I'm guessing you may have already decided on this, but I really liked the red or orange carpets in your concepts rather than the blue. I think I like when you have the upper elements in orange or reddish and mirror that with the carpet below.
Hey thanks for the feedback To be honest I'm still a little undecided myself... Since it'll be a while before I get to making my carpet anyway (perhaps after the walls, perhaps before) I'm still open to changing the colour again.
Dang! I know piece you're using for reference! It's by a Naughty Dog Artist. You should also check out Scott Homer's portfolio he also jas a similar scene. As for yours it's still early in the process but everything is definitely going the right direction. Try to come up with a back story for scene it will really help e.g. Maybe this is a middle eastern bazaar where residents were forced to evacuate because of military soldiers are about to come through, or maybe this is a Spanish cooridor post running of the bulls and the bulls are gone and the celebration recently ended. Just some ideas can't wait for the hardcore modeling and texturing phase.
@reckzilla yeah I know Scott Homer's work, so cool. Thanks for your advice.
Update on the baking and stuff. Thought I'd do a test run, baking in 3dsMax. So here is my baked lowpoly in UE4, though it doesn't have the falling/broken tiles because I'm making their lowpoly for baking at the moment.
The unbroken floor tiles I'm thinking of just keeping as a normal map, rather than modelling them in.
Also got a slight issue;
This pixelation is occurring, despite the texture being 4096x2048? If anyone could tell me why that would be much appreciated!
Properly baked my normal/AO maps in Topogun and fixed all the little things. Also sorted the pixelation-it was because I was basically stretching a 1024 map to a 2048 map one way, hence the stripeyness. It's now two separate textures.
A more interesting update for anyone following my project- I've done some texturing! Finally! I've been learning Substance Painter, and this is what I have so far. I've only been working on the tiles, so now I have to do all the stone/dirt.
Started modelling the buildings for sculpting. Going to come back to texturing the base when I've sculpted the buildings in Zbrush, so then I'll have more consistent colours etc.
Been a little while since I updated. Figured my updates were all a bit small and pointless, so here is the culmination of all that small pointlessness so far!
Still very much a WIP, but I'm feeling like there is an end -sort of- in sight. All the big big stuff will be done when the buildings are sculpted and textured, so assuming that all goes well I could be doing all the asset population stuff soonish (yeah right). I'm really taking my time with this though- I don't want it to become too much of a burden.
Got past a big 'I hate this project' phase when I finished texturing the base today. I've been avoiding it for ages because there were a lot of seams to patch up and such. It's not perfect, but I'm just glad it's done and I can do the next bits.
I'm not sure how I feel about the tent/parasol/whatever in the corner yet. Thinking I should maybe make the fabric pattern less crazy and also tone down the rips and stuff. I've found I get the look I want from all the rugs and stuff by actually making them a metal rather than non-metal in UE4. It makes all the highlights the same colour of the fabric, rather than white and plasticy. The yellow rug is currently just a mid roughness yellow metallic material, so ignore that for now. I like where it's going though!
Wow, this is looking great! I love the mood, and I especially like how the little circular tiled area turned out on the second floor. I see what you mean about the parasol/tent bit in the corner--I kind of liked it more simple with the stairs in the previous post.
very solid progress Ayna, I think you have a strong composition in your overall scene. Im curious how you textured (or sculpted) the vases. Keep it up !
Thanks everyone, your support pushes me to keep it up!
@Carabiner, I tested a plain material on it the other day and preferred that, so I think I'll definitely be re-doing that bit.
@MisterSande, thankyou! The vases were textured exclusively in Photoshop, as was the tiled circle area on the balcony. I used various grunge textures, masks, and filters to grunge up a flat colour hand painted texture. I was going to sculpt it, but I think I'll be getting enough Zbrush with the buildings!
There's my hand painted base, some grunge over the top, making it into a height map and then into a roughness by changing the lightness of various layers.
Another update. I've made a start on the walls Before I continue making the other two wall meshes that need sculpting, I'm going to texture those cushions properly and maybe make some foliage to climb the cracked walls. Some pipes in the base might be good around now too.
...ignore the floating straw I just noticed in the last image haa!
What I like about your original concept is the very defined colors and contrast. In your 3D, it seems you've lost the vibrancy of those blocks of colors. I'm not sure if it's lighting or just the lack of saturation in your textures. The shadows in your render are harsher than your concept. Try to achieve that pastel look through your lighting. Right now your ambient color looks like it's black or something close to it.
You should unbiasedly overlay your render with your final concept and try to color correct until it matches up. Then, use those colors to plug back into your textures and lighting.
Other than that, I think it's looking pretty great. Keep it up!
Helloooo everyone and thankyou for all your wonderful advice, particularly @jhoythottle. Sorry I didn't reply, but I did take your suggestion on board! I tried reducing the saturation of certain textures and increasing others, fiddled with the lighting, fog, post processing, all sorts... to no avail. I just couldn't achieve the effect I have in my concept with my limited UE4 knowledge So I gave up, oh dear!
Good news though; the environment is finished! DONE! Now, at some point, I need to make some birds. But I'm taking a break for now to go on holiday and recuperate before university and my life starts up again.
