My Real Life Apartment in UE4

anonymous_user_169fedbc · January 15, 2016, 5:41pm

Hey guys!

I’ve decided to start learning some 3D from scratch to improve my vision of the art side in my projects like The Hum:Abductions or The Hum.

So, as an exercise, I made this reproduction of my real life Apartment. I used Maya for modeling and QuixelSuite for texturing.

I spent around 3 weeks to make this, including learning stuff. I made most of assets and used a few that I already had from The Hum:Abductions.

Hope you like it.

Some things I couldn’t do as I would like to and that I want to improve, and some notes/questions for future (and for discussion )

I coudn’t find a right AO setup. Maybe because I have too much small objects? It’s a mistery for me, pls enlighten me
I need to learn how to do better DoF effects in the cinematics. The setups and transitions I tested were terrible xD
Building lights took too much time (I have a powerful PC) even in preview quality. Maybe it’s common, but I think I need to learn better setups.
I would like to learn how to do more organic stuff, like plant, ropes, etc
One of my next things in my list of ThingToLearn is particles effects
I need to understand better how to use Reflections wisely

anonymous_user_6675e545 · January 15, 2016, 6:10pm

This is a really cool idea, I have actually thought about doing something similar. Your scene looks very nice, but a little dark… maybe thats just how it really looks!

anonymous_user_169fedbc · January 15, 2016, 6:19pm

Thanks!

Yes, it’s dark. I actually wanted to do an only indirect light illumination coming fron the windows, like usually happens in my apartment. But I could find a perfect setup for that… I gave up and just finished it like it is xD

anonymous_user_4ff5e96e · January 15, 2016, 8:03pm

Very nice! I watched the video before I read your following notes. In regards to your AO issue, try setting it to ~0.8 intensity with a radius of 500-1000. Feel it out and see what looks realistic. I would suggest cutting DOF from your cinematics entirely. If you really want DOF, maybe there is a way to render a depth pass that you can have more control over in a program like After Effects.

As a general rule of thumb, 99% of the realism comes from the interaction between lights and materials. Your couch looks great, but maybe too reflective (unless it is actually really glossy.) If reflections are feeling goofy, try balancing it out with the roughness channel parameter.

I think I see some texture popping from level of detail being funky. Check this out if you’re having issues from that.

Part of the reason you’re having long lighting builds might be because your scene is relying on indirect lighting. Maybe you can get some use from employing a lightmass propogation volume or tinker with your postprocess effect to pull some light back in. Speaking of postprocess, maybe you could increase global illumination - but I’m not sure how that would impact your build time. Are all of your lights static?

This looks really good. I really like the shots of the kitchen. Keep it up!

tupikp · January 16, 2016, 1:38am

Another trick to make rooms brighter without spending too much time in light building is to use Post Processing Exposure, but don’t use the automatic exposure though, use the manual one as it will be more controllable than the automatic one.

anonymous_user_169fedbc · January 16, 2016, 4:26am

Wow guys, thanks for the feedback. These are amazing tricks/tips. I was already trying them today and I could see a nice improvement in the overall scene, it was really helpful!

I don’t want to repost the same video with this changes, but maybe I will do it as a comment here just to show the difference.

Thanks again