Add Materials and Textures - Week 9
Today I am going to be adding materials and textures to the environment and assets I have created.
Rather than adding materials and textures to make the buildings look realistic - I want to make the city look futuristic and sci-fi, using bright colours such as bright whites, blues, reds and oranges.
My main inspiration for this aesthetic is the city in Mirror's Edge and the way it uses lighting and the colour palette to give the environment a clean, crisp and futuristic feel.
These are some examples of how colours and materials are used in Mirror's Edge.
I am starting with the floor - currently the floor is using a gravel material - however, I want to have a much brighter colour and shinier material. I could have the floor as a bright shiny white, but after looking through the materials I noticed that there is a bright orange shiny material - I think it is actually meant to be used for a shelf or something of that sort but after trying it as the material of the floor, I really like how it looks and have decided to keep it that way for now.
Also the material has a pattern already on it which works really well with the sci-fi theme of the city. The shapes look like street panelling. It is a very reflective material which I think works well with the sci-fi theme and the general look of the city. It gives the impression of a very man-made area - natural ground would be a lot more rougher and matte, and the bright colour and shiny aspect together make it look very 'fun' and child friendly - something that would be ideal for a children's game.
In Maya, when I was creating my assets, I assigned different materials to different parts of the buildings - this is useful because it means now in UE4, it has already created different materials that I can edit and change.
I am going through the materials and changing the colour so I can see which parts of the assets they are attached to and then renaming them accordingly so it is easier to keep track of which materials are which.
I used lambert as the base material and changed the colours to make them bright, and then added the material to the buildings.
For the Skyscraper, I decided to use different shades of blue, with the lightest shade at the top. I gave it an orange base so that the windows (that are reflecting the blue from the other buildings) would stand out. The Skyscraper windows are one of the only parts of the assets that I haven't given a plastic looking material - I placed glass in them, but made them highly reflective.
I made almost everything a plastic-type material and gave them different shades of blue, with some oranges and greens to create pops of colour. To give the shops on the first street more personality, I had added signs and images. They are bright and colourful to match the rest of the cities aesthetic and show that there is a variety of businesses here.
I added some more detail on some more of the building and added a 'main square' area.
I added a lot more things on the buildings here - I wanted to make it look like it is a very busy area with lots of signs and adverts - inspired by the main squares in New York and Tokyo where there are signs, billboards and advertisements everywhere you look.
I also imported a fountain that I have modelled and a monument. I experimented with adding lots of different types of materials to the fountain. To start with I was adding materials like clay or marble, as they look the nicest on the fountain, however, those materials don't fit well with the rest of the buildings or materials used. I didn't want to make it look plastic like the other buildings as I wanted the fountain to stand out - be centre-piece or landmark for the level.
I found that I liked the look of the material Hex on the fountain, which is a shiny, futuristic-looking tiled material. However, the original colour was a very dark grey, so while I liked the material, the colour didn't fit. I changed the colour to a light blue colour, which I like a lot more, and is the colour that is used on the fountain in the picture above.
The very top of the fountain is using a metal burnished steel material - a shiny reflective surface would reflect the water and other buildings well. I like how this looks and am happy that I am going to keep this as the material for the top of the fountain.
I created 3 cylinders and one cone to add water to the fountain. For the bottom of the fountain, I made a flat cylinder and added the water lake material - I changed the colour to make it a much brighter blue to make it fit with the bright colour palette of the level.