http://millansingh.com/312004/4046202/projects/desert-oasis-a-5-day-challenge
Deep in the dunes of Egypt, someone has driven up to perform maintenance on a communications antenna set-up near a beautiful oasis. The contrast between the sandy dunes and the vibrant foliage sets a picturesque background, accented by the contrast between man and nature.
In this project, I designed and constructed the scene using existing assets, I modified several large and complex shaders to add new features, I built the cinematic, and I created the motion graphics and scored the video in After Effects. Of particular note for the shaders, I added in the displacement to the water shader, added wind effects to the grass (and modified the look from cave grass to more “desert”-y grass, and I added in a new Wet Sand layer to the landscape shader for the oasis shores.
Special thanks goes to Luke Schloemer for the antenna model, and of course Epic for the awesome engine and assets!
The above shader image shows my additions to Epic’s water shader that was made for the VehicleGame demo. Their shader already had a very good setup, but it only looked good at a distance, because there was no real world displacement going on in it. So I decided to add in world displacement, using two sine waves on different axes and then multiplying that by a noise setup to give it a natural look, and as you can see from the video, it looks really good in motion, and the shader is fairly simple.