Hi folks,
I’m looking for some feedback (see video link above) on my first pass at creating some card art effects for a digital card game I’m making. I’m a noob in the process of learning unreal’s lighting and materials in general. My goal is to implement some cool card art that people would like and be attracted to. I feel like I have a really cool game design and it’s been play testing really well but I’m a total noob at making assets in unreal so I’m trying to conquer that barrier right now and your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Suggested feedback topis:
- Any initial feedback, criticisms, suggestions, etc?
- How does my lighting look? Is it integrating with the material okay?
- Any suggestions on what to do with my lighting to make card art color pop more?
- Does my parallax/depth effect look decent so far?
- Any performance concerns or suggestions if I wanted to put say 20-40 of these cards on the screen at once? I literally just got this working as a POC and am still learning so I haven’t even experimented with real performance yet.
This was my first pass at creating:
- Materials in general
- Multi layer parallax effects
- Holographic card effects
- Emissive effects
Details:
So I implemented a multi layer parallax using a bunch of chopped up PNG images. Some for the foreground and some for the background. Then I give them each a different depth value via modifying the UVs. And I merge them all together using a bunch of Lerps, multiplies, and adds and then plug it into my material’s Base Color.
My material is using Shading Model Clear Coat. I created a background mask using a micro-normal clear coat roughness technique I found online. It’s resulting in data being plugged into the material’s Normal, Clear Coat, Clear Coat Roughness, and Roughness.
I was also able to create a glitter effect that I plugged into the material’s Emissive Color node. I don’t love it, but it’s a cool effect that I may be able to improve upon.
Overall things don’t look super clear and it’s probably a combination of my PNG images being low quality and me being an unreal noob and me being a complete lighting noob. I’m still learning lighting… Card technical cart inspirations for my game are Hearthstone, Marvel Snap, Pokemon TCG. I really like the way art pops off Marvel Snap cards.
Lighting:
I feel like my lighting isn’t quite right, so any suggestions there are greatly appreciated. Here is a quick overview of what I’m doing with lighting and I have no idea if these is remotely correct or way off. Note that my RectLights are pretty high up but I zoomed out so you can see where they are positioned. Size wise, my RectLights are very large, way larger than those white cubes I put to show you where they are located. Please note that the graphic you see on here is temporary and not real art work. I just wanted to put some color on the board in the background of the cards themselves while I develop the materials. I don’t have any real art work yet.
Please note:
I’m focused purely on the technical art right now. I don’t have any real art so everything you see is placeholder art for the purpose of learning how to make materials and effects in unreal engine. I’m a bit of an unreal engine noob so I’m learning as I go here so ignore all art assets for now and just focus on the technical side of unreal engine, materials, etc.
Any feedback, criticisms, or suggestions are super welcome. Thank you!
