Creating Environments in Unreal Engine | Project Feline Devlog #28

[@RaymondCripps]

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[@Terszel]

Something abt the double jump seems off. Not the animation i think just, like when im zooming through a level when do i know to double jump vs scale a wall? I wanna go fast but that requires level to guide me on the best paths to keep my momentum, but double jump is completely my choice of when to use it, and it slows down that fast pace by making me choose between movement styles when really i should only focus on the different paths i can take. In mirrors edge you have options like scale a obstacle (fastest) vs run unobstructed (kinda fast) vs use a device like a door/run a slower path (slowest) and finding where i can scale the wall or chain together multiple walls and bounce between them to move as fast as possible is much the fun of running through the levels. Adding double jump onto that to, now i have to think - do i double jump here or is there a secret path that i can scale to not double jump Just my brain thinking, game looks great still

[@justsomeguywithaforeheadmu6209]

Dam seeing this game turn from a single asset character and a piece of bank mesh into something beautiful.

[@Danidev]

Atmosphere looks great man, looking forward to hearing the soundtrack and seeing those Gabby particles

[@windzyboy6445]

@@BRBergman Just use Cascade or Niagara

[@MastermindAtWork]

@@windzyboy6445 It's a running joke

[@Henry_c1]

Yo its dani, hi

[@ZenithZeroChannel]

Nice rhymes, man Here's a milk 🥛

[@Paul-Marmet]

*Gabby particles* ... I mean yes, technically?

[@yona9798]

One common way to achieve "that bloomy look" used in anime (especially movies and artworks) is also changin the colors (like, drastically) when drawing lighting. If something gets darker it should get more blue-ish/purple-ish, if it gets lighter it should get more yellow-y. The color palettes themselves are also extremely important. Other than that, yeah there's sometimes a lot of bloom, especially in Shinkai's movies.

[@Cyliandre441]

You could increase the source angle and soft source angle of the sun, that makes the light more moody and prevents those overly sharp, blobby shadows. It also makes the lighting more painterly, in my opinion.

[@RaymondCripps]

Thanks, Timon!

[@Cyliandre441]

@@RaymondCripps You're Welcome 😅

[@lasauceart]

Most AAA parkour games use a "guiding" color like red in mirror s edge or yellow in Uncharted

[@lawrencelawine9082]

Highly agree, BUT those two games are very linear, which isn't the case here. Still it could help by guiding the player a bit. For example make sliding marks at walls or containers, showing the player that if you wallride there you are on a safe track. This also shows that other people of the world have been playing around there.

[@KRYMauL]

Lawrence Lawine if you wanted to go more toward Cyberpunk I would suggest using graffiti, but he doesn’t like that esthetic. He could potential use some pinks stripes on crates, though

[@kloa4219]

Anime also uses a grainy filter. That's why the colors aren't consistent when you colorpick it.

[@toafloast1883]

That could just be jpeg artifacting.

[@SoulXtremeCTE]

You can easily earn that with a Color Variation filter

[@lucasbosco3473]

Just one little feedback and suggestion on the shipping crates: they look very repetitive just with colors and even with all the ambience of the scene they are still very saturated which makes the player be distracted by the colors(in anime and manga they only use very bright and saturated colors when they want you to pay attention to something in the enviroment this is called focus point and is why only the characters have that "cell shaded" look, also most anime backgrounds are painted in watercolor and that's one of the keys to that look, modern anime uses bloom and volumetric lightning that's the term you are probably looking for). you should make a procedual shader that applies a mask where you can put some company logos(some of these crates have logos in real life) and implement wear and tear not only on the logos but in the crates itself, this will help make everything distinct and break the repetition on the eyes of the player even if it's not final.(this shader shouldn't take too long to make unless you want it to be very complex.) You could also make a shader that randomizes the color of the crates based on like 3 or 4 input colors and the only textures you would need are a normal map, roughness and other masks instead of making 3 different shaders for like 3 colors for each crate, you could just get a lot of them colorized in one click. also, continue your work man, you are amazing and really creative! hope you stay well! :)

[@genesessilva3429]

Man. This is really... really awesome. Goddamn. I didn't know lighting could be used this way and neither make environments be so astonishing. Congrats, man. Really nice.

[@TUKMAK]

Bloom effects in a post process volume coupled with using the 'translucency' drop down in the material editor and messing around with that and adding FRESNEL to the material, I think could be your answer to achieving the soft bloomy look. Hope that helps some! Good video!

