Last Day Before Vacation

UE4

Today may be the last night I can get some work onto this piece. Replaced all the temporary assets with semi-working ones and made a tileable texture along with other things. During volunteering at the con I will be thinking about this and what else to add into it to get the "squatting" look that I have in mind.

Spiral Dream: A New Project

UE4

This will be a tinier environment than the last few I have made but I still plan to shove quite a bit of life into this piece towards a kind of story that I have going in my head. Sadly, will not be able to touch this for nearly two weeks as I will be on vacation.

Even if I will be away from the computer this baby will be rolling around in my mind!

Another Environment Completed

UE4

Textured the last set of props and sprinkled them all over the environment. I think I will be able to move on to the next project once I am done volunteering at Anime Expo and going to Comic Con. While those events are going on I'll dwell on the next two pieces to test something out.

The upcoming project I plan to push my lighting capabilities and utilize the layered material system for the whole mini environment. It should be relatively quick to make in comparison to this but it is in preparation for the sci fi concept art that I want to tackle.

Forward march!

Nearing the Finale

UE4

Textured the last assets that had temporary colors, fleshed out the level a bit more, and built production lighting for this. This piece is nearly done I think just have to post online and see if I get any feedback before I may call this one done.

Texture Updates and Lighting Changes

UE4

Changed the lighting around again and think it is getting closer to what I am wishing for it to be. I got around to texturing the large atlas for several assets and continuing to get them fleshed out. Only a handful of other tasks to do before I post another update on facebook.

UE4 4.8

UE4

I upgraded the project to 4.8 but sadly it crashes on occasion when I import or auto import changes to meshes so this may be a bit slower going till I figure out what the hell is causing that. I ended up turning of fDFAO, as even though it was a bit optimized, is too much for this scene.

New Discovery with UE4

UE4

I now understand why textures from dDo did not sync up with what I saw in UE4. According to Gametextures.com I need to adjust two texture maps after importing for the materials to take advantage of the PBR pipline: uncheck sRGB on roughness maps and to flip the green channel on normal maps.

The past few projects I wondered why the lighting was not working correctly on any of the materials I made and was at a loss at how to solve it. With this understanding I think I am getting closer to mastering the PBR pipeline and can push the realism further ahead!

Background Elements Galore

UE4

At some point the Kite Demo assets fully loaded onto my project and I managed to start populating the background part of the environment to situate it into a forest area. Now I need to tackle the potted plants that are meant to propagate the interior space.

Readjustments Everywhere

UE4

Used Marvelous Designer to create the curtains and adjusted several other assets in the scene. I'll spend time to adjust the materials to really sell the realistic lighting I am shooting for.

Next major thing is probably converting the glass to stain glass as loading the Open Kite Demo into the project was a mistake. My PC sadly locks up each time I attempt to open a file from there so the prospect of trees and other background elements is a no go.

Lighting Adjustments

UE4

I adjusted the lighting as I found I was not a fan of the general look of the environment. I'll keep playing around with it till I find something that fits the piece. Added a few more props into the scene and will continue that for awhile.

Texturing the Book Atlas

UE4

I took a week break about to play Witcher 3 to properly detox myself after the art test. During that time I went and worked out the atlas for all the books that will encompass this scene. Finished unwrapping the books that I had modeled and placed into this scene but will require more books to scatter about. Luckily the atlas will make this easier to accomplish.