Final Stretch

LUTs and Post Processing

Creating the Look Up Table

After getting the initial lighting, I wanted to experiment with colour grading. For this, I took a high definition screenshot of my centerpiece, and then took it to Photoshop where I added multiple filters and layers to enhance or change the look of the lighting in the background. I then Applied the filter layers to a neutral LUT image and exported the new LUT as a PNG and imported that into Unreal Engine. 

Once the modified LUT was in engine, I changed some texture settings and then applied it to a post process volume in the 'colour grading' tab. This changed the entire environment's lighting to what I had in Photoshop. I wanted to take some of the orange out and and some more cold light which I feel like I was successful. It's not perfect at in my opinion, I feel like what I did wasn't really and enhancement, but more of a preference thing as I feel like some people could go either way, however, I prefer the colder lighting.

  Original    /    Colour Graded

Couple Renders

Overview

Overall, I am happy with the final results, but I am still questioning my lighting. I feel like I really need to work on my lighting. At the moment, I have a small spotlight lighting up the face of the sarcophagus as it was really dark, and you couldn't see much. This ius the cold light running down the centerpiece, however, if you look up, it looks really bad. If I had more time I would try to achieve a more effective moonlight flooding in effect, with 'moonshafts' coming down onto it. I kind of tried to achieve some god rays using the height fog, but I wasn't very successful in doing so.

As for the rest of the environment, there is definitely a lot of polishing I could do. I would have liked to create a better fire effect for the firepits. The candles could be a bit better too. The lighting on some of the candles aren't great, and there is no flame of wick so if you look too closely, it breaks believability slightly. I would have liked to add subsurface scattering to the candles too to simulate real life candles and the light glowing through it.

Texture and material wise, I feel like more instancing could have definitely been used. I feel like I didn't use tiling materials efficiently enough. For now, that's all I can think of and I have learned a lot throughout this project. I am looking forward to getting useful and constructive feedback for the future that I will take into consideration going into my future projects and work!

One big thing that I would adapt, is the decals. I would have loved to have painted my own symbols and scenes, like the inspiration I originally wanted to draw from, being Star Wars Clone Wars animated movie, when Anakin goes through his trial. That would have been really cool.

Things That Changed

Quite a bit has changed with my project. In the beginning, I wanted to have a table infront of the platform and sarcophagus, with jars, or a knife, or a staff placed upon it, but I decided to isntead, just focus on the main environment, and leave them as stretch goals which, unfortunately, I didn't get round to doing. I did however, create a fire pit as my supporting prop. I needed a source of light for my environment, so I instead focused so time modelling the firepit and candles that are practical assets, if you can put it that way. I also added a quick carpet to the steps and floor. I just felt like it needed to be broken up a little, which I think that achieves.