To begin with, I started from this concept, courtesy of IO interactive:
I began by first doing a BSP blockout of the area in UDK. This was done roughly, as was the lighting. At this point I thought it prudent to add in some basic blockouts of the key assets from 3DS max, all unwrapped and lightmapped so I could texture them later. I lightmapped them to 64/64 grid, so I could have more versatility when it comes to texture size. I added in some UTBots to represent the characters in the scene so as to get the scale correct.
Next up was simply adding more to the scene and tweaking the lighting. I tried to compose it as close to the concept as I could, but of course a lot needed to be changed.
I added a tileable set of textures to the BSP. The walls needed to be very sparse, so I used a bit of photo overlays and ensured they tiled. Also ensured every surface had a lightmap resolution of 16.0 across the environment.
More meshes and lighting experiementation. I also added the first textures, the columns, which were architectural and therefore important for the composition.
Tried to make the scene brighter, and also added some textures! Since the environment I had chosen had a lot of repeating assets, my workflow for the filing cabinets was to create one 4-drawer cabinet, with the drawers sharing UV space. Once this was unwrapped/lightmappped, I could alter the geometry to create different variations easily that I could texture the same way. The same workflow was used for the dividers.
In the below shot, a user of PolyCount pointed out that I could use a skylight to colour my shadows, therefore ensuring that my shadows weren't completely black.
The next shot was where I began to really go to town on the lighting. I placed the Skylight first, set it to a dark-brown colour and then added bounce lights that didn't catch shadows to simulate the atmosphere of the room. The striplights were adorned with spotlights which shone down onto the tables. It was at this point I realised the huge mismatch between the colour of the support columns and the walls, so I altered the shader to account for that.
Now we were getting somewhere! The lighting had a lot more contrast and much deeper shadows, however a problem I faced was the light from the much brighter back room leaking in and interfering with the shadows from the ceiling on the top. I tried rebuilding BSP to cover any gaps and later attributed it to the radius of one of my spotlights.
I added more meshes this time and used post-processing to tint the scene a more earthy yellow colour. I continued to add textures, at least one texture a day, and often I would redo a texture if I felt it was a bit undetailed.
More lighting tweaks, eventually allowing me to solve the light leak issue. I continued to add blockouts and texture at a steady rate, with big assets first and smaller assets as I kept going. In terms of modelling workflow, I had all the assets in one 3DS max scene, where I was able to get the proportions and sizing right in respect to one another. I also used this workflow to combine the textures of smaller assets into one texture sheet for an inexpensive solution.
Experiements with the lightshaft shader in this update, which was basically a modified version of one of Epic's shaders. It was very rough, so in later updates I would tint it, add a bit more falloff and slight dust particles.
More experimentation here with the lighting and the lightshafts. I also had to make some desicions with regards to the set dressing: The environment was a busy police office, so there would need to be clutter, notices and folders strewn every which way. Stacks of police reports and wanted flyers helped show the office as being truly alive and busy.
The lightshafts started to make the scene here. In the shader, I took a fiber texture in Photoshop and multiplied that with the lightshaft's alpha, making the light appear more noisy as it fights layers of dust. Critique helped me to make the shafts look more natural.
More lighting correction here, though the scene appeared a bit too green. I also attempted to construct the desk fan using actual geometry.....needless to say this looked too blocky and would be more expensive, so in later updates I resorted to using good old alpha channels.
A friend told me about Bleach Bypass, a wonderful post-process shader by http://oliverm-h.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/udk-bleach-bypass-post-process.html. This allowed me to subtly accentuate the shadows in the scene, with a controllable parameter.
At this stage everything was starting to fall together and I was busy trying to texture the remaining assets.
Some assets that didn't demand detailed textures were assigned a flat colour with a specular.
At this point, i also decided to add more assets to the scene than was originally in the concept, such as fire extinguishers and folders.
More experimenting with the colours here, I also employed use of the DX11 feature Image-Based Reflections to try and put in the reflection on the floor as seen in the concept.
Other things I added after studying office environments was venetian blinds for the windows and a map of
Houston on the wall, with photos tacked to it with drawing pins. This provided a bit of story to the piece as well.
More textures and experiementing with making the scene brighter.
Added the remaining textures for key assets, experimenting with bloom and found that the bloom on the desk items was way too bright due to their white colouration. I remedied this in the end by placing large point lights with their own light channels in order to light the objects on the desk.
This was a shot with a moving light I used to try and simulate the shadows on the left wall. This is one problem I did not solve in the end, however, so the strong shadow on the wall remains absent.
The remaining shots below are just daily updates as to the end of the project. In them I experiment with different forms of lighting and tweak aspects of meshes and textures here and there.
My most recent update to the piece. In retrospect I learned a lot about lighting, texturing and set dressing from this environment, and its success, not to mention the praise and support of my friends and the online community, has made me feel a lot more confident on my next project. Thanks for reading!
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