Virtual Walkabout
Educational Prototype - PC
Virtual Walkabout is a photorealistic prototype aimed to teach the audience on the Australian First Nations lifestyle & native lands. Walk around & broaden your codex to learn more information on flora, fauna & many more!
I had the opportunity to work with Virtual Songlies - Bilbie Labs, an Australian studio to create an educational prototype in 12 weeks using Unreal Engine 5.2. With the collaboration of the team, I was in charge of the environment design & being the project manager.
Gameplay Footage
Research & Prototyping
For this to be educational, I did research for flora and fauna for an accurate representation of the environment I was creating based off Ku-Ring-Gai in Sydney, Australia. Our research document can be found here on the side.
Virtual Walkabout - Research
Unreal Engine 5
Environment Building
I had the opportunity to build the environment based off Ku-Ring Gai. After researching its lands & native flora and fauna I was able to block out a closed off area with a river & small ponds within it. The rocks, trees & landscape materials were outsourced from Andrew Hamilton pack called Rural Australia.
Niagara
Here is my attempt of a fire Niagara particle system. To create this, I split the particles into 4 sections including; Flames, Smoke, FireDebris & HeatDistortion. Each section plays an important value for the realism effect I wanted to achieve.
Contributions
Photoshop
Decal Creations
To represent Ku-Ring-Gai, research showed the First Nations made cave arts for ceremonies & more. To reflect this & teach the audience, decals were made to be placed onto the rocks walls in the environment.
Foliage Material & Masks
Foliage material has been created for the combination into one for ease of management on UE5. These are then made into assets using Autodesk Maya which could then be painted as a foliage on UE5. These allowed for vibrant colors and small assets to be painted across the fields.
Flora Material & Masks
I created various flower materials to support the floral research including the base colour, masks & normal textures. The two flower materials that I hand drew included the Golden Guinea & Pandorea Pandorana flowers. Once these were done, it was ready to form into bushes/ assets on TreeIt.
TreeIt
For a 3D effect on the flowers, a cross effect was applied to this material after I modified the branches to resemble a bush. The leaf & branch textures were supplied from TreeIt for free. On UE5 the mask was applied for the shape of the flower to be in full effect.
To differentiate the bushes I made, gravity was applied to the flower petals so they have a hanging affect. This was applied to the Pandorea Pandorana, while the Golden Guinea did not have gravity applied. These also have the same leaf and branch textures on them to reduce file size and loading times within the game.
Decals
To portray the First Nations traditional art on the rock faces, I created these decals using Photoshop & UE5. These Red Hands are significant as they represent the warriors in their tribe & are a place for ritual areas & celebrations.
Theses worked well as a Decal as it allowed for the cave paintings to appear more realistic & morphed into the side of the rocks. This decal is in a separate location as it signifies a play area for the kids to paint on the walls & a teaching ground.