[@ddnava96]

Try studying the anime scenes better. You'll notice the shadows are not just darker shades of the same color, but usually have a slight blue tint. Lights look warm and shadows look cold. Colors are vibrant and shadows are not too dark

[@ArtofWEZ]

Nice, digging the style. I have similar style goals for my own project so it's nice to see you going through what does and doesn't work, sempai. So gonna buy this game when it's out.

[@dseniorfilm]

The lighting on Gabbie seems a bit too bright inside crates, like she's too saturated. Otherwise game is looking great so far

[@jemsyago7163]

It appears as if the shadows aren't being cast on her ya know.

[@crugg]

Agree

[@QuincyIsCrispy]

I think it's cause Cel Shading in unreal uses unlit lighting which is unaffected by other lighting. I guess to fix it you'd have to somehow get the world lighting data into the cel shader so it can properly shade the character?

[@crugg]

@@QuincyIsCrispy I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too hard. Just make the character lit normally and react to shadows, then use masks to apply cel shading to specific parts of the screen. I never used Shaders, but I'm pretty sure that masks exist

[@QuincyIsCrispy]

@@crugg Lighting the character normally just loses out on the cel shading effect, I dunno how you'd apply a mask that would achieve the effect

[@Parrexion]

The game looks so professional now with the textures and the lighting. Really looking forward to the sound and effects improvements in the next devlog. Keep up the awesome work!

[@UltravioletNomad]

My God, the watching the ridges of the shipping crates ripple as you speed through is mesmerizing.

[@SadTown99]

It’s mind blowing how much you’ve accomplished all by yourself 😵‍💫 Proud of you dude 👏

[@Gamejesters]

I love it when i see these devlogs pop up in my notifications. They're really inspiring!

[@maxcoy1771]

Can't get over how beautiful the map is looking as it comes together

[@AvisSky27807]

Your devlogs are so organised and clear in showing your goals, how you went about things, and the results of the efforts. I wonder how long it takes to make them, they're really good.

[@Lugmillord]

Wow, the lighting makes this repetitive level setup (object-wise) really suddenly look exciting. Really getting the most of these few models there, buddy! Good job.

[@paru-san]

This game is starting to become so beautiful! One way to maybe get the bloomy soft colors is to have your models have plain and unshaded colors and work with the color correction post processing effects to change them a bit. Also one thing that I noticed is that it feels the character wants to go fast, but some parts of the level make the character stop or slow down dramatically. If this is desired, great! But see if you can find out what kind of experience you want the player to have and design your levels around that. Want the player to go fast? Make the level in a way that the player always moves fast! Keep up the great work Raymond!

[@MintyMarshy]

Gosh your project feline devlogs are such a inspiration to me! Your videos make me so inspired to make my dream project but i have no idea how to do game development! Im sure i shall figure it out one day!! Keep up the devlogs i am so going to buy this game when it comes out! It looks super fun and pretty!

[@AngelEpinoia]

You are proving that making a kick ass game, that matches the AAA quality experience, is 100%possible to be made by one person, so impressed!

[@0zux45]

It might sound unreasonable, but i think it could work, so hear me out: if you have a filter which is too performance hungry you could train a neural network on it to significally speed things up (like DLSS). as you can feed it images from the game it would be used on, it doesn't even have to guess that much and you have unlimited ground truth objects (which makes it training a lot easier)

[@TimeWisely]

Hey raymond, you oughta check out Dynamic Bones! You can use them to make your character's tail and hair move more naturally, this may tax on performance a tiny bit, but it'd look really good! (I believe dynamic bones are present on UE4, i work in Unity so i'm unsure, sorry.)

[@fantastico69]

the game is getting VERY GOOD, congratulations, you have a lot of talent, and the ability to grow, keep it up

[@kolupsy]

The map looks pretty cool. Already excited for when the actual gameplay design drops

[@Y2wray]

Post processing definitely plays a huge role in anime production, especially 3D production. A lot of anime tests done in UE4/Unity rely heavily on Post Proc to emulate effect "passes" like bloom, light gradient (that slight blue/cool color tinge you see, whenever sunlight hits an outdoor scene), etc. Sounds obvious, but it really makes the difference in the end. Also, since Quixel is free for UE4 users now, I'd look at some ways to stylize some of the sun assets to get a bit more of that texture realism, and look into material setups to get a lot of that shadow/specular soft look done easier. Haven't fooled around with it myself yet, but seen some cool stuff around Artstation with what people have been able to achieve, with just the base UE4 tools, and some scan data manipulation. Keep up the amazing work, Raymond!!

