[WIP] Realistic Forest Creek Environent

[MOTHERJAVA]

Busy as always! Just thought I'd show you guys what I've been up to...

This time its a riverside environment, within a Norther Boreal-style (to be technical) forest map. I'm trying to get things looking as realistic as I can, as per usual, and I do feel as though I'm slowly but surely progressing beyond the scope of my previous endavours, in this regard.

I tried to just grab a bunch of screenshots, so some of them might be similar, but I think they are sufficiently representative of the env. at this time.
[Some assets are placeholders, most are custom]










Next I may work-in somemore wildlife, a cottage type structure and some other signs of civilization, perhaps a canoe or two, as well as solidifying the direction and flow of the level design. Other than that, I'm really not entirely sure where I'll go from here, as I'm primarily a level designer (and a novice at that). Maybe you guys have some ideas?

As always, I welcome absolutely any coments, questions, thoughts, and espectially criticism, pertaining to ANY aspect of this at all. Everything helps!

[Chosker]

impressive
im just not too fond of the clouds. the rest is ace

[merc-ai]

Very nice. I'd love to play some Gothic-like game in such environment. Hunting wild beasts, gathering alchemy ingredients and simply sightseeing

[Private Tux]

Such a lovely atmosphere, forest view, deep river and mother nature in the springtime. Very artistic indeed and seems the clouds are pretty good. Keep good at it!

[rowan_moss]

looks almost exactly like BF3 - damned good job!

[Max Power]

Dope, but beware the video game complacency. The current scene is very low saturation which is common is games to sell the realism as opposed to accuracy due to lack of resources.

However, actually going outside results in beautifully high saturation environments. Plants are glowing with green, the atmosphere is an infinity of blue, and the sun cast a strong yellow/orange on the Earth.

Look at Bob Ross paintings or GO OUTSIDE to reveal how intense the full RGB envelopes the world.

http://www.wallcoo.net/paint/Bob_Ros...ys_300x300.jpg

Hiding behind reduced saturation is an extreme lack of realism. In fact, it's stylized surrealism.

Other than that, and the plastic trees, beautiful scene.

[Borland366]

awesome. one of the bets udk environment i have ever seen.

[DoomTobi]

awsome, but I don't like the sky. How many frames?

[TheAgent]

Gotta agree with MaxPower it needs much more saturation to look real. The trees have too much specularity as well. Otherwise its a good start.

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks for the comments guys. Im averaging about 35 fps on my Asus with a core i7 and a GTX 560M 3GB GDDR5. Though theres still a whole bunch of optimisations I can do to increase performance.

@Max Power and TheAgent, you guys are totally right and I'm very aware that real life is much more saturated than this. The task becomes replicating this full depth of RGB that we experience in real life, within UDK without making things look 'cartoony', which is all too often the result I have observed. Anyhow, Its definitely neccesairy here to increase saturation and I don't disagree with you guys on this. Ill work on that. Also, your right about too much spec on the trees. Didn't even notice that one.. easy fix at least...

also, Im not sure what specificly you guys don't like about the sky, but I'd love to know.

thanks for the advice! And feel free to rate this thread if you so desire..

[foxrenderfarm]

Beautiful environment,except the sky,because it seems not very realistic.

[Chosker]

@Max Power and TheAgent, you guys are totally right and I'm very aware that real life is much more saturated than this. The task becomes replicating this full depth of RGB that we experience in real life, within UDK without making things look 'cartoony', which is all too often the result I have observed. Anyhow, Its definitely neccesairy here to increase saturation and I don't disagree with you guys on this. Ill work on that. Also, your right about too much spec on the trees. Didn't even notice that one.. easy fix at least...

I'm not sure if these will be the right terms but, I'd say you're going for 'Artistically-Photorealistic' (as in, a somewhat artistic photo of a real thing) instead of Realistic (as in, what your eyes actually see). Having said that, don't get too close to Instagram

also, Im not sure what specificly you guys don't like about the sky, but I'd love to know.

I think the whole clouds look too much like a random perlin noise texture, and individually each cloud has weird shapes instead of being closer to either being a fluffy and round cloud (as stratocumulus), or a natural-looking high cloud (as cirrus)

[MikeClarke]

My first post here (and yes its a type of request) I tried out the water in UDK and i'm just wondering how you accomplished the look of the water you have achieved. The way it has a realistic flow and looks great along the edge with the smaller rocks. I saw a video on youtube regarding using a Flow Map and was wondering if this is what you've done. Any information/advice in how to recreate a similar affect would be greatly appreciated. I'm just starting development on my game and the first map is based on an island so I really could use a good water effect like that to help immerse the user.

