1st UE4 Project - WIP

Hi there,

I’ve just about finished my first project using UE4 - it’s a model of my flat - I would really appreciate any feedback/ suggestions, particularly on how to improve the lighting/ appearance of the opening doors (they should be the same white as the wardrobes)…

Any tips or suggestions would be really appreciated.

Cheers,

Not bad. I would turn off the bloom and lens flares in your post process volume. The light seems too bright for a ‘‘golden hour’’ type of lighting. Especially with the strong shadows on the ceiling. How do you light the scene right now?

Hiya. Yeah, I think maybe it’s a little lens-flare-tastic as it stands now - I’ll play around with this later tonight…

I’m not 100% happy with the shadows on the ceiling either - at the moment, the scene is lit with a skylight, and each of the windows has a big spotlight shining in (There are a few internal lights too.)- If I were doing a more traditional render, I’d use an area light on the windows to give the impression of some light streaming in through the windows. Any tips on how to improve this?

Cheers,

I think a static skylight + static (or stationary) directional light would look more realistic than ‘‘faking’’ it with spot lights, especially if they shoot light directly inside the apartment.

You can still have the light streaming tru the windows with a more physically realistic method than faking it imo.

If you have 4.11, use portals in windows + skylight/hdri and a directional light to imitate the sun. Play with it’s intensity.

thanks Phil!

I’ll download 4.11 tonight and have a play.

Cheers,

4.11 is a big step up for architectural, would recommend too. The generated lightmaps are just so much better. Good job!

Cheers.

I’m looking forward to having a look at 4.11 this weekend! I’ll post an update once I’ve had the chance to play!

Looking pretty good so far, congrats!

My feedback would be:

  • bloom is too strong right now; make sure bloom isn’t fighting your lighting or scene contrast; it should feel like it compliments your lighting and right now it’s fighting you and making it hard to read depth in your scene

  • lensflare is fighting you, just like I mentioned above. Make sure to turn it off while you light and only start to introduce it little by little when you’re finished with your base lighting pass. Also, keep it localized to a point of interest where you want to draw your viewer’s eye; don’t use it all over the place or it will make your composition fall apart

  • right now your scene has very flat lighting; you need to compose something with more contrast to make the composition more interesting; flat lighting is boring :slight_smile:

Try those tips and see what you can come up with!

Thanks for the feedback - I’ve been playing around with 4.11 and the lightmass portals - I am pretty amazed by the results!

I’ve adjusted the bloom and lensflare too, and think that it is looking a bit less ‘bling’, which is good.

I’m interested in looking at the Matinee features too - I’ll post and update here when I have something to show.

Thanks again for all the tips - much appreciated.

Cheers,

rafareis123 from doesn’t recommend using portals as it increases render time and is hard to imitate that type of light for exterior scenes.
I’ve recently started deleting all my portals with and had the same results without them. Maybe due to better quality light maps in 4.11?

I’ve found them useful in areas hard to get the lighting right, but not necessary to be used all the time.

I’ve been looking at 4.11 and using portals for the last day or so, and am pretty happy with the results, but yes, the render times seem to be higher (still around the same time as a vRay single frame render though!).

I had thought that the increase in quality was due to the portals, but perhaps you are right, and tht it’s just down to the better lightmaps… I’ll have to do a control-check.

Incidentally, I am sure that I’m doing something wrong, but when I package my level, the file size is much larger than some of the test files I’ve seen in the Marketplace - mine is coming out at around 1gb. Is this a typical file size, or am I doing something wrong?

Cheers,

1gb is normal. It packages everything you have in your content browser, even if you don’t use it in your scene. Try to do a cleanup before packaging if you want to reduce the size! But 1gb isnt big at all!

Thanks for the heads-up :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Hi again,

here is a link to the updated version of my flat, done in 4.11.
I’m much happier with the lighting in this one, and have really dialed back the bloom and lens flares.
Once again, any feedback (good, bad and ugly) is much appreciated.

Cheers,

I really like it. How did you do the rug? Was it in Marvellous Designer?
Now you should set-up your scene so you can change the colour of your objects/fabrics in real-time or do a night-time scene :slight_smile:

The rug was done in Cinema 4d, and just uses a normal map for the texture. I’m looking for a good tutorial to do an interactive Colour/ texture change button for. Some of the furniture items, but am not finding too many good ones. Any suggestions?

It looks soooooooo much better man. Outstanding for a 1st project I’d say!

Digital Tutors do a tutorial exactly this. But you have to pay for access to their stuff.
I purchased a annual subscription because their tutorials are invaluable and I find myself going back and watching stuff on 3Ds max and Unreal all the time.
Check em out!

Also, I’d be interested to see this exact scene as it is without you touching anything - but delete the portals. I want to see the difference!

Hi - thanks for the tip regarding Digital Tutors - I will check them out… I was a bit underwhelmed by the tutorials on Lynda.

Good idea regarding the portals. I’ll give it a try and post a video (might take a few days, I am on the road for the next couple of days).

Cheers,