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[UE4] Speed Environments Thread

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Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
Hey guys. I Hope everyone is well!

I decided to setup a thread for my mini environments finally. There will be more and I'm going to do some workflow time lapses since some of you guys were interested in the process (not able to stream with this rather ridiculous upload speed here). I'm reusing some stuff from old projects to make it a little easier for myself. I do believe that sculpting a tileable cliff for each new scene is a good practice but it's not always necessary :)

Any feedback or suggestions for stuff that you would like to see in the future are welcome here.


Also, pretty weird fact I found about my work. I tend to place primary focal elements in the right hand side of an image subconsciously. Is that normal? :D How do you guys approach layout and compo stuff in general? Share your thoughts!


Lunar Landscape (3h)

Lunar.jpg


Swamp Scene (12h)

Swamps_hq.png

Highlevel scene breakdown


Storm in Rocky Mountains (6h)

stormyhq.png

Highlevel scene breakdown


**11/26/2014**

Shroomland (11h)

img4.png

Workflow time-lapse: [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPZ384Ych-c&list=PLBdiwlnOugq9nKCf7A1cGpLckFRRwyA2_&index=1"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPZ384Ych-c&list=PLBdiwlnOugq9nKCf7A1cGpLckFRRwyA2_&index=1[/ame]


**12/13/2014**

Stormy Ambience (10h)

img5.png


**04/07/2015**

Gwendeith (2 days)

img6.jpg

Replies

  • Bbox85
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    Bbox85 polycounter lvl 9
    These are great! Well done! I really love the moon study. Funny about how artists have natural tendencies to gravitate toward certain compositions. I always end up putting some sort of super bright focal point in my work.
  • Stirls
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    Stirls polycounter lvl 8
    I love all of these, especially the swamp study one.. it's so vibrant. Reminds me a lot of STALKER.
  • AlexCatMasterSupreme
  • Grusti
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    Grusti polycounter lvl 10
    god daaaaamn! Subscribe!!!
  • KazeoHin
  • Snefer
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    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    How are you doing your craters in world machine? I end up just placing them manually but it seems like there should be a more automated way to do it.
  • mats effect
    Ace work dude!! Would love to see some detailed breakdowns for how you go about making them.
  • JamieRIOT
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    JamieRIOT polycounter lvl 6
    Sick work man. Would be cool to see a bit of breakdown on these, especially the lunar landscape.
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    A big thank you to all of you guys!

    @Tris - thanks man, I think that bright spots and desaturated color palette in your artworks work really well. It makes them very memorable.

    @Stirls - This one was actually inspired by the swamps area they showed in Witcher 3, damn that game looks tasty. However, a couple hundreds of hours I spent in the Zone may have some impact there as well ;p I think I'm gonna do a proper tribute to STALKER with next environment.

    @Alec, mats, Jamie - To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how to approach detailed breakdowns for these. My workflow for terrains is same as for one of my previous projects, I did a full breakdown for this process here + to make things as fast as possible here, I'm using some pretty dirty tricks that would be unforgivable for standard production :) Anyway, I'll be recording the whole process for next environment, so you guys let me know if there is anything specific you'd like me to break down after that.

    As for craters process, yep its fully automated. Here is a tutorial and a macro available for download.


    And snapshot for my setup:

    LunarWM.JPG

    A good example of dirty trick here: the diffuse sharpen should be done on actual texture to save shader instructions but yeah it was faster that way :D
  • MudBocx
    That just looks amazing. Very well done!
  • Mik2121
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    Mik2121 polycounter lvl 9
    That looks stunning. I'm also using World Machine here and there.

    I see on the material editor that you are using normal textures so I assume you are converting the World Machine results into actual meshes and just applying the textures like you would do on any other asset.

    Are you using the mesh exporter from World Machine or doing something else? When exporting from World Machine how do you reduce the mesh, by yourself with some plugin or the actual reduced mesh that can also be exported from WM?

    I will give this a try as well, as until now all the times I've exported meshes it was usually for just one mesh and did some very rough mesh reductions with ZBrush.
  • AbKI
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    AbKI polycounter lvl 6
    Damn. Nice work. :)
  • Avvi
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    Avvi polycounter lvl 3
    Fantastic work :) You managed to do artistically complete sketches (speed painting style) in a full 3D game art workflow! That's an achievement by itself.
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks again guys, love ya!
    Mik2121 wrote: »
    That looks stunning. I'm also using World Machine here and there.

    I see on the material editor that you are using normal textures so I assume you are converting the World Machine results into actual meshes and just applying the textures like you would do on any other asset.

