I now feel that I have completed the final stages of the Unreal scene to the best of my ability within the time limit. I have animated and rendered out some camera shots of the island design project. I had to adjust levels of chromatic aberration and bloom in some of the shots because they were too strong, but overall I am extremely pleased with my outcomes and input into this project. Please view a collection of rendered scenes, as well as clips from the game-mode of this scene.
All in all, these were the stages I partook in for creating the design project.
- Initial concepts– as mentioned in the first week of this module, the initial stage of developing this scene was concepting. I initially had several different environment locations in mind, but after discussing with my team we decided on making an island environment.
- Concept art– Although we ended up moving away from our concept art due to time constraints, the concept art was an essential part of creating this project, since it aided my initial direction and first draft of a scene.
- Landscape sculpting- in both my initial draft of my scene and the level that became part of my final outcome, the first step was sculpting the landscape.
- Water Creation- Using Unreal’s inbuild water plugin, I created an ocean, lakes, rivers and a waterfall. This provided a clear sense of the land and what could go within it.
- Texturing the environment- after applying the water, I was able to use the material i created with an unreal material blueprint, using textures freely available from Quixel Bridge. I used sand materials to create a beach, grassy and rocky textures to create the village, and a dirt path to imply a route available to the player.
- Landscaping- Using Quixel Bridge, I added assets like rocks and foliage to the scene. Especially around the waterfall and water’s start, these rocks give essential context to the scene, such as where the water is originating from and where the water has flown to.
- Placing assets- I was able to use a really comprehensive free pack from the unreal asset store to create the environment. The pack included modular houses, props, some foliage and some included vfx particles. I used this pack to create the marketplace area, a small beach, a village, and the singular house on the hill. I was also able to use this pack to decorate each of these areas, adding produce and potions to the market stalls, barrels and wagons around the town and campfires and lanterns to produce some light. I also was provided with some assets from my teammates, such as the lamposts I was able to place around the island, and the large wooden bridge. Adding colliders to the bridge meant that the player was able to walk across it to reach the hilltop house.
- Animating assets- After placing assets, I was able to apply a simple animation to the windmills that made them turn. Even this small blueprint adds a lot of liveliness to the village environment overall. In a future project, I would really love to add more environment animation and would love to include some character animation for a unique character.
- Lighting- I added point lights to items such as lamps and campfires to add some realism to the scene. I also adjusted the directional lighting in the scene, making the scene look as though it was late afternoon or early morning. I also added emissive materials to props that would give off light, to add a glowing look to the assets.
- Particles- I created water particles for the waterfall, adding a more stylised texture and including collisions for the particles off of the rocks. This really makes the scene feel more alive since the elements of the scene have some interaction. I also created a particle for the bottom of the waterfall, which made it appear that the water particles splash upon impact. I felt that this really added to the environment overall. I also added emissive firefly particles that the player can walk through, adding another element of life to the scene.
- Scene effects- I added bloom, lens flares and chromatic aberration to the scene, to further stylise the visual appearance. I think these details add a good finishing touch to the scene.
- Camera animation- I animated some cameras with the sequencer, highlighting some of the elements of the scene.
- Rendering- I rendered out my animated cameras, adjusting the scene effects as necessary with post-processing.
