(UE4) Sci-fi Colony Bunk Room

Final finished scene and screenshots (see below and rest of thread for WIP shots):

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7557268/Unreal/SS2/Screens/screen_04_10_2014_a.jpg]

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7557268/Unreal/SS2/Screens/screen_04_10_2014_c.jpg]

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Old first post:

Hey all!

Been messing around in Unreal for a bit now, just trying to get my head around everything and I've also been wanting to learn a lot more about blueprints too, so I decided to start yet another generic sci-fi scene! Yay! I don't think anyone's done sci-fi in Unreal yet, should be fairly unique.

Seriously though, I do want to try and separate this from other sci-fi scenes a bit, I'm not entirely sure how just yet. I'm going for a kind of retro look, with the fake wooden panelling. Gonna try and come up with some sort of background story to kinda embed it in some kind of universe a bit more. Thinking of doing something a little System Shock 2, an abandoned space station and you have to figure out what happened. But the entire point of this scene is to just let me explore Unreal a little more, get used to the rendering, and learn a lot more about blueprints. I want this to be really interactive.

Here's a few blockout shots of where it's at. I've been working on a door and light sequence, so that when you open the door, the lights flick on one by one. Hoping to add some audio in too to sell the effect! At the moment the scene is quite small; just the one bunk room, so that I don't get too burnt out in the blockout phase. I may extend this scene a little further afterwards. Also, I'm thinking of changing out the desk area for a kitchen area to prepare food.

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7557268/Unreal/SS2/Screens/HighresScreenshot00001.jpg]

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With this scene I want to achieve the following:

-Keep everything on the grid so it is easy to swap out sections for alternatives. We did this a lot on Alien Isolation and it worked really well.

-Learn Unreal blueprint scripting! A few examples being having lights turn on when the door opens and turn off again when the player leaves the room, having the TV interactable and have it dynamically light the scene, and also maybe be able to open the window shutter and allow the sunlight in. Nothing particularly mindblowing, but just a bit interactivity which I haven't really done in anything I've worked on before.

-Experiment with audio

-Learn more about Unreal's rendering.

Cheers guys, please give any crits you can. It's all still very blockout so I'm willing to change anything!

Quote from Vilham

Someone spent too much time working on aliens

Lmao. Yep, I'm such a sucker. I started at Sony and started doing a lot more organic stuff and instantly missed doing sci-fi. I think it's what I enjoy doing the most! It's definitely a little Aliens inspired, but I do want to differentiate from it slightly.

I don't know if I'm really liking the placement of the wooden panelling. I think it looks ok, but the placement of it on some assets feels a bit random. I wonder whether to just use wooden panelling on the bulkheads with the lights, and also on the bottom of all the wall pieces. That might look quite nice, especially with the rubber on the bottom of each wall section. Kinda stole that from London tube trains heh.

[Blocked Image: http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/img/s1/v55/p1167296118-3.jpg]

Thinking about it, I quite like the idea of having concertina-style connections between doorways, almost as if the bunk rooms are detachable in case of emergency. Not sure exactly how that would work, might be quite cool if it goes airlock door -> concertina/connection -> airlock door. Hmmm. Kinda like this:

[Blocked Image: http://www.ice.org.uk/ICE_Web_Portal/media/Topics/underground/Moderncarriagecircleline.jpg]

eXodus - Yeah that wall is just blockout still at the moment. I'm thinking of turning it into a mini kitchen area.

Chris - Ooooh that does sound like a cool idea. Thanks man, I'm gonna add those to the ideas list. I do like the idea of having fake wooden panelling to give it more of an earthy feel. I want this place to feel like a believable place, not just a random sci-fi space station.

Thanks mate!

Haven't had a great deal of time to work on this much since my last post. I'm currently in a similar position to Minos, my mother in law is stopping with us til Sunday lol.

However, I have had an idea for the entrance of the bunk room. I'm thinking of making a sort of jetbridge kinda thing with 2 airlock doors. The idea being that these bunk rooms are modular and can just bolt on or off depending on what is needed, and can also be used as an escape pod. Should break up the room a bit and look quite cool as an entrance!

Cheers Andrew! Yeah agreed on the walls, that's what I've been working on when I've had chance. I've tried adding a little more panelling to the walls, along with some bolts too. Also changed the style of the wooden panelling to be a little more consistent. I've worked a little on the planet/skybox too, but my material shader knowledge is a little iffy so I'm stuck with the planet shader at the moment!

Need to get cracking on with this, but I'm not getting too much free time at the moment! Also, I'm aware that the lighting might be a little dark at the moment. I need to calibrate my monitors, I've no idea which one is correct!

(Excuse the crappy quality, these were grabbed using Windows Snip tool lol)

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Also, here's a collection of some of the modular sections so far:

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7557268/Unreal/SS2/Screens/modular_02.JPG]

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7557268/Unreal/SS2/Screens/modular_01.JPG]

Hehe thanks Pampers.

God damn those shots are really terrible quality. Time to stop using Windows Snip tool lol, so used to using it at work to grab quick screens of stuff, didnt realise how terrible the compression is.

I guess I am using similar modelling techniques (lots of tiling materials!), but in terms of architecture, this scene is nothing like Alien. I'm actually looking at a lot of Submarine and Ship cabins for my inspiration mainly. I think it's mainly the white panelling that gives it a Alien feel. I'm not using any kind of vinyl padding in my scene though

Hehe, maybe something like that'll be incorporated into the story. I was bored at work today and started thinking up idea and story behind the scene, and will be working to incorporate elements of this into the environment. Here goes!

Orbiting Planetary Engineering Facility Summary: An orbiting space station above a planet in the beginning stages of being terraformed. The space station is a base for the research scientists and engineers involved in the terraforming. They primarily live on this station, but also go on excursions down to the planet for weeks at a time in order to seed the planet with algae and other microbes, with the end goal of making the planet hospitable in generations to come. The station generates it's own gravity via its spinning superconductors below the station, and has the technology to create food (as well as having large stores from Earth), and also generates and recycles it's own breathable air. A large group of scientists and engineers left Earth 40 years previously, aboard a giant interstellar space station, in order to travel to the nearest star system to ours and start up a human colony in a different star system. However, Earth received a distress signal 5 years into the terraforming process. A single garbled message was received, and no other contact has been made since. Fortunately, since the departure of the original crew, technology has been developed that has reduced the large amount of time required to travel across space, but the time required is still fairly substantial. You are one of the crew members sent to investigate the cause of the distress signal. After waking up from 10 years in stasis, you are approaching the station, eager to find out what caused the distress signal. Purpose: - Primarily to learn Unreal 4 rendering techniques. - Learn basic Unreal blueprints (opening doors, turning on light switches etc) - Show a scene from beginning to end, showing all stages of production. - Release online for other people to learn from. - Investigate environmental storytelling. Inspiration:Alien, Bioshock, Ringworld, Halo. And here's another shot of a kitchen area in the bunk room. Not quite sure what I think of the white cupboard doors/drawers. Might change that to the same wood, but don't know if it'll blend in too much! Might try putting in some metal frames. [Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7557268/Unreal/SS2/Screens/screen_13_08_2014_a.jpg] After this, I'd really like to make the airlock you first enter, if this were a proper game. I love the idea of you coming out of stasis, donning your spacesuit, docking to the space station, and finding out what happened onboard.