    Are you using the mesh exporter from World Machine or doing something else? When exporting from World Machine how do you reduce the mesh, by yourself with some plugin or the actual reduced mesh that can also be exported from WM?

    I will give this a try as well, as until now all the times I've exported meshes it was usually for just one mesh and did some very rough mesh reductions with ZBrush.

    Yeah, I used normal map for Lunar landscape but it's tuned down a bit (R=0.5;G=0.5;B=1). I don't normally use it for terrains, especially with high mountains, as it will make the side opposite of light vector unnaturally dark.
    Eg back side of a mountains may appear completely black for no good reason. Tiling detail maps are much more efficient and add this nice crispness to rock formations.

    And yeah I use Mesh output and do either decimation master pass in zbrush or check simple reduction in WM mesh output node. It may be hard to get it look right under 15-30k tri but for game production I'd probably export just one or two mountains separately that I can scale and rotate in engine, thus build the vista manually with more control.
    Check the exterior of the UE4 Effects Cave demo, really nice example of that there.

    Avvi wrote: »
    Fantastic work :) You managed to do artistically complete sketches (speed painting style) in a full 3D game art workflow! That's an achievement by itself.
    Haha, thanks man. Yeah just trying to find bypasses and justify my laziness :D I need to learn how to properly draw finally!
  • Mik2121
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    Mik2121 polycounter lvl 9
    Tepcio, thanks for the suggestions. I usually just export the height map and a couple weightmaps to UE4 and do the work over there, and only bring meshes when it's just a single mountain or something like that.

    Had a try at the Moon stuff last night, but didn't really think much about the composition and the result is kinda... bad. The fact that all I had in that UE4 project was a couple rough meshes of pipes and stuff didn't help to populate the image either, hehehe.

    http://i.imgur.com/1IeUUb9.jpg

    Still learning my way through some of the nodes in World Machine.
  • steve0
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    steve0 polycounter lvl 5
    This is really dope! Thanks for sharing your process. Are you comping all the different render passes in photoshop? Or are you capturing it and all the post process volume effects inside UE4?
  • theslingshot
    I'm not doing environments myself, but man that's impressive! Cool stuff in general, loving that swamp.
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    Mik2121 wrote: »
    Tepcio, thanks for the suggestions. I usually just export the height map and a couple weightmaps to UE4 and do the work over there, and only bring meshes when it's just a single mountain or something like that.

    Had a try at the Moon stuff last night, but didn't really think much about the composition and the result is kinda... bad. The fact that all I had in that UE4 project was a couple rough meshes of pipes and stuff didn't help to populate the image either, hehehe.

    http://i.imgur.com/1IeUUb9.jpg

    Still learning my way through some of the nodes in World Machine.
    Cool to see it inspired you! As said in PM, shadow in the foreground is drawing too much attention. Also, try to scale a few of the terrain pieces in Z, it will give some variety in craters depth.
    steve0 wrote: »
    This is really dope! Thanks for sharing your process. Are you comping all the different render passes in photoshop? Or are you capturing it and all the post process volume effects inside UE4?
    Hey, it's a buffer visualization (new view mode for UE4). But yeah it's possible to call specific render passes (Like AO or translucency) in material effect, as there was no easy way around it in UDK.
  • Mik2121
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    Mik2121 polycounter lvl 9
    Tepcio wrote: »
    Cool to see it inspired you! As said in PM, shadow in the foreground is drawing too much attention. Also, try to scale a few of the terrain pieces in Z, it will give some variety in craters depth.

    Hey, thanks for the reply and also the PM. I will work on a couple smaller rocks to add detail and also try modifying the Z scale of some pieces. Also will work on the shadows. It's true that it draws too much attention, but making it very light also looked kind of weird... I will try to find a nice spot in-between.

    Thanks and keep posting environments done in UE4 here if you can!
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    Dang impressive stuff, man. I love how bold and vibrant everything is.