Here are some renders, though I still need to get some technical stuff like textures and wires done at some point. You can see a couple of quick wires I took in UE4 here.
I can't believe it took me this long to get it done, but I'm super pleased with all that I've learned, and I'm glad I have something for my portfolio at the end of it.
Please, feel free to tell me what you think. Though I can't guarantee I'll come back to fix stuff any time soon, I need to not look at this for a while!
Thankyou everyone who helped me out with this one, it's been a blast. I'll be back with a new project I'm soon. And I'll update this thread with any birds I make.
I wouldn't say I'm 100% pleased with it, that's for sure. There's a lot I'll do differently next time. I think I'm mostly proud that I didn't give up halfway though. :P
This is a great portfolio piece! Way to push through to the end! Learning from your projects as you go is part of the process. Looking forward to the next one
Also, just a thought, a background/skybox other than black might make this pop even more.
I'd love to put it on Marmoset viewer, but since I made it in UE4 I can't be sure it'll work great... and I don't want to really spend the time putting a project into Marmoset when I could just start a new one specifically for it. Looking forward to where my next projects take me!
Replies
Hey thanks for the feedback
Update on the baking and stuff. Thought I'd do a test run, baking in 3dsMax. So here is my baked lowpoly in UE4, though it doesn't have the falling/broken tiles because I'm making their lowpoly for baking at the moment.
The unbroken floor tiles I'm thinking of just keeping as a normal map, rather than modelling them in.
Also got a slight issue;
This pixelation is occurring, despite the texture being 4096x2048? If anyone could tell me why that would be much appreciated!
Hope you're all having a nice weekend.
Properly baked my normal/AO maps in Topogun and fixed all the little things. Also sorted the pixelation-it was because I was basically stretching a 1024 map to a 2048 map one way, hence the stripeyness. It's now two separate textures.
Got a lot of modelling, sculpting and baking to do.
Still very much a WIP, but I'm feeling like there is an end -sort of- in sight. All the big big stuff will be done when the buildings are sculpted and textured, so assuming that all goes well I could be doing all the asset population stuff soonish (yeah right). I'm really taking my time with this though- I don't want it to become too much of a burden.
Got past a big 'I hate this project' phase when I finished texturing the base today. I've been avoiding it for ages because there were a lot of seams to patch up and such. It's not perfect, but I'm just glad it's done and I can do the next bits.
I'm not sure how I feel about the tent/parasol/whatever in the corner yet. Thinking I should maybe make the fabric pattern less crazy and also tone down the rips and stuff. I've found I get the look I want from all the rugs and stuff by actually making them a metal rather than non-metal in UE4. It makes all the highlights the same colour of the fabric, rather than white and plasticy. The yellow rug is currently just a mid roughness yellow metallic material, so ignore that for now. I like where it's going though!
really looking forward to see more :thumbup:
@Carabiner, I tested a plain material on it the other day and preferred that, so I think I'll definitely be re-doing that bit.
@MisterSande, thankyou! The vases were textured exclusively in Photoshop, as was the tiled circle area on the balcony. I used various grunge textures, masks, and filters to grunge up a flat colour hand painted texture. I was going to sculpt it, but I think I'll be getting enough Zbrush with the buildings!
There's my hand painted base, some grunge over the top, making it into a height map and then into a roughness by changing the lightness of various layers.
Yep, I agree. Thanks for your opinion!
...ignore the floating straw I just noticed in the last image haa!
What I like about your original concept is the very defined colors and contrast. In your 3D, it seems you've lost the vibrancy of those blocks of colors. I'm not sure if it's lighting or just the lack of saturation in your textures. The shadows in your render are harsher than your concept. Try to achieve that pastel look through your lighting. Right now your ambient color looks like it's black or something close to it.
You should unbiasedly overlay your render with your final concept and try to color correct until it matches up. Then, use those colors to plug back into your textures and lighting.
Other than that, I think it's looking pretty great. Keep it up!
Agree with jhoythottle about vibrance, but you can probably achieve that with lighting and post process
Good news though; the environment is finished! DONE! Now, at some point, I need to make some birds. But I'm taking a break for now to go on holiday and recuperate before university and my life starts up again.
Here are some renders, though I still need to get some technical stuff like textures and wires done at some point. You can see a couple of quick wires I took in UE4 here.
I can't believe it took me this long to get it done, but I'm super pleased with all that I've learned, and I'm glad I have something for my portfolio at the end of it.
Please, feel free to tell me what you think.
Thankyou everyone who helped me out with this one, it's been a blast. I'll be back with a new project I'm soon. And I'll update this thread with any birds I make.
I wouldn't say I'm 100% pleased with it, that's for sure. There's a lot I'll do differently next time. I think I'm mostly proud that I didn't give up halfway though. :P
Also, just a thought, a background/skybox other than black might make this pop even more.
I'd love to put it on Marmoset viewer, but since I made it in UE4 I can't be sure it'll work great... and I don't want to really spend the time putting a project into Marmoset when I could just start a new one specifically for it. Looking forward to where my next projects take me!