Trying to redesign Gilneas in Ue4

Explanation;
Like the title suggests, I’m trying to redesign the Kingdom of Gilneas in Ue4, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Gilneas, it is a zone in World of Warcraft, I’ve heavily admired it for years, since it was released, and the very early concept. I like how it feels a lot like an English city, the dark atmosphere still feels beautiful, the sheep roaming the rolling hills, and etc. I’ve attached some images for your viewing pleasure. I’ll try to depict the dark skys, the thick grey clouds, and the fog of the whole zone in the images, the handpainted art style, the trees, it feels like a painted picture, but it is a 3D asset, I’d like to achieve that feel with my redesigned version, granted… I’d like a little more of a realistic aspect to my version.

Conclusion
Things I’m struggling with so far is the lighting, I don’t know how to achieve the darkness that Gilneas has, while still remaining … bright? I think that is the word for it, maybe it is because Blizzard implements very little real dynamic lighting, but the objects aren’t overly shadowed or dark, they are illuminated, and the atmosphere looks like it is stuck in a permanent storm. Anyone who can help me achieve this look, I’d REALLY appreciate it, and try to pay you back anyway I can.

Here’s the images;


;EDIT; Okay, so I’ll add images asap, if you want to help, really want to help, add me on Skype; Deaven34

I am really serious about this.

Bump? Bumpity Bump? I really could use a hand with this.

I´m no expert. But i would try to tweak the Post Process Volume

  1. Make your shadows very soft and not contrasting a lot with the general ground.
  2. Use vertex painting on the ground to make it darker where necessary, Blizzard does this now as well.
  3. Use post processing and color grading
  4. Mess with GI settings as necessary.

IMO, do not worry about the lighting until you get a fair approximation of the geo. Then get a first pass at the sky and lighting.

This looks straight out of WoW. I can’t tell the difference.

Looks similar to the real thing. It’s been a while since I was in Gilneas though. :slight_smile:

This is the reference image that’s why. THAT IS Gilneas…

@ OP, Use a directional light and a sky light, set the sky lite to have very little power, as well as the directional light.
Adjust the light colour of the directional light.
Use an exponential height fog. Alter the colour of the fog to somewhat match the scene here. Also increase its density, start distance and so on.

Which do you want? :You can’t do hand drawn and realistic XD

Hand drawn stuff is exactly that, you either hand draw it and scan it in, alter it in Photoshop, or hand draw it entirely in photoshop.

For more realistic stuff you could use cgtextures.com for source images, manipulate them however you want.

The art style can take a while to get how you want, it takes time and effort. That being said, I do’t see anything overly complicated in any scenes ive seen of this place (Don’t play Wow btw)

Landscape, low poly static meshes, simple materials, lots of fog, really cloudy sky dome.

So I’ve decided I’ll just form the landscape as best as I can since I have no idea how to turn an .obj into a heightmap, my new problem is that I can’t get the foliage color to look the same as the grass material below it, Blizzard managed to do theirs perfectly, probably because they aren’t working with highly detailed foliage. So anyway, I’d like to know how I can grab the color of my landscape and use it for my texture, don’t just drop a link here to some other topic, because I’ve seen those topics, and I’ve seen how they don’t explain what freaking nodes they’re using, a guy showed me how to do it awhile back, but … I can’t get in contact with him anymore. so DONT link me to some other topic where they explain how to do this, but don’t explain the nodes. - or they expect you to figure out how to do it, just with attaching an image of their material setup.

Here’s an image of how things are looking so far, trees are straight out of speedtree, the lighting of the scene is very bad, and I’m struggling over all.
Side by side comparison; game is on right, UE4 is on left

You need to adjust your specular on your materials to remove that shrink wrap look.

Adjust your directional light as i said in my previous post, turn the intensity right down. Perhaps even use a blueish colour for it.

Doesn’t have a high amount of fog either.

This sort of attitude will do you no favours.

I’ve never tried, but couldn’t you create a heightmap from an OBJ by baking the model onto a plane in Xnormal or something?