    Got to ask a dumb question, do you bake lights on your terrain? If so, is it supposed to take an entire day, or is there a faster way of doing it?
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    Mik2121 wrote: »
    Thanks and keep posting environments done in UE4 here if you can!
    No worries, I thought I will be able to carry on this weekend and record some time lapses but can't look at terrains atm, need to give myself some hard surface happy times :D Anyways, if anything is up I will post it here.
    Makkon wrote: »
    Dang impressive stuff, man. I love how bold and vibrant everything is.
    Got to ask a dumb question, do you bake lights on your terrain? If so, is it supposed to take an entire day, or is there a faster way of doing it?
    Thanks man, yeah lighting on landscape system is a huge pain in the ass. I'm using a static mesh with 1024 lightmap per instance and static lighting scale of 5.0 - the last scene built under 5 mins.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    If you're looking for feedback, can we see:
    • Unlit scene shots (camera break-away, high up looking down on the scene?) With a good view of the lighting set up?
    • Wire shots
    • Individual asset shots
    • Textures

    These are interesting but its hard to give feedback without knowing how they were constructed.
  • _Kratos_
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    _Kratos_ polycounter lvl 11
    I think the Lunar scape is brilliant man!
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    adam wrote: »
    If you're looking for feedback, can we see:
    • Unlit scene shots (camera break-away, high up looking down on the scene?) With a good view of the lighting set up?
    • Wire shots
    • Individual asset shots
    • Textures

    These are interesting but its hard to give feedback without knowing how they were constructed.

    As mentioned earlier, these are not supposed to be standard production environments. The wires are mostly bad and textures bigger than they should be.

    I totally get your point but I'm looking for lighting/comp feedback:
    Are there elements that shouldn't be there?
    Does anything distracts the eye from focal points?
    Aren't the values too dark?
    And most importantly, do I repeat same mistakes over again?

    Speaking of dark values, here comes new one:

    img4.png


    Including workflow time lapse this time (first of six parts, should manage to upload rest by Friday):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPZ384Ych-c

    Contents (time stamps will be included in YT descr):
    - World Machine landscape development
    - UE4 - Scene set up + some shader work
    - Mushroom block out in Maya and Zbrush sculpting
    - Small section dedicated to working with fractals using Structure Synth. Used it for those funky trees.
    - Putting it all together in UE4


    The total run time for it was pretty long so I sped up some sections by x3.
    My respect for people who stream/record tutorials and workflows increased by 1000% (and it was pretty high already). It was a huge challenge, composition couldn't 'click' for quite a bit, suddenly stuff that should work in zbrush and world machine didn't. What is more, uploading single 3h video took almost 2 days and YT crashed around 90%... so decided to split it into parts eventually. I tried to clean up the video but some of my epic fails are still there I think.

    I did not record the whole process but grabbed several of snapshots during and after the recording:

    shroomland.gif

    (also started reusing grass and some stones from previous projects at some point sv_cheats 1, lol)
  • Bedrock
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    Bedrock polycounter lvl 10
    Super awesome of you to share your work process, not a lot of people do that! :)
  • Pablorom12
    Wow i really enjoyed seeing this...second and third ones really inspiring :thumbup:
  • Stirls
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    Stirls polycounter lvl 8
    I love these so much, really nice work. As for criticism, What are these lines you've marked all over the screen in the gif? Are these just for points of reference, or is it something similar to a guideline for your composition?

    While I like the fantasy one, it does sorta feel a bit.. much? There's a lot to take in, but that mightn't be a bad thing.
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks guys! :)
    Stirls wrote: »
    I love these so much, really nice work. As for criticism, What are these lines you've marked all over the screen in the gif? Are these just for points of reference, or is it something similar to a guideline for your composition?

    While I like the fantasy one, it does sorta feel a bit.. much? There's a lot to take in, but that mightn't be a bad thing.

    Yeah, forgot to mention that. These are compo grids attached to post process. I've made a version for UDK in the past. I will share my UE4 version next time.

    Totally agree that it's too busy and contrasty mate. Not even trying to justify myself, I'll try to a better job next time :)
  • mats effect
    Going to sit down and read/watch though all the awesome info in this topic now :D

    As for feedback though one thing that stood out to me was on the left and right of that latest post there is a yellow light but, i can't see any kind of light source for it?
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    As for feedback though one thing that stood out to me was on the left and right of that latest post there is a yellow light but, i can't see any kind of light source for it?

    The idea was that the light is coming from behind the camera but yeah I should have sold that better.


    And here come next one! :)
    This one uses some pre-made pieces from UE4 demos and was super fun to put together.

    img5.png
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    I want game environments to look like this and play well. Is it possible to optimize these scenes so they would be viable for a game? This last one especially. Holy crap.
  • locater16
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    locater16 polycounter lvl 8
    Should be possible, but would have to get programmers on it specifically. There's always more to do, so picking and choosing priorities is often a tug of war between who wants what and when.