[@s1ndrome117]

This looks so good! but i can't help but be bothered by hard looking shadows. Hope you'll make more progress towards that! good luck on your project, can't wait to see it finished :D

[@brunoo_dgs2195]

man the game is getting really cool, compared to a few months ago it already looks like a totally polished game. I wish you good luck with your work :)

[@Kurohisaki]

dope af. your work is inspiring man. makes me want to finish my character sheets and start sculpting new and finishing my current models to move on down the pipeline even more. keep it up.

[@Paint0077]

Hope your game turns out how you wished for ! Great video .

[@Enny_]

Honestly I really live this devlog series keep it up Raymond can't wait to okay the final game

[@Toria_T_]

That looks absolutely amazing! I can't wait to see where this goes!

[@NitroGlyde]

Y'know, I used to not like the low fps animations on Gabby, but they've really grown on me. Makes her, and the game itself, look unique.

[@Rivershield]

Thank you for sharing your development proccess. This will help me a lot

[@KittydragonASMR]

This looks so cool! Cant wait for the next video

[@Skeffles]

This lighting has really improved the atmosphere of this game!

[@vegillito]

Looking beautiful, love the anime look. Looking forward to every update 🔥

[@idc2120]

Just a suggestion to fix the overbright "cel lighting" on your player character when in interior areas. This occurs because your character is using an unlit emissive material, correct? And is caused by the eye adaption/exposure change when in low light areas... (because the emissive intensity hasn't changed but the surrounding light has). If you divide the emissive result by a node called "Eye Adaption" and plug that into the emissive input on your material as a final step, you will maintain a consistent emissive intensity regardless of the current exposure.

[@RaymondCripps]

Thank you so much for the specific advice! I will implement this straight away, appreciate the tip!

[@idc2120]

@@RaymondCripps No problem. All the best!

[@m4r_art]

You should add a lower edge/ corner animation, when she jumps from the edge of a low square upward to a static *oomph* that pushes her forward

[@eagleeyeedit]

The game is looking fresh 👍

[@jokered1133]

I feel like you are getting more and more comfortable working on the project, It felt like you were a but lost on what to do or how to go about doing it (I have no idea of how you do things because I’m not as talented as you are), but I can tell that you know how to take the next step, your approach is really good, you try and do one thing let it go, do something else, return to it later, making 20 half baked things is better than polishing 1 thing because you’re not shipping the game tomorrow. Idek if I’m making sense but I’m very optimistic about your project and excited to see what’s coming, I think you’re in a spot where you can just work on levels, props, and even enemies. Extra suggestions that you probably read a million times: One thing I love that you added is rail grinding and I think you have the right idea of how to use them, unlike the sonic series where they place three rails in a straight line and have you playing subway surfers for a bit, I would love to see an interactive element that you can add in maps which are related to movement or something, maybe a slingshot or hover boards, another suggestion is stealth, maybe you can hide under tables or inside portable toilets or even go full metal gear and hide in a box.

[@dragynjumpcinema7271]

This is really starting to shape up! I would love to see some speed dash effects on Gabi, or some smoke puff up on landing, but whatever you make, I'm looking forward to it!

[@decb.7959]

I'd make the sun yellower, and have softer shadows. Try making the bounce lighting / ambient cubemap an almost blue/purple grey, to contrast against the yellow sun. I'd add subtle lens flares and god rays when outside. In some examples I looked up, the clouds have a bluish tint at the edges. Maybe add some chromatic aberration and speckled graniness. If it's possible, try drawing a subtle darkened outline on everything using the depth buffer.

[@llechium]

I think this environment would go really well with the final product of Gabby's animations. Imagine animation smears in 3D!

[@bledsoefamily6309]

Game looks awesome looking forward to it coming out!

[@mutcholokoW]

Damn, I remember watching one of your devlogs some months ago and got surprised that a single person could use Unreal to develop a game alone. Because of that, I decided to pick unreal up, and for the last four months I've done my first game ever. It's a psychological-horror game, called Aerial Dust. I was pretty satisfied by the result, and so were my friends :) Anyways, just want to thank you for making me realize all of this ^^ thanks a lot, can't wait to see Project Feline finished :)))

[@windzyboy6445]

This is looking great! In my Unreal ventures, I hope I can eventually create something up to this quality!

[@HarryYese]

Awesome! I suggest experimenting with less reflective surfaces for the shipping containers. Great video!

[@soulite2574]

An effect that ideally could be mirrored is the use of indirect lighting aka ambient lighting. I’d recommend tweaking the shadow color to more fit the sky color, which would give sun lit areas a worm look because of their relationship with the cool shadows something that appears often in those kinds of painted bgs

[@AFE-GmdG]

This Game looks better and better each time!

