Hello Everyone! I wanted to show you my master´s degree final project, which consists in creating a full environment using Unreal Engine. I always wanted to design a steampunk style city, so I think this is the best moment to do it and to practice my skills as a game artist/environment artist.
Firstly, I gathered some images and concept arts in order to create a moodboard, then I continued with blocking the scene in Unreal. Here are some pictures, so you can see the process weekly and some of the assets I’ll be working on (modeling and texturing), being the train, buildings and vehicles the ones that I’ll be paying more attention to.
UPDATE: This week there has been a lot of work to do, I’ve been modeling modular parts of my environment such as windows, roofs, doors, pipes, buildings (low levels, second floors), etc and their respective implementation in UE. For now I assigned some basic materials just for visualize the level so probably the next weeks I’ll be doing some changes or adding more details to the textures, using decals or maybe vertex paint. For now, let me show you a picture of this week process:
Loving this so far, the yellow-circle windows are especially adorable and give a lot of character to the scene. Took a moment to go through your mood board and all I have to say is-wow. The building choices immediately caught my attention. They’re beautiful and dystopian(?) if that’s the right word.
Thanks so much for sharing your art with us here on the Unreal Engine forums and can’t wait to see more from this project!
UPDATE: Hi! Im back with new progress of my project; this time I kept doing some modular pieces (mainly walls and windows). I used a little of vertex paint with the ground just to try the textures, maybe In the next weeks I’ll be trying new ones to add some variations to it. But the main focus of this week was the modeling (HP/LP and Uvs) of one of the main assets of my scene, a steampunk train, here are some images of this week progress. Hope you like them!
So glad you like it so far! Thank you very much for your comments. Dystopian may be a good word to describe them! but also, my idea was to give a more “industrial” vibe.
UPDATE: Hello everyone! Im back this week for some new things to show you of my environment! I’ve been having some troubles with maya lately, so unfortunately I had to do some things all over again! Nevertheless I managed to finish this week progress with the results I was expecting.
This week I concluded the 3d model of the train, so as Uvs , which were distributed in 5 UDIMS and then I proceeded to do the HP to LP bakes and texturing using Substance Painter. Secondly I imported the train model to UE in order to visualize how it looks in the environment (attached image). I played a little bit with the post-process volume and illumination, I don’t think this would be the final Illumination, but i think it could be a good starting point. And Finally the blocking fo the next vehicle Im planning to model.
UPDATE: Hi everyone! As usual, I’ll show you this week work. I basically left UE for a while and concentrated with maya because I still had some things to model, like the clocktower and the central statue. For the clocktower I decided to use seamless textures for the base material but I’m planning to add some decals to all the buildings. The central sphere lacks Uvs for now, Im still thinking about how I’m going to texture it, most probably is using substance painter.
The Unreal part this week was just adding the new models to the scene, working a little with lights and post process volume and the retarget of the main character.
UPDATE: Greetings everyone! As usual, this Sunday I’m showing you the things I’ve been working on last week. This week I’ve been a little sick, so this weekend i really had to work harder in order to recover the time I lost. This time I worked more with the lighting, global light (skylights), directional light and some point lights just to highlight important objects and to give more lighting to some dark areas.
Also I started giving this environment more narrative, so I was thinking, If this environment is “Steampunk” y have to add some steam and consequently fog, so I played a little with vfx particle systems in order to create steam and smoke, then I added exponential and atmospheric fog, It really helped to give more personality to the scene! Also I started to model the secondary wagons of the train and finished the central sphere (modeling and texturing).
On the other hand, the technical part, I managed to solve some retarget issues I had last week with my character so as some texture and lightmaps optimizations!
I’m finally seeing what I was imagining my steampunk city would look like, so Im quite motivated! The next week I’ll be adding decals to the scene, modeling remaining assets and adding much more personality to the scene!
UPDATE: Hello everyone! Im back with some new things to show you about my environment. There are some few weeks left for me to finish the project, so from now on Im going to be in a rush. This week I have not worked a lot in Unreal, I’ve been finishing my demo reel and portfolio. This week y basically did some details with decals and vertex paint so as some blueprint and manual animations of some objects.
UPDATE: Two weeks left to finish my environment! Im excited and amazed of the results I’m achieving. The next weeks Im going to be 100% focused on finishing my project, for now let me talk you about this week progress.
This week I was mainly working with animations, character animations from mixamo, some manual animations from maya, camera animations, cinematics and some other animations of simple objects made with blueprints. On the other hand I was modeling some of the assets that still are on blocking phase, such as stairs, simple props, windows, etc and, obviously, assigning them their respective material.
I played a little bit more with the lights, I added some point lights to add some color accents and made an intermittent light material using nodes to make those lights more dynamic.
Here are some images of my work so far, hope you like them!
One week left! I’m i the final stretch of my project, I had a lot of work to do this week and a lot of work left for next week!
Basically This week I added lots of decals to the scene, I wanted it to look more like industrial and dirty town/city, just like a steampunk city. I made some new animations using blueprints and some others manually in the sequencer editor. Then i added some light details and some 3D models left to fill the scene and finally I did some flags with movement depending on the wind. Next week I hope to finish all assets left and to use even more decals and add some final details in order to give more life to the scene!
Here are some images of the progress so far. Hope you like it!
FINAL UPDATE: Hello Everyone! Finally, this would be the final post of this thread, Im so excited to show you the final results, it’s been quite a journey, tons of work and stress but I really enjoyed it and I’m really proud of my results, I still have a lot to learn and to practice but a few months ago I could not imagine that I would be able to reach out this quality and complexity in my projects.
Thank you for joining me on this journey and for reading me all weekends, I can’t wait to share with you the next projects that I’ll be working on, but for now, I’ll have some rest! See you!
If you want to se more of my artwork, you are welcome to take a look at my artsation:
