Roadside Fantasy INN - UE4
polycounter lvl 13
Hey everyone, it's great to be back posting a new thread. I recently started teaching game modding at a local tech camp, and it was the first time I actually met other people (in person) that also had a passion for game art. And so, I was inspired to start working on my portfolio again in preparation for applying for summer internships next year!
My goal with this project is to create a sort of forest path environment with another path peeling off to a tavern/Inn. I've always loved creating fantasy environments, and I've never had practice with PBR or foliage, so I figured this would be a great environment to introduce myself to all of those things.
Here's where I'm at so far. I finally decided to ditch using baked lighting and am now using dynamic lighting with an LPV to get my global illumination. I'm still really new to lighting, though, and I have to improve my current setup a lot I feel.
As of right now, the todo list is to create windows for the building, create another tree/a completely new tree (this one was basically a test), change the construction of the building, and actually start building the final composition, as of right now this is basically just to see if the stuff I'm making works and looks good
Of course, this todo list is apt to change depending on what you guys recommend. Any and all comments are welcome, thanks for taking a look.
(BTW, I have two moniters, and one of them is showing my scene as REALLY, REALLY green, so if that's the case, then I I guess I'm just going to have to re calibrate my main moniter.)
My goal with this project is to create a sort of forest path environment with another path peeling off to a tavern/Inn. I've always loved creating fantasy environments, and I've never had practice with PBR or foliage, so I figured this would be a great environment to introduce myself to all of those things.
Here's where I'm at so far. I finally decided to ditch using baked lighting and am now using dynamic lighting with an LPV to get my global illumination. I'm still really new to lighting, though, and I have to improve my current setup a lot I feel.
As of right now, the todo list is to create windows for the building, create another tree/a completely new tree (this one was basically a test), change the construction of the building, and actually start building the final composition, as of right now this is basically just to see if the stuff I'm making works and looks good
Of course, this todo list is apt to change depending on what you guys recommend. Any and all comments are welcome, thanks for taking a look.
(BTW, I have two moniters, and one of them is showing my scene as REALLY, REALLY green, so if that's the case, then I I guess I'm just going to have to re calibrate my main moniter.)
Replies
Also, what were you considering to make this a fantasy environment?
Ok so finally updated my textures and changed some post processing to get the scene more or less to what it looks like on the monitor I was working on.NOW it's really ready or posting.
@noosence - thats great to hear man tor's city was a big inspiration for me
@anngelica - Definetely see what you're saying, hope this is better!
basically just added in the new trees, changed up the bark texture to get some non-greens in there.
Also, I'm constantly fiddling with fog/post while I'm working on this, I think it's my weakest area and I'm not really sure where to go with it. I think this looks decent enough to show right now though.
I did like how your house was lit in the previous images a little better. There was a really nice, soft light hitting it with some nice bounce lighting. I think that the trees casting those shadows on the front are killing it now. Perhaps the shadows from the trees are too dark in general. Also, just the placement of the shadow makes it bad. You have that dirt path that guides the eye straight up to the front door, but when you get to the front door there is a whole lot of contrast and its hard to even make out the door. At the very least I would try to keep that front door out of shadow.
If that doesn't cut it, play with the sun position to get better shadow look in the scene. Search for that ultimate shadow-play.
Cheers!
theres a couple of scripts for that out there, depending on the software you are using.
heres what im talking about http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/VertexNormal#Modo
also you could try using a transluscent material for the leaves, theres a preset dedicated to foliage in UE4
although i had problems with importing vertex normals into UE4 aswell even with regular FBX imports. it didnt detect changes in the file or something so after reimport, it never updated my vertexnormals, importing a new file worked though. but i gues your issue probably lies somewhere in the speedtrees.
So yeah, other than that, extended the foliage a little bit, changed the angle of the sun, and increased the intensity of my skylight slightly to brighten up the shadows a little bit. Thanks for lookin
I think right now I need to focus on more of the surroundings of the focus because really there is nothing going on besides some world machine mountain props I threw at the end of the terrain. Really need to ground the scene.
first i would add some more variation to the tree size, they all look the same size now, maby increase the scaling variation to something up to 40 percent.
also they look too uniformly placed, try building some variations in density, have some open planes and some denser groups of trees growing next to each other.
for the background i would go with a major increase in tree density.
right now this looks like a house with some random trees in the middle of nothing.
it probably would look way better if you try to make this look like a lighter spot where trees have been cut down to build the house. and all that surrounded by a real dense forest.
if performance gets too bad maby leave the tops of the mountains barren as they are, but there should be more trees in the valleys atleast.
you already did a lot of work, so don't slow down on the final sprint.