    Frankly, while the recent focus on image quality and materials is all well and good, playing Dragon Age Inquisition reveals just how much work there is to do in terms of LOD, polycount, and draw call optimization until we can get to something like the above.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Thanks for the reply to my post! As exercises in composition and lighting these are really nice. Have you tried applying this to tighter, closer scenes as oppose to vast landscapes?
  • Xaragoth
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    Xaragoth polycounter lvl 8
    Love the whole idea and concept behind these as well as the results. It's a really nice way to produce concept art for your projects without actually having a lot of concept art painting skills. Might be something especially for smaller indie studios to really think about using.

    I'd love to see a scene breakdown of the Castle one, with shots from different angles and such :)
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    @Makkon, locater16
    Yeah, I do think it's possible. It's pretty much what locater said, good LODs would do the trick. Even seamless terrain mesh shouldn't be a problem if set up with custom tesselation thresholds. Thanks guys!

    adam wrote: »
    Thanks for the reply to my post! As exercises in composition and lighting these are really nice. Have you tried applying this to tighter, closer scenes as oppose to vast landscapes?
    Thanks Adam, it means a lot. I definitely want to give it a shot, especially after seeing the stuff that Snefer has been posting lately. It's so inspiring!


    Xaragoth wrote: »
    Love the whole idea and concept behind these as well as the results. It's a really nice way to produce concept art for your projects without actually having a lot of concept art painting skills. Might be something especially for smaller indie studios to really think about using.
    I'd love to see a scene breakdown of the Castle one, with shots from different angles and such :)

    Thanks man, visual targets will not always replace good concept art but yeah they may be quite handy sometimes. I actually started doing these to bypass lack of painting skill. This series motivated me to start practicing and I did my first value sketches last week :)

    Not sure if these will be of any help but posting them here:
    zMSTeGO.jpg
    WxhbEhY.jpg
    valley.gif

    So yeah not relying on GI too much and controlling bounces manually with
    spotlights/pointlights. There is no global directional light in the scene.
  • Lucas Annunziata
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    Lucas Annunziata polycounter lvl 13
    Hot damn man, you've been seriously killing it with these environments. These are really inspiring. Keep it up, and thanks for the breakdowns.
  • visoutre
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    visoutre polycounter lvl 6
    Thanks for sharing your timelapse and behind the scenes. Tried it on a mini-project. It's a fun technique!
  • TrevorJ
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    TrevorJ polycounter lvl 9
    these are great, i think its a great exercise in composition and color. I really like how relatively simple they are when you break them down, thanks for the info, looking forward to more of these
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    Yup, these are pretty great. The composition and lighting is top notch and it seams this could be a viable way to art direct a team.
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    Little side project to rest from tons of hard surface. Had a chance to play around with GeoGlyph at least. A bit overpriced but amazing set of macros nonetheless.

    Gwendeith (2 days)

    img6.jpg

    translucency
    krzysztof-teper-1.jpg?1428380535

    color
    krzysztof-teper-2.jpg?1428380537
  • filthy_sandwich
    Since no one else has said anything, I might as well.

    Your proficiency and efficiency are mind blowing
  • jmerrick
    Great stuff man! I really like the high mountain scene, looks epic like Mordor or something
  • mrgesy
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    mrgesy polycounter lvl 7
    I've SO subbed this thread.
  • mrgesy
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    mrgesy polycounter lvl 7
    Awesome moon scene. Although its missing a lot of stars and galaxies in the background, no?
  • Tepcio
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    Tepcio polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks guys!

    @mrgesy - when you look at the Moon surface photos the sky is pretty much black. I think it might be due to the dust layer in the "atmosphere" that catches the light reflected from the surface and blocks weak incoming light. Similarly to Earth's atmosphere gases during daylight. Additional sky detail could be interesting but I was going for most realistic effect possible.
  • ActionDawg
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    ActionDawg greentooth
    The moon's sky is black in photographs due to the camera being exposed for photographing subjects on the surface. If the camera were exposed to see stars the lunar surface would be completely blown out.
  • mrgesy
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    mrgesy polycounter lvl 7
    Tepcio wrote: »
    Thanks guys!

    @mrgesy - when you look at the Moon surface photos the sky is pretty much black. I think it might be due to the dust layer in the "atmosphere" that catches the light reflected from the surface and blocks weak incoming light. Similarly to Earth's atmosphere gases during daylight. Additional sky detail could be interesting but I was going for most realistic effect possible.

    Oh that's true! Just checked reference now and saw it :D
  • 2008nickcody
  • Ryno
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    Ryno polycounter lvl 18
    I am so digging this. I'll be watching your making of videos all the way through soon. The palette in this one is awesome!

    img5.png
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