Heya.
I wanted to present some of the insights in making of my UE4 "Unhinged Swamp" project.
Beauty shot below.
The original Artwork by John Avon below.
Mood and Accuracy
The focus was the mood.
It is not the most technically advanced project and I never intended it to be one.
I wanted to see how close I can get to the original art that I enjoy so much.
Accuracy was another issue. I knew I will not model every branch. That much was clear. Starting the project I made some decisions and I just stuck to them for the rest of the project. I knew composition was vital. At the same time I decided to change the resolution.
That meant that i will have to make up some stuff:) Highlighted in orange below.
I really enjoyed this project. By the time I finished it I even named the two trees at the forefront:)
If you think that is a bit over the top than I can only say it helped me to sty on track with what I want to evoke.
Some parts of the original picture were also close to pitch black. So there was the opportunity for some creative Ideas.
To do that I decided to play with the shape of the bushes on both sides to better illustrate the my story for this picture.
Workflow
Workflow was pretty default.
1.Blockout in MAYA
2.Quick import of the very basic shape to UE4
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3. Some Composition and whole lot of lighting.
I think it is interesting how much was done in these first days when the energy is high and excitement is bursting!
Entire project from start to finish took 11 (after-work) working days.
MODELLING THE TREES
It was way more important than i originally predicted. Initially I was convinced that just by getting a rough shape and composition I will be fine.
apparently I was very wrong. Especially the people who knew the original artwork were very particular about the shapes.
Eventually I had to model some of the trees in MAYA first before getting started with the SpeedTree.
Maya blockout below:
Agression tree modelling in SpeedTree below
LIGHTING AND COMP
I would like to thank the Michael Kinsey and DiNusty's Empire for providing me with the insightsin to Volumetric Clouds in UE4.
(Link at the end of the article) The Volumetric clouds appart from being "volumetric [SIC!] are also much easier to control.
Thanks to them i managed to further strengthen the comp by giving the clouds delicate directionality.
The directionality is complimented by the natural composition of the picture. Trees were very carefully placed to created the circles below.
Compositional circles of the foreground
Compositional circles of the background.
POST
This effect was forther complimented by the post process material that inncreasingly desaturated the picture with the distance and also lighten it up a bit. That was obviously accompanied exponential height fog. The effect is subtle but fits the general idea for the picture.
Simple PP material below:
Color grading I made with Photoshop by exporting the custom LUT.
The only thing I want to mention here is that artist should not be afraid of desaturation.
When I am desaturating I always am afraid that my picture will be less "punch". The truth is that overly saturated pictures are hard to look at and the grays are often the secret sauce of the picture. It is possibly my biggest takeaway of this project.
FINAL WORD
To sum up. I would like to stress that I feel like in the industry we are very much focused on things that we can do.
When it comes to this project, it was very much more about the things I could observe.
Special thans to Izabela Lubon https://www.artstation.com/neurotic_duck
She helped me to troubleshoot the my colourgrading.
Further special thanks to entire DiNusty's Empire Discord Channel which is full of amazing artists who will really help you with your artistic and technical struggles.
LINKS:
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/KzYA/dinusty-volumetric-clouds-in-ue4-tutorial-content