House/Shop Project : Skysphere and Unreal engine

 Sky sphere

I decided to add the sky sphere on the last minute before I finish my work after checking the learning material. I followed the tutorial and first start off by making a sphere. 

Create a sphere

Inverting the Sphere

Going in photoshop, I created a gradient of the colour that would match my shop’s aesthetic and add in details before exporting it as a texture file.

Sky process: Base colour with gradient tool

Sky process: adding clouds and stars

Sky process: test to see if the colour look ok with the shop

Add texture to the sphere and export to Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine Process

I import the model from 3ds max to UnrealEngine4 with folders separated for textures, materials, models and lightings

adding models and materials

Adding the Skysphere and enlarging it to frame the shop

I was a little bit confused about how the lighting works and how to adjust it to fit on my building. The lighting likes to adjust itself whenever I move the camera going from dark to full brightness. I found it a little bit difficult to find the right adjustment because of this and decided to let it go and do as much as I can.

I only add lights to each window and under the doors to make it seems like the light slips through the crack.

Adding lights 1

Adding lights 2

Fireflies addition

Creating material for fireflies (the same technique used in the chest project )

Shop with fireflies

As a prefinal picture of the shop, I decided to make fireflies and add them to the scenery of the shop. However, when I press play for the fireflies to appear the framerate drops and the screen is very pixelated more than I wanted as a screenshot to my final project. The fireflies will be in the files but won't be shown in my final beauty shot.

Final Piece

Close up of the baked goods

I am so happy I finished this project! I am not sure how much I did wrong without realizing as I am still getting used to the unreal but after doing this project I did improve a lot in using 3dsMax. There are a few difficulties with switching controls from Unreal to 3ds but apart from that. I am very proud of myself.