Also looks amazing to me overall, agree with some of the comments regarding the sky but I think its just they are the lowest quality part even though high quality in themselves everything else exceeds them too much so they dont slot in right.

[ambershee]

You can build meshes and UV them in a fashion that would make them appear to flow also - this technique is more common because it doesn't come with the additional cost.

[MikeClarke]

In that case would the UV map need to be animated in some fashion, or scripted to rotate, im just curious if the same effect would apply near rocks etc. As I mentioned in my previous post I watched a video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1vFVGAlwk) and it blows my mind if I was able to create something similar for surrounding my island with some particle effects to create a shoreline and water spatter.

[MOTHERJAVA]

My first post here (and yes its a type of request) I tried out the water in UDK and i'm just wondering how you accomplished the look of the water you have achieved. The way it has a realistic flow and looks great along the edge with the smaller rocks. I saw a video on youtube regarding using a Flow Map and was wondering if this is what you've done. Any information/advice in how to recreate a similar affect would be greatly appreciated. I'm just starting development on my game and the first map is based on an island so I really could use a good water effect like that to help immerse the user.

Also looks amazing to me overall, agree with some of the comments regarding the sky but I think its just they are the lowest quality part even though high quality in themselves everything else exceeds them too much so they dont slot in right.

For my water, I didn't use anything as sophisticated as what you mentioned. Instead I just created a material with multiple panning 'normal' textures to create the waves and various tiled panning textures to create further distortion. I used this tutorial to guide me in making the shader: www.hourences.com/ue3-water-outdoors/

Hope this helps.

[MikeClarke]

Thank you very much I'll sit and read through it all this evening. Appreciate you taking the time to provide me the link I was googling alot last night and didn't find anything this thorough. Excellent job once again on the scene

[alvarofer0021]

Just beathifull

[MOTHERJAVA]

@ Chosker, thanks for the feedback as always. I think "artistically photorealistic" would be a good way to describe what I'm after. looking at it now, the sky is definitely a little too 'swirly'. I'll work on the clouds and try and get some more realistic shapes happening.

@MikeClarke, no problem, glad I can help. Something else you might be interested in is this ocean tutorial www.johnheeter.com/udk-ocean-now-for-download/ which also includes the downloadable project files,

and another tutorial that I've been meaning to take a stab at, which looks absolutely stunning and uses dx11 tessellation (its in German but you can use google translate) ulrichthuemmler.blogspot.ca/p/udk-ocean.html his work is top notch.

[MikeClarke]

Just wow, thankyou again so much that is 90% of what I was trying to accomplish right there. The scene itself it going to be an island with a rocky base/cliff edge being accessible to the player, but wanted a soft-rock/beach type area around the rest they can't access. Thankyou will get my hands dug into this right away!

[MOTHERJAVA]

Look forward to seeing what you come up with

[MikeClarke]

Will be a while yet, managed to get the affect "basically" working but not spot on so I'll spend some time tweaking it as I go to make it work exactly as I need. Will be sure to share pics when I finish messing with it.

[BmB23]

Now we're getting somewhere. That looks really cool. Kinda has that BF3-ish high contrast look to it.

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks for the comments. can't complain when something I put together is compared to BF3! more updates to come..

[MOTHERJAVA]

Updated first post. need opinions.. is it too colorful now?

[Private Tux]

Not that bad mate. Very colorful.

[Max Power]

Saturations are looking really good now. Good distance blue atmosphere and the reds/yellows coming out in the leaves now. Seems more natural, real. I'd focus on improving the lighting as this new shot is super dark. I leveled the image a bit in photoshop and it looked a ton better. Backsides of trees, even in a later sunset aren't solid dark. Some dark greens that fade into lighter violet in the distance. You've kinda got that, but the mid-range shadows right now are just too dark.

[MOTHERJAVA]

Thanks. Yea lighting still needs work. I think once I get that down, I'll do some final tweaking, add in a cottage I'm currently modeling, and make the water interactive, and then things will be in pretty good shape for a demo