Berlin Apartment 2018 WIP 1 - Structure, reference and planning

Today I will start on a personal project based on an interior of a Berlin apartment I founf on Pinterest. The link can be found here : http://annabellkutucu.com/apartment-berlin-mitte .

The final product will be presented in Unreal Engine 4 as an interactive, VR compatible walkthrough of the space.

The structural asset will be created in 3D Max and brought straight to Unreal 4 for materials and lighting work. The various objects will be created in 3D Max for the basic model, sculpted in ZBrush whenever necessary and finalized in Substance Painter, with proper PBR textures created to be brought into Unreal to get the PBR material built and asset finally lit with Unreal's Lightmass.

The interactive part of this project will consist of the basic walkthough aspect, with the user being able to move around the apartment, changeable lighting situations (mid-day, rainy/overcast, night and dawn), adjustable TV with on/off switch, on/off artificial lights and material change for walls and floors.

The interactive part of this process will require the most research, since I am very familiar with Unity and C# for such functionalities, but Unreal with blueprints is still a new-ish workflow for me.

Starting with a basic V-Ray render of the structure ready to be brought into Unity, with the basic overview of what goes where.

Horizon Dawn Graphics Overview

Another great PS4 exclusive. A lot of similarities in the grapics when compared to God of War. The difference being that HD is more of a open world, which brings all the "features" that come with that, such as LOD popping, shadow distance issues, etc. All things considered, they handled it very well.

Even though it focus greatly on the open world gameplay mechanics, it does not skimp on the indoor areas. It takes advantage of these areas to showcase some great lighting opportunities.

The exterior lighting has great help from post-production effects such as occluded light shafts from the sun light, fog and bloom. The day in the day-night cycle looks standard compared to other games of this generation. The night time is where the exterior really shines. The art-direction has nailed the ambiance here giving an eerie feel that looks great while keeping things visible enough for gameplay, and dark enough for the right amount of shadow and other light source contrast.

The fog had to be set just right to give the sense of scale needed for the surrealistically huge creatures you see in the game, and provide also the sense of depth of the huge map.

Something else I really liked in the game was the map. Great color pallet and style used, made it a pleasure to look at and easy to find what you're looking for quickly. The icons and UI used is another story, and not something I can objectively review, but I found it a big hard to distinguish between the different icons for each beast I had to hunt.

God of War 2018 Graphics Overview

Analysis WIP!

God of War, Sony Entertainment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0u_kAWLJOA