Modular Level/Textures

LAST AND FINAL UPDATE

ORIGINAL POST

Hi there, recently joined the and toughed I’d give it a go to post my own work here.

This project is for a school exam, we have to create a 1vs1 map, and you start from the shooter game example or unreal tournament game.
Having a lot of fun with this and learned so much during the buildup of materials/meshes/blueprints and such, It really is a cool program to use.
Also this is only my second project in Unreal Engine (3rd if you count in UDK) and really try to push the limit of what I can do.

I started with a quick BSP blockout wich I quickly disliked so I ditch that one fairly quick, It was after my 3rd or 4th blockout that this idea came to being.

As you can see I took this screenshots fairly late (Hence the imported meshes). I am going for a sci-fi industrial look for this one, an abandoned factory on a distant planet of some sort.
Lot of wear and tear and sand, the bottom level is Terrain material because I want to let the sand take over large parts of the factory.

13sHO04.jpg
Nb4wdA5.jpg
qScZ09B.jpg
TyyGUXu.jpg
13sHO04.jpg
Nb4wdA5.jpg

Also playing around with cloth for the first time, using APEX clothing from Nvidia in 3Dsmax
(Textures are not final as you can see =P )

qScZ09B.jpg
KJyBFdz.jpg

A more detailed part of the level as it was a while ago, going to update soon.
With a quick light setup for a more moody screenshot =D

ESKJyfR.jpg
TyyGUXu.jpg

Hope you like my first post, gonna update this as it comes more and more to completion.
thanks for watching people!

Looks cool! Going to sub to this thread. Really looking forward to seeing what you do with the sand! Too early for me to provide some real crits on the art, though the design looks like it may be a bit too cluttered. Especially if this is for a fast-paced shooter, I would keep in mind that you don’t want your spaces to get too close together or too cluttered.

Keep it up!

Nice beginning. I look forward to seeing this progress.

Thanks @Fragfest2012 for the comment! and yeah it’s really hard to figure out the spacing in some parts of my level. Constantly going trough it and redoing parts and such.
Also love your portfolio! got any threads going yourself?

@ Thanks! Going to do my best to post as I have updates.

And speaking of which, here is another one for you guys!
First shader test, quiet happy with the results so far also this is not from 2 days work. This was my first time writing some shaders and also had an exam about them is the past week.
Shaders are not the only thing I’ve being giving a go, did some simple rotations in blueprints and also a flickering light.

5JYkfVB.jpg

A preview of my first animated shader, also screenshots don’t do it justice =D
81f0e79477a45715e28c4ce52ab64f61dbcd8f36.jpeg

Long story short, I love working in Unreal engine 4.
(And glass is a b*tch to make)

Got any questions, or comments feel free to drop them!

Looking a bit better now! Next time you post, take some higher res screenshots; there is a high res screenshot tool in the dropdown menu in each viewport. You can use that tool to render out a screenshot at really high resolution (using a multiplier; I use 2x for WIP and 4x for final images), then you just scale them down in photoshop and it removes all aliasing and gives a nice high res screenshot for us to give you better feedback with. I do like the changes you made to that hallway part though; it looks much less busy now, though the pipe may be excessive - I would see what it looks like without the pipe going though. Post some video sometime too; I’d love to see that animated shader in action!

Glad you liked my 'folio! I don’t have anything active yet, but when I wrap up my current contract, I’m planning on starting a new portfolio piece. I’m starting to get into learning environment art, so I can make my own assets, and I want to do a nice easy project to get into 3D. I’m thinking either like a standard sci-fi hallway, maybe with some windows to the outside sky, or like a small cave canyon scene, not sure which one. Which one do you think I should do?

@Fragfest2012 sorry for the late response man, Personally I think the scifi corridor is the best option for getting into 3D content creation, not that hard and you see the whole workflow, especially if you keep in mind the modularity of stuff.

And for all of you here is another update on my level, this one is more about setting the mood, not really sure if Dusk is the best option here so if you got recommendations fire away.

Here are some (Higher res) screenshots for you guys

5b945cbfdd4117351c07f4fe3dc035ee7fb42061.jpeg
99375d784dc4366519f1633163bb91ef1c1be285.jpeg
899e3e7befb934de6a34a0a1cc1a24ad118fde52.jpeg
730005177f57e74c85438f736c9785ffdb2d325c.jpeg
5dc0591a8ee4c3a5b2741a015b35a4a5b4c717d6.jpeg


af7e2f29dab80ffe328293ebb8866334ee55119f.jpeg

Hope you can see where I’m going with this piece, love to hear some feedback from you guys.
Got a lot to add still, so join me for a ride until completion! saddles horse

and Thanks for watching this thread =D

Looking good so far. Are you using 4.6 yet? It would let you automatically generate lighting for all those emissive surfaces you have. My main crit at this point would be that the scene feels generic because you need to add some elements that tell a story. I don’t know exactly where you want to go with this, but I would recommend putting some time into making a few decals and perhaps coming up with some other ways to put across a story here. I seem to remember that you wanted the bottom areas to be covered by sand, but it looks like rock/dirt, not sand. I would stick with the sand idea, start putting in some background elements, spice up the lighting, add vertex colored sand to your master materials, and add some more color to the environment or at least some more sense of what this place is.

Sorry that’s kinda all over the place, but I hope it helps.

