Arbor Vitae - UDK Scene [WIP]

    Hey guys,


    About a month ago me and PhilipK decided to do a little collab for Unearthly Challenge, any excuse to make good art is a good excuse. Unfortunatly there's not a lot of entries this year, but we'll still finish it of course, we're having loads of fun!


    So the idea is here is that Humans have colonized this planetoid and are in the process of creating an atmosphere similar to planet earth by using an atmosphere processing station. The air outside is not 100% breathable yet, but it already allows for the growth of vegetation.The whole point of this facility is to create an atmosphere, so we want to push for strong elements of O2, water and greenery!

    The scene will be set inside one of the outer rooms of the station, more specifically inside one of the big control room, featuring a gigantic window with a beautiful view to the outside world, which from that angle you'll be able to see the other end of the complex, natural terrain and the sky. We want to make use of bold colors and staying away from the same old desaturated look you typically see in sci-fi, we're also set on staying away from gritty/scary as much as possible and instead try and make the space seem like it's livable and looking almost inviting. I started out with a concept to get the idea of the visual language we would be going for, I'm taking very strong inspiration from Doom 3 and Halo 4.[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/lthu7F6.jpg] But then we decided let's mix this style with COLORS, almost like mixing a Doom meets Mirror's Edge and have a child, PhilK did this amazing paintover of the blockout:[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/JbxoFQJ.jpg] I started making the modular textures and assets, walls, floors all that shit. Everything on the grid, texture included.[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/vngEWVl.jpg] So I can just chop the assets very easily like this, and they all fit together so we can create many variations and maybe expand the level later on.[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/tkn4YmP.jpg]   
    While I was doing that, Phil made an awesome blockout of the scene, using modular pieces already and started modeling the middle main area, which should be the focus of the scene. Needless to say it has that awesome PhilipK style that we love all over the place! >DSo, whith that here's our latest WIP pic with all my stuff and phils put together with the new lighting. We have two weeks to wrap this up, still a lot to do but man these next two weeks will be hella fun! [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/un2jhUw.jpg] Deffo more to come, stay tuned Hurg people!
      :::EDIT::: Adding the final scene to this first post, feel free to check the rest of thread to check out the rest of the WIPs. Guess we're calling it done now. I'll try and put together that breakdown asap and I'll then need to clean the package and release it for anyone who wants to fly around the scene. Thanks Mapcore, Polycount, Jordan Walker for releasing his scene and allowing me to properly learn UDK, Quixel team for making nDo2 and dDo tools, and everyone who helped us with feedback! You helped it get much better! And of course, PhilipK for kicking so much ass, it was an honor to do scene with him, this guy breathes talent! [Blocked Image: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2833/11025882695_e05112cffe_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot1 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3741/11026095733_dbf828b64e_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot2 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5540/11025979286_262ee8d0fb_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot3 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3666/11026094253_9b3565d53d_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot4 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7455/11025880125_18b12435a1_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot5 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7292/11025977316_4be6e41491_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot6 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5516/11026035884_bc28c3e429_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_shot7 by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5474/11026092513_a6f1924267_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_extra_background by HelderP, on Flickr [Blocked Image: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5478/11025883215_a1478bb6cb_b.jpg]UC_HP_PhilK_extra_materials by HelderP, on Flickr

    Spreading love, I'd like to see the horizon line behind the windows actually, not just the mountains. So far this is easy to read, which i like!

    Sci fi shit <3
    thats why i love it, you can reuse texture all over the place - good choise !

    question: those 2 screens where you show Philips texture and assets cropped out of it, did you use any custom shit in renderer ?

    It's using a complete real time solution for this, the assets still have lightmaps and all that fun stuff UDK offers by default but they also have real time reflections and proper shading. Closest you can get to PBR with current gen tech (Although that screenshot is only NM+AO)

    I spent like a week working on that fucking master material, but I finally have a really solid mat to create instances and work with. All you need to do is plug your dif, spec, gloss and normal and tweak a few parameters I've exposed in the instance as well, such as vertex painting. (I've allowed for the painting of some moss and wet surface with dripping water, I'll show it latter)


    For the reflections It's simply reflector planes. When the scene is done we'll manually place a lot more and it will look much better and believable hopefully!

    Hey I think it'll help some once we've come a bit further kinda making sense of some of these parts. I have some ideas on how to do that. I think it's a valid point the middle stuff feels a bit generic scifi right now so good catch

    Also thanks for the feedback on the bg, I'm just now working on making that a lot more interesting, will be a lot more vast and should convey the idea a bit better of this being some kind of facility creating life on an uninhabitable planet.

