Whimsical Forest

Unreal Engine 5 - Blender

This stylised themed environment is a night based environment I made with Unreal Engine 5, Photoshop & Blender. This project is an individual project dedicated to learn & enhance my skills as an environment artist.

This project is dedicated to show my learning progress of Blender & foliage development which has also being submitted to The Rookie Awards 2023.

My submission for the Rookie Awards can be found here:

Fly Through

Grass Foliage

Grass Modelling

Here is my attempt at make a more optimised & game ready grass foliage. My first attempt seen in Jiggle Escape was too

clunky & as it was 3D assets it caused too much rendering making it a heavy process for PC's to run. For this grass, I made it with a 2D plane & made it on UE5 so it matched the color of the landscape so it blended nicely with the different shades in the landscape.

Wind Material

The wind material was made on UE5 & applied to the grass, the same functions were also applied to the flowers material however had a slower effect to create a depth. I love the ringed effect

seen blowing across the grass as it creates a scenic story which I'm aiming to achieve. The color of the ring is set to match the lightest color used in the Landscape Material. The noise material was made using Photoshop which helped achieved the ringed effect.

Comfy Cottage Features

Water Material

Using UE5 allows me to explore & learn different aspects including making water through BP. For this I experimented with using the Single Layer Water Material function UE5 offers & added a normal texture for the distortion & waves. Having created my own water, I can now include a lake to flow through the scene and enhance the comforting cottage story.

Rainy Night Sky

To enhance the unique colors of the vegetation, I made a night sky with a purple tint & white fog. A simple moon was made to enhance the scene of midnight & allows me to learn how to make clouds for the night sky. A Niagara system was used to make a rain with splashes on impact. This allow allows for expanding ideas including clouds & fireflies

Fireflies

A new feature I wanted to learn was including Fireflies using the Niagara system. I'm allowing myself to branch out on UE5 features to improve my knowledge of Niagara. To achieve a fading effect on this, I made a translucent material & applied a texture allowing for this to change the gradient when exposed. This was then applied to a Particle Effect with a yellow tint to create a glow perfect for fireflies

Flowers Foliage

Various flowers were made to further enhance the story of the scenic environment. I used Photoshop to make these flowers with the line tool and gradient tool. An alpha mask was also made with Photoshop which helped masking it in UE5.

Once the image was created on Photoshop, it was then added to Blender on a plane & cutout to make individual flowers. These were then adjusted & indented to show depth for the petals.

Once done the leaves were added to some of them & imported onto UE5. The same wind effect used on the grass was applied to the flowers as I don't want it to be a static asset.

Trees Vegetation

A new approach for making trees was using an app called TreeIt. This gives the user a lot of freedom when creating the trunk down to the leaves generated on the branches. In the future I plan to model my own trees in Blender however, it was an opportunity to learn a new program for this project. The leaves were made on Photoshop as seen below, I created a variety of different leaf shapes & one that is flowers. The leaves material on UE5 have a faint emission to give a mystical story.

Red Umbrella Asset

Made a red umbrella to have lying on the ground with Blender allowing for me to learn about Arrays, Subdivision & Bevel modifiers. This was then textured with Substance Painter.

Tree Bark Material

Instead of having a bland dark brown color for the tree, making a material on Substance Designer was a learning experience. This including learning about Levels, Blends & many more.

On Unreal Engine, I made it so green moss can be painted onto the trees surface giving it more a depth.