I wouldn’t be so interested in game if my own project was going to use similar level architecture. is a pretty nice looking interior house. And looking at the surface textures and lighting, I’m sure there is a lot going on. But a lot of it is something I’m not sure how they achieved. For example, when looking at the hall in general there are a lot of non-repeated cracks. Is there more going on here in the texture work than I’m aware? Also, in the corners of the walls are irregularities, nicks, cracks, etc. How is effect accomplished where each corner of the wall is nice and smooth, but looks different than all the others. The painting around the moulding and window frames look pretty non-uniform as well. I’d like to be able to mimic some of these techniques in my materials. Not to mention there is a softness to the rendered image as well. Nothing is too sharp, unless is all done through AA.
It’s quite simple, chamfered corners so that they’re a bit rounded, and then texture painting all the details. They probably tile where they can but it’s not out of the question to actually paint those details.
I’m afraid not. I’d never actually heard of it until point.
There actually doesn’t look to be that much going on in the screenshots, from what I can tell. I expect they’re using a modular workflow approach, thus meaning there’s very few assets actually being used. It’s more likely they have interchangeable textures. I can count at the most, several models.
The cracks and general damage is likely achieved through both the model itself and the texture work. Probably some smoothing / chamfer on the corners, for additional effect.
High-quality assets coupled with some above-average lighting, in addition to some post-process .
Texturing is handled through a program such as Photoshop. Similarly, there’s PBR workflows that include the likes of Substance Painter. Models are created and unwrapped in programs such as Maya or 3ds Max.
I understand about the modular approach. I use Photoshop for texturing, and Blender for my models. I know how to unwrap textures and use modifiers. So I’m familiar with that much. My attention is the surface shaders. The textures seem not to be repeating, as I can’t tell in the chips of paint if they are recycled. I assumed the cracks were decal textures projected on the wall and various locations.
I know when it came to smoothing on the walls, I had problems in Blender smoothing the corners only, and not created strange artifacts in the mesh.
They might not be repeating any textures, since it’s just the hallway and that’s the majority of the demo they might have spent a lot of work doing that part than they normally would have.
Don’t have anything to say other than I played it, it was gorgeous on my big screen. I made my wife play it first, without telling her anything about it, and she got spooked after a few loops and made me finish it.
There’s probably an element of procedurality to how the shaders are set up - probably using perlin noise in conjunction with masks to indicate where cracking and ***** should appear, but without relying on the artist to manually paint them. Since a perlin noise function is inherently random, you’d expect there not to be any repetition or tiling.
I guess it is possible that its all non repeating textures for detailed textures around doors and windows. I never heard of that term before. “Perlin Noise” How does one set up something like that in the material editor?
Anyway, on the corners, I’ve done that before to make rounded corners, by making a bevel, but I couldn’t smooth out the corner without smoothing out the entire walls, which cause lighting artifacts. How many faces to people typically chamfered the corners? Just one? Granted, I’m using Blender, how do I get rid of those hard edges, even if it is chamfered.
I just use bevel for sort of thing. Edge select mode, ctrl+b, use mouse wheel if you want it smoother.
I also use edge split and subd modifiers for hard surface modeling, along with setting shading to smooth & using mean crease values.
Yeah, if you add a chamfer and then set the wall and the corner as one smoothing group then it’ll mess up the smoothing on the wall since it will try to curve it with the chamfer. There’s a couple ways to fix it, you can add an extra loop on the wall near the corner, that will make it so that there’s something to stop the curve smoothing before it gets to the large section of wall. Or after you’ve created your high detail you can use a normal map to correct that type of thing.
It’s probably just decals, or each wall piece is divided into a series of smaller meshes that have different detail textures. The entire game takes place in that one hallway (near enough… spoilers!) so they can afford to budget massive amounts of information for those simple assets. The walls are just planar meshes with chamfers no doubt.
Attention to detail in game HAD to be good because of the way the game is designed, you have to focus on things very closely and LOOK for things that are wrong in order to progress. They probably went over the level thousands of times to get it as perfect as it is. Definitely the best-looking game/demo I’ve ever seen.
Also, it looks like they’re using a very subtle scene fringe effect to, some of the colours on the wall are slightly separated from each other, if you look closely at the lighting generated through the normal map (though it could just be my eyes).
While playing the Destiny beta a while back, I was looking at how they made walls. I don’t even know if they smoothed out the corners. They did have one 45 degree face between the corner, which is how my walls are created, but they appeared sharp. (as do mine) Although the texture did make it appear smoother. I will try do put loop cuts in the corners and smooth them out and hope it doesn’t have lightning anomalies. The realistic rending project in the marketplace does that as well, but their corners look much better than mine.
It’s not your eyes. I’ve picked that up too. Especially while standing next to the lights in the hall. You can distinctly see a chromatic aberration.
When it comes to interiors, I prefer look much more than those ArchVis demos you see floating around. While the latter look fantastic, and pretty, they just look too clean, and don’t look like a real house. I know one isn’t kept clean, but it looks lived in. (Although, I don’t leave rotted banana peels lying on the counter) And since my project would be using these type of levels, I’d prefer to adopt that style.
The standard Noise node has Perlin as a noise method inside it. By itself, its not much use for something like , but you can use it to lerp between various tiling materials and apply some math to it to make it work well for sort of set up. I’ll look into making something if I get time later.
I noticed something else in the game that is pretty cool, is the dust in the flashlight. It’s not a lot of dust, (like it should be) but occasionally you’ll get a glint of a dust particle that the light reflects off of. Is done by attaching a small particle emitter to the flashlight model itself?
I do want to mention that is not the same as the ‘dust’ added to the flashlight in the Realistic Render sample project. That used a texture that was motionless unless you moved. Not very convincing.
I would love to know how they did the models and textures for too! I can imagine the Quixel Suite would do a good job at adding the dirt and scratches and scuffs across the surfaces
My guess is they went with very high resolution textures, there is not really all that much to render on screen at any given time, so they probably went crazy with the details.
Most likely Quixel or Substance Designer/Painter were used to create the texture maps & normals etc. These tools make work like trivial, I have used the Substance Indie pack for the past few months, it literally makes you look like a pro without the hard work, so I can only imagine what the level of quality created by actual pro’s will be once these tools are used by more studios.
Yeah I agree. I’ve purchased everything imaginable. My hobby has taken a serious route and I am working on my first project now with UE4. I am hoping to get visuals like too with the tools I have (Substance Designer and Painter, Photoshop, Quixel Suite, Maya LT etc) I have been learning a lot of stuff over the last year to prepare myself and I have started to build my modular units for a demo for the my main project. is exactly the type of layout and look I want (my demo is also going to be set in a house but the house will be a full level with upstairs and downstairs, attic, basement etc). I would defo love to know how to get those cracks and scratches, would be all normal map or some sculpted detail in say zbrush or 3d - coat?
First of all strong level planning is required then start bashing different colors in level to get overall look. Lots of texture planning along with vertex paint can be really helpful. Atlast give strong importance to mood and ambiance of your level by playing with light and post process, placement of props and overall composition of level. Hope helps.
