Substantial Progress

UE4

I spent some time exploring what assets would fit along with the throne room and I've settled on a theme of a banquet hall. This will probably be one round of detail prop set up and will start texturing these guys and will see what the 2nd iteration will be.

Also first time in a long while that I've made LODs and have helped considerably with the small assets. I used Simplygon for this process and their free account helps speed up the work load!

Slight Iteration

UE4

I normally wouldn't be posting this often unless I made substantial progress but the previous entry in this blog bothered me quite a bit. I know it was the addition of all of the benches that blocked the way and detracted from the grand vision the original concept had, my interpretation anyway.

Onwards!

Design Process and SSD Magic

UE4

The past few days I ended up spending cleaning up the hard drives of my 'puter in preparation for installing the Solid State Drive that was delivered. In those few days I brainstormed on how I would flesh out this environment and tread away from the original concept and make this into a piece I would feel proud of.

I settled on placing elements that are from European cathedrals into the scene and break up the back areas further to element the sky from being dominant in this piece. It'll be awhile but I am excited nonetheless in fleshing out this baby!

Return to the Throne

UE4

Now that I have finished with the last project I can return to this with renewed vigor and fix the issues this piece had!

I will need to model more elements to fill up the space and update all the textures so the interior looks like it is actually textured. One of the critiques I had was that the environment at first was essentially too desaturated and I'll need to now go away from the initial reference concept and try to make this thing my own.

Updated the lighting, AO, and added a few trees to slowly flesh this out further.

Conclusion?

UE4

I think this will conclude this personal project for now. The last batch of assets are textured and I will say that this piece was taxing in terms of my computer power, dDo is amazing but the way it chugs this PC kills me a bit. Hopefully the SSD coming in within the week will help the next project: updating the throne room!

Base Texture Groundwork

UE4

Pushed through with the last bits of props that needed a basic texture foundation and am I pooped out. It was a grand experiment to smash in about 35 props worth of UVs into one grand atlas but thanks to dDo turned out better than expected; added in the Ambient Dust particle to see how that looked in the scene.

Now to refine all the textures and to add in extra detail props all over this business!

DFAO Revisited

UE4 with DFAO

Spent much of today rendering Distant Field AO for the scene and 4.7.2 has a far better version than the one I used for the Throne Room in 4.5. Colored me impressed with the latest engine update!

UV Glory

This baby took most of yesterday to unwrap 35 assets. I still have room to fit more that I have planned into here and will be adjusting the IBM uvs as well!

More Progress Yo!

UE4

Starting to get fleshed out but need to figure out how to properly have curtains that have slight opacity but still receive shadowing from the lighting. This will require further research.

Base Texturing Galore

UE4

I set in some more texturing onto major architectural elements and added in a bonifer tree from Speed Tree into the scene to help flesh out the general look of the environment. Still a ways to go and loads of time spent in rendering AO, World Space, and Normal maps for Quixel to do its magic.

Texturing the Office

UE4

Started texturing this today after spending a great part of yesterday setting up the rendering process of the AO, World Space, and Normals for several assets. This time around I will spend more time on how I texture this environment as I am trying to create a "dirty" look but keep it in a state of use. I struggle to understand it but maybe as I work on this and the throne room something will click.

Unreal 4.7.1 Differences

Doctor's Office UE4 4.7.1

Throne Room UE4 4.7.1

Today Unreal went completely free so decided to upgrade the project. However, I have no idea why but the reflections are far better than in 4.5 and I don't know why yet. I can understand the shadows being crisper since the shadow map limit has been bumped up to 2048. reflections though, that is a different beast.

I went and updated the Throne room and other projects and noticed the same difference with the reflections, I will now go back to that environment when this is finished with in order to also use as a portfolio piece. This is very snails pace with the doctor's office but after seeing the environments for The Order I have to attempt to reach that kind of quality with this piece!