VaM 1.x Any suggestions to improve my Kinky-room?

[UnknownPeasant]

Hi! I'm working on my first location/scene and are egger to get feedback from the community.
First of an disclaimer, so no one gets upset, this work will be a paid asset, it uses many of my already made paid-assets and takes a loot of time for me to complete.

Now to the topic at hand: I've created a gothic location and filled it with different devices but can't help but feel that there's more potential to this than just the devices that currently is present. I can add stuff directly to the room and even add animated Items/eye-candy to improve the feeling further.
So what would you love to see in such location? items to interact with? more details? please help me come with suggestions to improve my work!

The location is setup to have a gothic-feeling with candle-lights and a pedestal and throne as a centrepiece for the room, spread out in the room are different bdsm devices featured (hopefully i'll be able to provide present-poses for each device when I'm done)

lights and textures are baked to 2k images for better performance, so the scene should run smoothly.

and finally here are some screens of my wip:

 

[Electric E-Boy]

I am not sure what kind of feedback you want, so i hope i don't talk about things that aren't important for your asset (lighting for example, but you wrote you bake that in?). And of course it is just my own subjective taste and doesn't mean it has value.

My 2 cents:

I don't know if this is the final lighting or just to showcase the scene - if it is the first, i think it looks too cozy and plain given the theme. I would love to see more shadow or contrast.

I don't know if you want to animate your candles, but you could do this easily with FloatParamRandomizerEE controlling the intensity of an invisible light, could also help with the atmosphere.

Perhaps there could be some things hanging from the ceiling, like hooks or chains? Perhaps even a little bit swaying, different heights. But maybe the room is too small for that.

The walls with the windows and the cut for the painting look a little bit plain regarding the geometry without any further details. Also the brick texture seems a little bit monotonous, would be good to loosen it up with other elements or try a different one. Perhaps again some chains hanging there or some medieval tools. And the wall texture doesn't seem to have a normal map? That could help also with details. I guess it is about the balance between vertices count and texture work, and i think you want to keep the vertices count low so you could enhance that with better and more detailed textures.

PS: i think the most important thing is what style you are going for: medieval chamber of lust and pain, or a modern hobby cellar just simulating older times for example Or something like a dark church of forbidden pleasures etc. Then i would have different ideas for each.

 

[UnknownPeasant]

I am not sure what kind of feedback you want, so i hope i don't talk about things that aren't important for your asset (lighting for example, but you wrote you bake that in?). And of course it is just my own subjective taste and doesn't mean it has value.

My 2 cents:

I don't know if this is the final lighting or just to showcase the scene - if it is the first, i think it looks too cozy and plain given the theme. I would love to see more shadow or contrast.

I don't know if you want to animate your candles, but you could do this easily with FloatParamRandomizerEE controlling the intensity of an invisible light, could also help with the atmosphere.

Perhaps there could be some things hanging from the ceiling, like hooks or chains? Perhaps even a little bit swaying, different heights. But maybe the room is too small for that.

The walls with the windows and the cut for the painting look a little bit plain regarding the geometry without any further details. Also the brick texture seems a little bit monotonous, would be good to loosen it up with other elements or try a different one. Perhaps again some chains hanging there or some medieval tools. And the wall texture doesn't seem to have a normal map? That could help also with details. I guess it is about the balance between vertices count and texture work, and i think you want to keep the vertices count low so you could enhance that with better and more detailed textures.

PS: i think the most important thing is what style you are going for: medieval chamber of lust and pain, or a modern hobby cellar just simulating older times for example Or something like a dark church of forbidden pleasures etc. Then i would have different ideas for each.

thanks for the feedback!, its still very much a wip so the lighting is still far from done, I will try to add in some more contrasts. I bake the static shadows but still let real-time lights cast shadows on top of that. having flickering effects are a great idea and will probably be part of the final scene (but with my own scripts, no big fan of external dependencies). Everything got a normal map but they probably should be adjusted to be more visible, they are baked aswell so perhaps I could up the res on them a bit. Im trying to bake/optimize collisions and scripts as much as possible so my scenes load fast and don't break the computers that they are run on

 

[MacGruber]

Maybe I share some thoughts that went into creating my SecretRoom asset:

• The modular room allows creators to use it as they see fit. Various things are also customizable, e.g. allowing you to move the hooks up/down and of course you can add those beams everywhere so you can have them where you need them.
• Baked light means the light is fixed, it can't be adapted to the scene and placement of characters. But light is vital! If you want to bake anything, maybe a bit of ambient occlusion, but not more. Recommendation would be to not bake, but allow placement of lights in VaM. In combination with using SkyMagic for faked global illumination that actually matches your scene, of course.
• Some slow movement brings a world to life, so it does not feel dead. Doesn't have to be much, but that's why SecretRoom does have those swinging chains. Just a tiny bit of movement. If you use candles for light, you could do the same with some particle effect for flame and mild modulation of the light source.
• Adding detail props helps a lot, too. Ideally a room should feel lived in. Toys lying around as they were used just recently. Racks of equipment, ordered yes, but with a tiny bit of chaos, etc.
• Sound helps as well. If a room is totally silent, it feels dead, too. Depending on the scene that can just be SoundFX from the equipment or breathing or voice lines, but even a simple low volume music track can already help. AudioReverb is always worth a try, possibly set to "Stoneroom" in your case for just that tiny bit of more realism?

