Production Lighting

UE4

It took 12 hours but finally finished rendering the scene with production lighting, removed some lights and adjusted the skylight to allow for darker areas in the scene. I shifted the chairs around to break up the symmetry and finally solved why the fps was tanking: it was setting the DFAO occlusion max distance back to default of 600. Apparently having set it to a far higher amount I did not account for the hover text warning against that, now the fps hovers from 40 to 60 fps which is phenomenal for how complex looking the scene is.

I now know that the method I chose for the material setup may be what I use for the foreseeable future.

Throne Room Feedback

UE4

I got some feedback on the lighting of my environment and decided to experiment with a far brighter source light and adjusting the AO to not be as washed out as it was in previous renders.

After some deliberation I decided to convert the chairs and candle holders back to individual meshes with LODs instead of merged as one actor as the DFAO was not rendering properly. Apparently large objects are a no no as it works best with individual meshes that are not too large in terms of screen space. The scene is still GPU heavy but that is part of using DFAO to get the shadowing effects I am looking for.

Another Project Completed

UE4

I think I can call this baby done. I've learned immensely from this and this is the 2nd project in a row I tested out an efficient shader network that utilizes channel textures and parameters to keep material count low and use mostly instancing to get the result I desire.

The main issue I came across was the fact that DFAO in this scene was GPU heavy and in future projects I'll need to reconsider using it or find ways to somehow optimize the scene while still having the option of enabling it. This was also the first time I tried Merging Actors and for the most part helped in keeping the draw count manageable for this environment.

Onto the next project!

Reworked Lighting

UE4

Added in gothic window frames into the scene and in the process of adding the last batch of assets into this environment. I adjusted the lighting to be a bit more dramatic than previous iterations and placed in some god rays for artistic lighting.

More Textured Props

UE4 

UE4

I managed to fit the scaffolding and one of the fences into an atlas that I had already made! Sadly I was not able to fit the chandelier into there so it'll have to go into the 6th atlas for this environment which means room for a ton of other props.

At this point I may turn to playing around with more dramatic lighting for the scene to help push the mood or do something with it.

Throne Room Texturing

UE4

Refined the textures for the majority of the assets and have a handful that still needs better textures. I will soon be doing another pass of assets to add to this and will continue on optimizing the scene by adding LODs and possibly doing some blend materials on this business!

A Different Direction

UE4

I decided to change the color of the walls and other sections of the environment to give it a freshness and so far am digging the place it is at. I started the base texturing for the assets I've added into the level and still need to do way more to get it to a point that I feel it needs to be at before I can move on. This piece will be a huge learning experience for sure.