with cold colors (better if a gradient of green for the outside and blue for the inside) imbetween the shelves. Currently there is the usual tonalism of synth lights.
  • b_beauchamp
    Offline / Send Message
    b_beauchamp polycounter lvl 2
    @pixelpatron @sympatik Thank you for the feedback! I'm currently working on another project, but when it's finished I will start fixing my library room environment. 
  • sympatik
    Offline / Send Message
    sympatik polycounter lvl 10
    Keep the good work.
Sign In or Register to comment.