    [Blocked Image: http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00466/wgq2aekftqx9.jpg]

    i'm thinking about this spot here is that chromatic aberration used VERY nicely ? or jus light looking like that in that spot ? after you finish this shit pliz make a material break down.
    So you're saying you didn't tweak the renderer in any way just work on materials it self ? fuck it just look too damn clean as for UE3, and i'm dead serious, any ways i love that screen by itself !
    and again question, if you are using only real time solutions, so i figure only dynamic lights - so why UE3 not CE 3 ?

    and small hint, outside the windows over those hills you have large free sky, make it look very sci fi, give it like 2-3 moons or some cool planets variations, something that all 80's sci/fi fan love !

    fuck i need to start working on my shit

    HP, that's fair enough. I just feel too many sci fi scenes have these random bits of machinery that server a random purpose other than looking like sci fi machinery. From the original paint over it feels like it could be a hologram projectory/holo deck thing.

    knj, no no man, there's deffo some post processing enabled. I thought you were talking about the mats only. I'm using the same techniques I used on my previous scene for Post. (Very very slight chromatic aberration, vignette, a color gradient, LUT and of course filmic tone-mapping) I'm also gonna turn on lens flare, camera dust and a couple other neat things when we're done with the scene.


    Vilham, yeah that's basically a holo deck big ass workstation. This is supposed to be a big facility that is creating O2, and that's like the main workstation for this wing of the facility. As long as that message comes across I'm happy. We'll try and make it look like a serves more purpose, thanks dude.


    Great feedback so far, so glad i created this thread!

    and this might be outside the box, but first think that comes to me when thinking about O2 are plants, maybe use some small plants to make it look more bio ?

    Quote from knj

    and this might be outside the box, but first think that comes to me when thinking about O2 are plants, maybe use some small plants to make it look more bio ?


    Absolutely, I allocated a couple days to make some vines and outside vegetation. If you look at my first concept you'd see some vines right on the outside of the glass, I still want to do that idea, I think it will help sell the scene a lot.


    I also wanted to make a small vehicle for the scene, like a little bot. But I doubt there'd be time, or if it would even make sense.


    Also, I want to have water on the inside, all around that main station casting caustics to the side walls.

    I would say I'm not totally vibing on the traditional philK orange/blue or the seriously halo4 vibes in either shot. I don't think the right balance has been struck yet, personally. Mirrors edge didn't do sort of generic blorange too much, at least not in that sort of a straightforward manner, and I think the halo4 style of geometry is so hard to do without seeming cluttered and messy and reinforcing the lack of purpose. I think the answer really does go back to asking yourselves, "when people sit around and talk about this scene, what actually are they going to refer to this scene AS?" If you say "generic pretty sci-fi area" that impresses way less than "hi-tech laser drill in a mountainous area"... stating the obvious of course, but my point is really that this decision will aid you in your visual design which seems a tad discombobulated for my eyes.

    Looking awesome, as we could expect from you guys


    What have you got in mind for the exterior? I'm sure you have this planned already, but an emphasis on water would be good (O² + water = greenery, sort of ).

    Quote from FMPONE

    I would say I'm not totally vibing on the traditional philK orange/blue or the seriously halo4 vibes in either shot. I don't think the right balance has been struck yet, personally. Mirrors edge didn't do sort of generic blorange too much, at least not in that sort of a straightforward manner, and I think the halo4 style of geometry is so hard to do without seeming cluttered and messy and reinforcing the lack of purpose. I think the answer really does go back to asking yourselves, "when people sit around and talk about this scene, what actually are they going to refer to this scene AS?" If you say "generic pretty sci-fi area" that impresses way less than "hi-tech laser drill in a mountainous area"... stating the obvious of course, but my point is really that this decision will aid you in your visual design which seems a tad discombobulated for my eyes.


    Thanks, that's some great feedback really! Definitely spawns some more ideas in my head for how to clarify some of this stuff

    As for the orange, I think we'll need to iterate on color choices a bit, but I do think the orange specifically is getting pretty damn worn out (even if I do like the warmth of it).


    I do think the work to the background will help this a bit, as you'll see the range of this facility and that it kinda creates greenery around the "pumps" in anotherwise dead desert landscape.


    An idea we were talking about was to show that you're actually in one of these main "oxygen" spewer towers and you can see more ones in the distance just like the one you're in. If we manage to sell that it's just of course halfway there as it still remains to make some sense of the actual machinery, I think some effects together with some more relatable details on those will help as well.

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