[UE4]Soviet Flats Environment
polycounter lvl 11
[LAST WIP]
[/LAST WIP]
I'm working on a new environment inspired by the typical architecture of romanian buildings.
It's still early wip, i am planning on adding some vegetation, more props like trash cans, light posts and garbage on the ground, maybe some bigger puddles and more decals like graffitis and more grime.
Feedback is appreciated!
Thanks!
[/LAST WIP]
I'm working on a new environment inspired by the typical architecture of romanian buildings.
It's still early wip, i am planning on adding some vegetation, more props like trash cans, light posts and garbage on the ground, maybe some bigger puddles and more decals like graffitis and more grime.
Feedback is appreciated!
Thanks!
Replies
Feels really dead. Whether or not that is your intention, seeing a tree or two and some birds could really help this out a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_criticism
http://vimeo.com/112681885
Anyway it seems your off to a good start !
hahahaha
ervin - wow, i still havent added the props which should create a story around the environment (and potentially make people feel sad xD) but i'm glad the environment is already giving that vibe
stirls - thanks man! i'm not russian though, i'm romanian
PyroGXPilot, jeremiah_bigley: haha thanks! i'll tone down a bit CA, i might have gotten a little bit overexcited with it.
Sebvhe - awesome, thanks for the video!
1)Lighting is off. If you look online for references you see such palette a lot but it's doctored to look beatiful and not ugly. It looks too tasty, you never see such palette here. First, bluesh tint you have there is way overdone. It should be either more yellow-orange or white, or green if you want to capture some light from neon and streetlights near apartment buildings.
See this for reference -
2)Also you have too much blue in your shadows, it should be more greyish. EVERYTHING should be more gray because it's the color which prevails over everything here.
As for buildings apart from lack of air conditioners:
I snapped some photos for you on my way home, you can use it if you want - http://imgur.com/a/VjdnT
And too much chromatic abberration.
But I like where you're going, would be happy to see it finished.
Try and modulate more pieces. You can see that there is a huge variety of small details, like the different paint colors around the windows, "personalized" balconies, clothes hanging, broken windows and other damage, etc. Khrushchovka type buildings are generally pretty boring and bland, but these details would really give your piece some soul to it.
You will also want to inject some color variety into the different buildings, even if it's something simple like different shades of brown and grey. You can see in Dzibarik's photos how sometimes the balconies are white whilst the walls are brown for example.
I also don't really notice that black, seeping goo under the windows, or at least not that prominently. You will probably want to dial those back a bit if you are going for more realism.
I saw this photo and thought that something is off, it couldn't be Russia/Ukraine/Belorussia and yes, it's Hungary. It's sort of East Bloc but not quite "stalkerish" if Riot is going for this. But judging from these refs buildings were modelled from them.
I'm just going to assume you are trying to be funny, saying that Bucharest is in Hungary
Lol, no! I've just asked a colleague instead of Google. My apologies.
dzibarik - thank you man for all the references and the paintover, they're awesome! you're right, lighting is not too realistic - i'm trying to go for a more cinematic, atmospheric look with strong colors. windows and improvised balconies are inspired from this reference, which is a building from ferentari, bucharest's gypsy ghetto. i agree about the ledge size and lines between the slabs, gonna fix that soon. good suggestion about the pavement around buildings. air conditioners i something i still haven't created, but i will as soon as i finish what i'm working on now and the foliage.
bedrock - thank you for the reference, they're great, just what i was looking for. you're right, those photos are definitely romanian, those cars are made in romania and were really common a few years ago. i will add more props like clothes hanging, more damage and maybe more improvised balconies later, but first i'll create more general assets before going into details. i like your suggestion about color variation, gonna consider that.
swarm22 - its pretty straightforward, nothing too fancy. I generated a heightmap with bitmap2material from a garbage pile photo from cgtextures, imported it to zbrush, applied it to a plane and sculpted it a bit to give it some more form. Added some garbage bags i already had aswell, to give more variation. Exported the sculpted heightmap afterwards, created a opacity mask for the garbage pile in photoshop, and imported it to ue4, where i applied it to a simple plane, created a material that used tesselation and the opacity mask, and then placed the plane around the level. the texture itself looks like this
sammy101 - sure, for now i have these tiles, but i'm planning on adding more modular pieces to them. they're all put in a blueprint, which is placed all arund the level, so if i add new pieces its really easy and almost automatic to propagate the changes around the level. they're all using the same concrete texture for now.
Thanks Riot.
i feel youre missing out on some climatic boxes or how they are called. Usually they hang like bugs everywhere on such flats, and also would make the facades more messy, which is likely what you want . Also some bad graffity maybe, but nothing with too much visual impact
i'll give some love to the ground next, some more assets and variation and probably create a few window variations
Also, you might want to try placing point lights near hard edged shadows (if there is something that light can bounce off)
this will help to soften the shadows a little, hope you get the idea.
I love how it's developing, keep it up!
Have to agree with others about the lights being a bit too strong near the windows. But its getting along very nicely!
Oh totally. I agree with that. I just feel this environment to be stylised so some artistic freedom is alright in regards to place/time and general atmosphere.
Sorry for going offtopic though.
the reason for this is that the artist referenced romanian buildings and slums and they are very distinct from Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belorussia and Russia. I've noticed this too.
try making the text not readable, and it all a lot more worn off so it is barely visible
the graffity fonts and the painted guy have way too much character for this dull atmosphere you want
also noteworthy that text is about 3x stronger than any other visual element, as the brain is trained recognizing it every day.
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-asbFRds8M[/ame]
haven't changed really much, just added a few props and made this video.
i'm wrapping this one up, going to start my first job on the industry very soon and i don't think i'll have enough time to keep working on this.
thanks for all the feedback, its been really helpful!