[@2NE2_that_guy]

Man when I see dvs like this I get more excited when I get a pc

[@simonlane6368]

Dude is making a ton of progress!

[@lowellcamp3267]

As in your description of the look, you may want to experiment with simply cranking up the bloom strength (and possibly turn down the radius). It’s also worth looking into painted specular highlights: many of the backgrounds shown have a speckled, glossy fringe (especially when backlit).

[@PyroPhysicsGames]

Raymond(2:13): human by nature are drawn to well lit areas Me(sitting in dark room with closed curtains , in the middle of the day ): i don't think so

[@AddGaming.]

Hmm- maybe you could try making the objects emit a dim light. The gloomy look in the animes stems from the reflection of the incoming light that all materials naturally have. So maybe by experimenting with that you might achieve something similar looking

[@RaymondCripps]

Luckily I think there's a property for that in the settings, I believe the effect you're talking about is "bounce" or "indirect" lighting.

[@neongreggyyt1115]

@@RaymondCripps wounds more like bounce lighting

[@-emir5484]

Well, aim for sharper shades in grass or flowers and softer shades for buildings and trees and whatnot. Like you said, moving things are celş shaded to think about what moves in the envinronment too. Aim for a similar style in both static and movable objects, but make the static one more detailed and soft. This is all I can say ^^

[@yogeshj7240]

It looks so alive ❤️ I love this sm

[@deprilula28]

Just wanted to mention baking lighting is actually a bit slower at runtime, as there are now texture taps for the baked ao. The only thing that will be faster is that static lights will no longer need to be calculated, but they won't work at all outside of baking anyways. Stationary lights will still be dynamic for the moveable meshes, and moveable lights will stay the same.

[@gamingbuddies1137]

can't wait for the full game to be out

[@emanuelkozerski8331]

Wow, this game is looking gorgeous already. Think that some concrete regions could definitely use some Mirror's Edge 1's colorful style, designs/ and architectures... Those definitely guides the player's view towards the level. Btw, looking forward for the game :)

[@trapshooter]

I think something that is missing is making the shadows less dark. If you notice your environment shadows are almost 90% black and if you compare it to the anime environment you are referencing they avoid them, and they also add a subtle blueish tint to shadows

[@susiloadiwibowo2228]

Amazing, so inspired 😱

[@theswedishgoat]

Two ideas: 1. Introduce godrays and in addition add a smudge texture over the camera. Looking at the anime clips you have included in the video, there is some interesting lighting effects going on that i think this could help emulate 2. Add the outline trick you gave to gabby, to boxes and other foreground objects.

[@btarg1]

Decals are really useful, I think that graffiti, puddles, metal scratches and arrows could look great in this game.

[@vagabondart9999]

Holy shit i love Unreal. The sky option is incredible. You're one of the main reasons I chose Unreal over Unity. Keep up the good work man!

[@Blueboyrave]

Arc System games (which I believe are like the golden standard on anime visuals on games) have painted backgrounds. A technique I've seen used in some production (tekkonkinkreet comes to mind) is to do a isometric painting of the model, and project the painting onto the model (and do some tweaks later). If that's the look you're going for, perhaps it could be worth experimenting with that

[@Crashsune]

Looks absolutely fantastic, always look forward to these! Have you ever considered using crate color/saturation to guide players throughout the levels as well? Think a less on the nose version of the red in Mirrors Edge.

[@JM-Games]

The closest anime looking effect that most games use these days is via post proccessing and cell shading, it's very easy to go overkill with it and make it look cartoony so you have to find the balance.

[@falxie_]

Great work dude!

[@misternarwhalart]

Looks really good man

[@HarryYese]

This is both giving me Portal 2 and Mirror's Edge vibes and I LOVE IT!!!

[@smiley8574]

My opinion: it's TOO COOL! very inspirational

[@bottinogames]

It might be more shader work than you're willing to do, but one thing that might achieve a similar result is fading into the Kuwahara effect using the depth buffer, so far off things look oil paint-y, but it doesn't apply to close up objects. This could also be used to mask out characters from the effect. This would have the same effect as in anime, where more attention is given to the foreground of the painting, and the background gets rougher.

[@narigavo8269]

Glad i got the discord notification.

[@thechonkulisrift6586]

I feel like you should make a rocket booster effect for the double jump/air dash. The effect could be the same direction as the direction Gabbi is moving, that way it really gives a sense of propulsion. You could also experiment with a slight motion blur when she is moving really fast.

