Bookscatter Script

UE4

I found a script that does what I need for this particular environment: take 3d models of books and procedural spread them out based off different parameters for a certain size book shelf. The script is solid and even allows for random resizing between two values, flipping books, and works better with more book variations. At some point will see where I can optimize as clearly the poly count shot through the roof.

Tileable Textures

UE4

Smacked some tileable textures into this business and some small props before venturing into a ton of book models slathered all over the area!

Art Test

UE4

I had to take a break from this project as an unexpected art test for a game company came up. Honestly it was probably the most pleasing test I have ever done to date; whether anything comes of it we shall see, till then continuing on this project!

What I took from the art test was that I should practice doing a mixture of tiled and atlas textures to quickly get the environment up and running. Maybe some project in the future I will return to only creating atlas textures first and then modeling it around that.

Start of the New

UE4

This will be a tough project as I will attempt to do hand painting with it. Not sure how exactly PBR will play into this but I may end up doing a fusion of PBR and hand painting. I did a rough test with the Miku model but this will be a long project in practicing something I rarely do.

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!