Feedback needed on environment reel

Hi all,

I’m a relative beginner to Unreal Engine (a little less than a year using it but not always regularly), a traditional 2D animator, and am looking to create content to market myself as a 3D artist as well. I’m proud to say I’ve finished creating an “Environment reel” of 3 different environments that is finally ready to show off some of my Unreal skills. As a beginner, I know that inevitably as I continue learning there is a lot I could do in the long term to make this look better- more realistic, better lighting etc. but for the short term I am just looking to show this off as a starting point to show I am familiar with 3D, how Unreal works and am a creative person who can design within a 3D program. The main things I want to fix are:

  1. Things appearing from a distance, especially foliage, that just “pop in” as the camera gets closer. Abrupt and distracting.

  2. Similarly and specifically at around 1:13 during the desert sequence the light source also abruptly changes how it affects the environment as the camera rotates. I’ve tried some work arounds including moving the camera in a different way to get it to rotate around to show the house and also messing with the light source coming from the moon area (the light source itself is not actually the moon) but so far nothing has kept that from abruptly switching as the camera rotates around.

Other than these very obvious “abrupt” moments any feedback is helpful!! I am just trying to get those obvious things covered before showing this reel around to others.

Here’s the reel:

Environment Reel

Thanks Unreal community!