Environment projects
The hobbit home
Originally, I wanted to concept a character design in 2D and then have their home/environment made in 3D. I wanted to make a tea maker and have their design based off an animal motif (like Rinotuna). It was a very fun exercise and after gathering my references I have made design;
the Moth Tea Maker
Once the character was completed I swiftly moved to the hobbit home. I felt that since the feelings I wanted to evoke was serenity and peace, I thought that the Ghibli style would help with the themes of this project.
I created some textures in Painter for the house and was ready to get started in Unreal.
I was quite nervous on how to do all the simulations and lighting. So I followed these guides to help me with the project:
Meadows: Creating Stylized Nature in UE4 (80.lv)
ArtStation - UE Stylized Grass Environment
UE4 Breakdown - How I create grass for my indie game Lucen - YouTube
Z-Up Normals: Stylized Wind Blown Grass – Jess's UE4 Tutorials (wordpress.com)
However, after my first attempt at making this. There were a lot of issues I came across. It didn't really work the way I wanted it to come out. I took a break from this project and came back around a month later or so to ask some critiques from the Club (the discord server).
After getting some feedback and buying the Lucen Unreal Tutorial, I was able to make vast and significant improvements leaps and bounds beyond what I thought was possible.
One big change are the clouds. I first followed the Level 80 article that I linked above for the skybox, however I opted out after getting feedback and found this panning tessellating cloud from this:
ArtStation - Realtime Clouds Shader
After more refinement and adjustment, I got adjusted the lighting so it can be a little more dynamic and added some trees to add some visual interest as well.
Final Render
Textures used in the project