Eroding Temple - Better Light Than Never

ERODING TEMPLE

Student Submission: No

Credits to sourced content:
CONCEPT ART

ENGINE VERSION UE5.02

DESCRIPTION
Hi everyone! What a lovely challenge.
I wasn’t going to take part of this but I got inspired after watching Quixel’s 90 days. I’m incredible busy at the moment so I can’t justify to spend anytime on anything other than work. I’m actually building a little tool for Unreal which it came in handy here :grin:.
My wife and son decided to spend the weekend away so that meant I had 2 days (only!) to start and finish this project, not much but this is all I can afford. So I naturally went to Artstation for inspiration and I found this amazing concept art by and artist called Eytan Zana, I love how dynamic the image is, translating this into Unreal will be a real challenge, that’s what I signed up for!

eroding

THEME
Concept wise I like the idea of light being the source of power in this particular world and how it attracts and it changes you. (It does feel like Lumen gives you superpowers right?)

SKETCHFAB


I’m familiar with Sketchfab but I’ve never downloaded anything from it, I forced myself to use as much as possible from there. I complemented the set dressing with a few assets from Megascans. (All listed bellow)

DEVELOPMENT
This was the perfect opportunity to finally utilize Niagara and EmberGen, I needed:
1-Vortex simulation
2-Eroding particles FX

EMBERGEN


For the vortex I used EmberGen to generate the volumetric simulation, a force and some tweaks was enough. EmberGen was such a please to use, simple and responsive. I’ll be definitely using it again. Lots of potential.

VDB
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Then I imported the vortex I created into Unreal with this plugin. I ended up duplicating the volume, one on top the temple and another around the scene. I love how turbulent and chaotic the animated volume is.

ERODING MATERIAL
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Niagara is awesome, it can be overwhelming but it’s quite powerful. I just scratched the surface. Each particle is getting the colour from its material and then I used a UV sheet to randomise the look of each particle, then I added some wind and a bit of curl noise.

DEBRIS
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I ended up adding extra debris around, this wasn’t on the original concept art but at this point I realised I didn’t have to replicate it like by like. This made the scene a lot more chaotic. Yes collisions physics are enabled, it’s just one tick away so why not?

HDR MATERIAL

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For the sky I’m using a vector flow map that seamlessly loops the HDR texture. I used Reverie to create the material, texture and HDR, I just prompted it with a stormy sky and it gave me the right one. (Disclaimer: I’m the developer)

TIME’S UP!
That’s it, I wanted to add some more characters and maybe some close up shots but I ran out of time. I’m happy with the result regardless of the short time frame.
To be honest the hardest part was using sequencer, I find it a bit convoluted and not intuitive. I spent way too much time just getting frames out of Unreal. I was lucky to find someone Discord who kindly helped me to find the issue.

Can’t wait for the next challenge!


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CREDITS



26 Likes

This is impressive! There are so many aspects of unreal knowledge that really show off the power of Lumen and Niagara! Great Work!

This is amazing! The niagara particles take it to a whole new level!

It looks amazing! Great work :+1:

Thanks mate!

1 Like

Jeeeesee! Great great use of particles and vfxss!! Congratss! very inspiring

Cooolll!!

1 Like

Cheers, yeah you know, anything get the job done :grin:

Cool scene! Great work

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Thanks buddy!

Wow! In only two days! Genius! I’m amazed! :exploding_head:

What a powerful scene! Thank you so much for sharing the intricate details of your creative process with us. There’s something about having a small window of time to complete a project that brings the best out of us. Good Luck to you! :smiley:

1 Like

Thanks my friend, yeah it’s funny how we are more effective while we’re against the wall. You also learn more and faster.
It was great finally using all of these tools inside and outside Unreal and only challenges like this gives you the opportunity to do so, I also like to share my experience to demystify and encourage other devs to start using everything that’s available to us.

Thanks!

1 Like