PS: Dusk is never a bad thing in video games… :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: After looking at your screenshots again, I think the best thing you can do for instant results is to add lighting for the emissive areas. It will make your scene pop so much more…

Yeah heard about the 4.6 update with the emmisive lighting, but the migration of the project seems to fail because it works of the base unreal tournament code, so it gives me missing Dll files when I try to convert them.
Dunno about the sand idea tough, I tried it and did’nt like it as much as these landscape layers, going to add some small grass. As for the decals, those are already in the making, just not using them in the current scene because I feel like filling the space more first.

Thanks for the comments man! =D

That’s interesting…either way looking forward to seeing more! Be sure to fill out your scene with some more static lights to fake the emissive lighting. I’ll let you know when I finally post my WIP too.

Allright, sounds good fragfest2012, hope you had a great Christmas and best wishes for 2015!

And I got another update for you guys! added some foliage and particles, also figuring out the light in the darker areas, can’t seem to find a good idea for a prop there, any suggestions?

fb22065ebd3a9e255e1cf322a69f70500f393fc9.jpeg
2709c3830554b6dd47d607208a42229a7871168f.jpeg
f649503bf87d21d675bd98fd7455ebe4d24ae003.jpeg

Thanks for watching guys, also replaced my boring bsp brushes on top of this thread with a recent pic =D

Now we’re getting somewhere! This looks really great! I would recommend maybe some fuel tanks or small props for the main areas; containers are great too. This is where you start telling the story with your environment. Off the top of my head, the story I think of is that the people here were trying to evacuate (thus you can litter some boxes/containers and other elements of chaos around) and had to leave faster than they wanted to. Just an idea though, you can do what you think works.

Keep up the great work!

Yeah indeed, was thinking about fueltanks, and they are already in, you can see on the first screenshot, the middle emmisive area has a light panner to show some movement in the “Fuel”.
And indeed, was thinking about an abandoned fuel station on a distant planet, that was abandoned for a while, but the main concept is not that far apart.

And thanks for all the replies, keeps me going to post stuff on here!

Yea I’ve posted stuff on Polycount before that didn’t get any replies and it bummed me out. That’s why I try to respond when I can to any promising threads here, so we get more talented people joining the industry alongside us and their early years of development are more enjoyable and rewarding than otherwise.

Coming along nicely, keep it up!

Thanks @SE_JonF will surely do!

@ fragfest2012 Yeah know how you feel, you just have to make a decent thread before any feedback comes your way, still getting into that atm. I already did some threads but always fail to keep them updated =(

But! On the bright side, here are some updates!
Tried to make the scene more light and adding details here and there, also trying to make more out of my materials (Since I only use 2 Textures ( and one separate texture only for the normal map ))




Got a problem on the next one, I got 2 panels close to each other and it seems like there are some lightmap problems, but I have tried making a separate UV map for lightmaps with separate clusters.
Every plane on the cube is a separate UV island. but that doesn’t fix the problem =/
Any ideas?

That was it for this update, deadline is 17th of this month so got a lot to do in that time, but I’ve come a long way.
Let me know what you think, and onto the next update.

PS: Happy NewYear and thanks for watching!

This is really coming along nicely. The heavy use of red makes this stand out from other post apocalyptic environments. Also great job on the worn surfaces -no tiling detected, at least from the images posted.

Really loving the lighting, and the materials look nice. And Happy New Years to you as well!

Looking even better! A few crits: you have some lighting seems in a few places; this will probably be solved with a production lighting bake, but if not, check the lightmap uvs. I’m not entirely sure what the “clear” parts of the surfaces (mostly ground) are; if they are meant to be liquid pools, then you need to massively tweak the metallic value. That said, it looks like there are some clean areas and grungy areas, in which case that’s fine but the contrast is too high. You either have a very dirty environment where even the “clean” stuff uses 20-40% roughness, or you have the scene be much clearer. I think you should simply up the roughness on the clean areas. And finally, this is more minor, but be careful with the masking for the dirt; there are some edges that are too straight and it seems to be pretty arbitrary and not based on a cavity map of some sort.

Hope that helps!

@SE_JonF Thanks! ( redid my materials about 3 times I think, really want to push the stuff I learn from this project )

@ , Thanks for the reply! =D going to make a video of the whole thingie when finished and show some other places that I did’nt show before. So update coming pretty soon I hope.

@fragfest2012 Hey man thanks for another reply, as for the lighting betwees the two panels, I haven’t found a solution to that problem yet, did a production bake and everything, also been messing around with making my own uv map for the lighting and such things, but still not a good result. Guess I will have to keep trying and tweaking around =P
And the things that you define as liquid pools are actually metal surfaces that are pretty dull, but the angle of the camera changes that ( will upload some screenshots in the coming update to show the difference ) And the dirt mask on everything is with vertex paint so there is no problem in adjusting that piece. Thanks for the reply!

Done with the project!

So people, last update on this environment time to move onto the next one!
here are some screens and a video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikoc3nbh96w






Really had fun doing this project and really tried to push myself in texture/asset usage.

And that concludes my journey into the wonders of my first real unreal engine level creation, the only thing I would change is the metal floors, is to make them a little more rough (like fragfest2012 told me before and I did tweak it but I could’nt get it right =( and was under time pressure) so they won’t get mistaken with pools of water.

But thats it guys, thanks for watching and commenting on this thread really loved it! and if you have any more comments, i’ll take them into account when I revisit this project for portofolio reasons.

THANKS! =D