[@legacythegame]

Great update keep going!

[@emptytomb4967]

perhaps some foliage would achieve the anime atmosphere, since like light, there's a natural grounding effect that adds balance to the man made crates.

[@amakaugo7657]

You can make the clutter interactive

[@thomasmann4536]

I love those devlogs. You really got a lot done man! However, there is one disadvantage to baked lighting: Memory. Since the light is baked into a texture, it needs GPU memory to read. Now, in your case that might not be an issue, but when you have a lot of high quality textures (e.g. foliage, rocks) you can run out of memory very quickly.

[@crugg]

Man all those Kimi no Na wa clips make me wanna watch it again

[@DeeJayHyuga]

Besides having the cel-shade be a material on the player character. Make the cel-shade a post process. When you add a post process volume in unreal, you can set a material to it which will become your cel-shade one. You change set your player to us the post process and it will become cel-shade. This works best because anything that you want cel-shaded, you will have to make the asset to become allowed to use it. So you can light your season the way you want it going for that anime look while keeping you cel-shade on the character.

[@Akkaren79]

I feel like the textures are a bit to uniform and clean. Maybe try applying a subtle oil-paining filter or something alike directly to the textures. Also, I'm sure you are aware of it, but not applying any shadows to Gabby atm looks weird.

[@bevel2334]

Beautiful!

[@prakesh2904]

I think one way to achieve the anime-ish look would be to have less falloff on the shadows. Overall it looks amazing

[@dylan6386]

Your characters moves that reminds me a lot of Koich from my hero academia vigilantes: his slide and glide quirk is pretty dope

[@hanac5586]

This seems so fun

[@lukasny8676]

as someone who is studying at university to become a gamedev, this is really inspirational!

[@bamfyu]

Woah, dude, this looks awesome 10:20 how about letting the boards here be a bit of an balance act? Or is that not possible because the lighting is baked?

[@RaymondCripps]

Would be possible, but I didn't add it in time for the video. A physics constraint actor should do the trick.

[@bqas777]

i think one thing that would help for now is a temporary custom stylized skybox. hand painting some clouds that fit the style of anime that your going for would really help sell the overall style compared to the photorealistic, washed out default unreal skybox. wouldnt be anything permanent of course but would make it all fit a bit better

[@victfv]

You could set both bloom strength and threshold to a low value. That way you'd have bloom in the whole scene, but it would be barely noticeable. You could also do something with eye adaptation, using post process volumes to adjust when you're inside or outside.

[@mosch9360]

A few ideas: In my opinion the Character should have a (greater?) booster/thruster effect on the shoes when its sliding on a wall. It should show that the characters weight is somehow supportet because currently the character just sticks to the wall and doesnt drop or reduces its hight while sliding. (feels a bit weird to me- because of the physics -> no downwards movement of the character) I dont know what your future ideas for the Maps are but i think you should include some moving Objects like Birds, a crane , Plane People(workers) just to create the feeling of a living world. (could also be things to dogdge) Keep up the good Work and thanks for sharing your experiences.

[@Lexxaro]

Maybe add some level of detail into your map, so the player has more refrence on where they are (and it would also make it look less like an endless container-scape)

[@swordflash854]

Gabby look hella anime in this and i, keep up the good work

[@hamdaman3593]

Im literally seconds early

[@RaymondCripps]

Benjamin is speed

[@hamdaman3593]

@@RaymondCripps the flash

[@foxxxtheworst]

I'm following your project and waiting to play the demo, as a novice developer. I'm also following several other developers from AAA to indie and most of them are less focused on the visual style than they are about the game mechanics. For what I see, and please don't take it as critique, your game needs mechanics! It needs enemies. Won't it be interesting to see the like of turrets or drones shooting at gabbie, while she jumps around? :)

[@HunterLawson_GameDev]

This might already have been said, but I think baking some basic ambient occlusion maps would go along way in making the style you are going for. :)

[@jobusenpai9763]

I'd say for anime, a big thing is difference in foliage versus structures. you can usually tell foliage is usually a color drawn in an area then different shades in same color tone (cool greens for grass and such) used to depict the blades of grass or leaf bushels in a tree and such, but the different from that to the buildings is big and key. building can be super realistic to an extent, anime usually has very saturated color, but the foliage is a nice difference to try and capture, and the artistic feel away from realistic looking architecture

[@AceHardy]

💥

[@Y4K3D0]

Hey your lighting is really awesome ! Maybe try getting some info about volumetric lighting, I'm not an expert but I think it could help you finding that warm and soft effect on the environment and give it a cool looking anime touch.