A few current WIP shots, rendered entirely on Lumen with Epic settings around 25-30 FPS on RTX 4070 Ti if foliage distance being culled could gain extra frame rates.

Current WIPs
- Adding fog cards and / volumes 
- Shader that disables low roughness values around the distance mountains 
- Small water streams shader 

From the profiler stats
Shader stutters aren't counted. I found a huge frame time spike around 120.212ms when Derived Data Cache was being loaded (DDC IO thread pool), because I am loading this project from my backup hard drive and the culling enabled for a group of grass very close to the camera. I think it has to do with the shader loading speed or something similar. 

A few updated screenshots from recent PCG updates added biomes and the scatters are still basic, and currently working on making variations and more naturalistic clusters of rocks and other biomes.

Hey folks, 

I have been working on this procedural landscape project on Unreal Engine 5.4 for a while now, taking my time. I am here posing a few screenshots of my recent updates from the project. The landscape heightmap generated from the Hoduni exported each map for vegetation and landscape material. The landscape has a complex shader to spawn grass and other biomes on the surface, Also, I am taking advantage of the brand new PCG to generate biomes on the surface. 

Still, I am messing around with shaders, lighting and PCG to get the best possible environment composition I can achieve,

                                                                        Screengrab from Houdini

                                                Some feedback from the Dinusty Empire community that I received. 

                                                 OVERVIEW 

Added a few point lights around the scene to highlight certain parts and added a spotlight above the shop sign board to have a focal point, I have been working with path tracing with the scene although geometry tessellation won't be supported by path tracing at the moment, The scene rendered in RTGI, with RTAO and RT reflections were enabled, For RTGI I used brute force method to tracing the rays  

                                       

                                                                         Colour graded in DaVinci Resolve 17 

The screenshots from DaVinci Resolve 17, used EXR from Unreal Engine 5 to colour grade. Still, there are a few improper lighting and material tiling issues that need to be fixed.

OVERVIEW

A few more updates that I have made to my Working In Progress Post-Apocalyptic Street Environment including modular background architectures and a few more props creation for the set dressing, from the critiques that I received I had no focal point to catch the player attention towards the breakfast restaurant, however, the background architectures giving a sense of the restaurant is the primary subject in the whole scene. plus I extended the wall bit further and also added a door for the entrance to make the restaurant look more real.

  A few more updates that I made to the scene

  Modular distant architectures I modelled, screengrab from Autodesk 3DsMax

Although still there are a few texel density and  UV stretching-related issues are there, For the focal point I haven't added any significant lighting highlights yet, however soon I need to start working on that, my lighting pass has not reached yet. 

OVERVIEW     

My ultimate intention for this project is to push my organic environment modelling and texturing skills further, Since I am targeting a Last Of Us similar ambience the importance of lighting is mandatory, although currently, I added one directional light and many spotlights to highlight certain parts.

Initially, I planned only a procedural sidewalk modular asset itself rather than creating the whole scene, later I changed the overall goal of the project and started working with other assets. I gathered multiple references and started to work with them.

These all are the multiple resources that I gathered from different sources. 

For the sidewalk, I have created a complex Unreal Engine material to control Moss, Dirt and Water. The tiles material on the sidewalk was originally made using Substance Designer, however, I didn't use the substance material instance on account of a need to establish a flexible material system in the engine. The beams and manhole cover on the sidewalk were sculpted and baked with marmoset and then textured in Substance Painter. A hybrid game asset, Yes, for a model I used 8 texture samples and 2 material slots not a great idea for video memory and draw calls, although I want to push the quality this time. 

Procedural Material for Dirt, Roughness, Moss and Water, Concrete beam and manhole cover sculpted with Zbrush, baked with Marmoset toolbag and textured in Substance painter

  Concrete Beam and Manhole cover in Substance Painter

Substance Designer Tiles Material

WORKING IN PROGRESS SCENE

For the procedural sidewalk model, I put tons of effort into pushing the quality harder, even though there are a few more important materials and assets that I working with

   Latest updates from different angles

The material on the wall has two layers, stucco and bricks. Patches are made using a Noise node, and I can control the size of the patches not uniformly, a reason avoided a custom-generated cloud opacity map to eliminate the frequent appearance of the same pattern on the modular walls. 

  Noise node based brick worn patches (Unfortunately, there is no any way to pass a parameter to the node for having control via material instance )

Patch Generator 
                                           

The rubbles and stones on asphalt were sculpted, baked and textured with Substance Painter. In addition to that the ivy around the walls is generated using Speedtree, yet there are some tweaks involved to make it more natural. 

Along others a few important models that I have made so far,

Brick Edge damage sculpted, baked to low-poly and textured 

The signboard in painter viewport and Unreal Engine with reflective shader and dirt composite on top 

From the critiques I received, I am lacking in a few important composition essentials, thanks to the artists from Dinusty and Beyond Extend Community  

• A Focal point to contrast from the rest of the scene
• Desaturated materials and highly frequent brick pattern
• Brick tiling size
• Broken asphalt composition

Currently working on those critiques and other modelling and texturing polishes.