My first attempt at UE4

[Lewis Garrison]

Hey everyone.

This is my first go at UE4. I basically used this project to teach myself the basics of the program. It depicts the elevator lobby and reception area of an un-built office space my work is designing. There's lots of room for improvement but I'm interested to know what you think. I'm normally a daily 3d Max Vray user so making this over two weeks time was very fun challenge.

 

Cinematic:

 

Virtual Walkthrough:

[carlostenorio]

Hi Lewis,

 

looks good!

 

I see some technicals things that might be improved like:

 

The light map resolution in some areas like the Air Conditioner ducts.

 

The difference in polycount between some assets like the table and the chairs.

 

Some pieces didn't have craftsmanship, I mean construction details and that look a bit odd when you compare models.

 

A better shader for the glass will help.

Are you using sphere reflections capture?

 

And personally, the bloom and the lens flares effects are a bit high for me.

 

A tip is that unreal sometimes is ok with a huge amount of polys. So always try to optimize your models but don't be afraid to push the polycount to gain better silhouette.

 

If I can help, just let me know.

 

Good Job!

[Lewis Garrison]

Thanks for the tips Carlos!

As you've probably guessed some of the better assets were purchased while others were copied over from Max so the optimization isn't quite there. I'm still learning what steps to do in Max to make the furniture work for me in unreal.

I struggled a lot with the glass shader! I followed various steps and tutorials but kept getting weird refraction issues. I'm using Cube reflection captures.

[carlostenorio]

Yep, that's what I thought about the optimization

 

Remember that UE is a game engine so is better if you follow up some game creation techniques.

 

If you have time try to learn a bit more about game asset creation.

 

This link can help to get a general overview of the process: http://www.cgmasters.net/free-tutorials/what-to-know-when-creating-next-gen-assets/

 

I mention this because the workflow Max/Vray is a bit different.

 

If you are importing non-optimized models you will have a very large scene at the end with performance issues.

So try to keep that in mind and optimize everything you do.

 

 

Regarding the glass material you can try this:

http://i.imgur.com/4hbPEii.png

With a sphere reflection instead of the cube.

 

 

If you have questions let me know!

[Lewis Garrison]

Second attempt based on a project in our office. Again built quickly over a week during free time at work. However this time all of the furniture are optimized purchased models. Didn't bother with the horrible un-optimized stuff I was trying to copy over.

 

[carlostenorio]

Hey Lewis, looks good so far!

 

In my opinion, there is some room for improvements on the lighting and the texture side.

 

For the lighting, I think you need to increase the lightmap size on the floor to get better shadows and integration.

 

Probably increase the quality of the bake might help too.

 

From the textures, I made an image to try to be more clear about the issues I saw.

 

Feel free to ask if you have questions.

 

Greetings.

 

[Lewis Garrison]

Thanks Carlos! I'll look into this.

[Devin Johnston]

Lewis was the base model created in 3d Studio or a BIM program like Revit? How long would you say you worked on this from beginning to end and what were the render times like when you were done?

[Lewis Garrison]

It seems my previous reply was deleted or didn't go through? oh well.

 

I built the model from scratch using 3ds max in about a day. Since I knew I was importing into Unreal I took the time to properly optimize objects and uv map while building. This saved so much time once in Unreal. Then it took another day importing into Unreal Engine setting up lighting and materials. I then spent about 2 days importing pre-built furniture tweeking materials and lighting and adjusting the post process volume. If I remember correctly the final light bake took around an hour. Setting up cameras and animating in Matinee took no time at all. Running the animation took maybe 3 minutes? All together I spent maybe half a day making video including editing in Premier. The whole thing took a little under a week. That's me working on it alone while working on other projects in the office.