 

[UnknownPeasant]

Maybe I share some thoughts that went into creating my SecretRoom asset:

• The modular room allows creators to use it as they see fit. Various things are also customizable, e.g. allowing you to move the hooks up/down and of course you can add those beams everywhere so you can have them where you need them.
• Baked light means the light is fixed, it can't be adapted to the scene and placement of characters. But light is vital! If you want to bake anything, maybe a bit of ambient occlusion, but not more. Recommendation would be to not bake, but allow placement of lights in VaM. In combination with using SkyMagic for faked global illumination that actually matches your scene, of course.
• Some slow movement brings a world to life, so it does not feel dead. Doesn't have to be much, but that's why SecretRoom does have those swinging chains. Just a tiny bit of movement. If you use candles for light, you could do the same with some particle effect for flame and mild modulation of the light source.
• Adding detail props helps a lot, too. Ideally a room should feel lived in. Toys lying around as they were used just recently. Racks of equipment, ordered yes, but with a tiny bit of chaos, etc.
• Sound helps as well. If a room is totally silent, it feels dead, too. Depending on the scene that can just be SoundFX from the equipment or breathing or voice lines, but even a simple low volume music track can already help. AudioReverb is always worth a try, possibly set to "Stoneroom" in your case for just that tiny bit of more realism?

Thanks man! I love your stuff, it's really great and inspiring! Will take your feedback to heart and do some improvements based on it! Only thing that i don't agree with is the baked lights, coming from a game developer background I'd rather have most static lighting (with some alive elements) and better performance than all living lighting and on the cost of performance.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

+1 on what Mac said. Definitely stuff hanging from the ceiling, and maybe make the floor dirty. I'm not a fan of baked in lighting either.

 

[MacGruber]

and maybe make the floor dirty

Oh, right. Dirt decals! Just a tiny bit here and there, it does a lot.

coming from a game developer background I'd rather have most static lighting (with some alive elements)

I guess the question is whether you want to make a room that is supposed to be used by other creators for their scenes? Or you want to build your own scenes? Because IMHO, lighting should be tuned to a scene to bring out the characters to their best. Of course you could provide a couple of different light setups for your room, e.g. focusing light on different bondage furniture in the room for each variant.

 

[VaMStaff]

Hey there, moderator here. Just stepping in real quick as a reminder about advertising Paid content on the Hub. The appropriate places to do so are the Paid Resource forums (which receive an automatic post when you create your Paid resource), a post on your own Profile page, or in the paid links sections on our official Discord server.

We see that this post received some helpful feedback, so it won't be removed. But please keep in mind that a pattern of "What do you think of my upcoming paid scene" will be seen as advertising paid content where it shouldn't be advertised and the posts may be removed in the future.

 

[VaMStaff]

If you would like to run a poll about what users want to see in your future paid content, we recommend doing that on your own Patreon page or your own Discord server.

 

[UnknownPeasant]

awesome feedback guys, thanks a loot, will post an update when i've made adjustments according to your feedback!

If you would like to run a poll about what users want to see in your future paid content, we recommend doing that on your own Patreon page or your own Discord server.

Im gona be honest with you I got like 3 patreon followers and no discord so polls on there where never an option, im doing this as a hobby and don't have time to build a community or a solid following, the 10$/month that patreon nets me is just nice for an extra cup of coffee .

I where just looking for ways to improve (that's really what this thread is about) as im new to this and thought these forums where for feedback/discussion. But if it's not allowed I won't post any more threads like this one. Im sorry for posting here in the first place and you have my understanding if you delete this thread. It's a shame though as the feedback where really nice and in making my scene I also produce some free assets for the community.

 

[DJ]

Thanks man! I love your stuff, it's really great and inspiring! Will take your feedback to heart and do some improvements based on it! Only thing that i don't agree with is the baked lights, coming from a game developer background I'd rather have most static lighting (with some alive elements) and better performance than all living lighting and on the cost of performance.

Some developers include 2 versions, one with baked lighting and one without. That's always appreciated.