Realistic/Stylized Environment in Unreal Engine 4

For this entry I want to show two different styles of environments I made in Unreal Engine 4, a stylized one and a realistic one. Although the style is different the way to work on them are not as much as their styles.

I made them for FX ANIMATION Barcelona 3D & Film School where I study.

I will start with the rainforest, which is the realistic environment.

I wanted this project to look as realistic as possible. After all I am satisfied with the result.

Some of the references I took to make this project were from Star Wars Battlefront 2 by EA Dice

I made two different types of assets, some of them had tiling textures and the others adoc ones.

To do the texture of the vegetation I made an atlas which package all the vegetation.

I wanted to try the photogrammetry for this project so I did some assets.

To do some materials I used Quixel Suite, and Quixel Mixer.

These images show the render passes of the lighting

I wanted the environment to look thick, that is why I used light shafts and exponential height fog.

The movable vegetation projected some weird shadows, there is where cascaded shadow maps come into the scene.

For the post-processing volume I changed some values from the color grading a little bit. I wanted the environment to look a bit more cinematic.

I spent about a month making this environment. Although I had some problems I learnt a lot working on it and I am proud with the result. I also enjoyed so much while I made it. I had never done such a big environment.

Now I am going to show the stylized environment

I wanted to create and old style boxing gym so I got some references from films such as "Million Dollar Baby" or "Rocky".

I was aware of the difficulty to transform an idea I got from realistic references and make a stylized environment so I decided to make some textures and colours I would use to set the style of my project, I decided to exagerate the colours and the contrast in the lighting and textures to make it a bit more stylized.

Modeled in 3dsMax and Zbrush. Set Dressing and Lighting made in Unreal Engine 4. Textures made in Substance Painter and Quixel.

These are some lighting pases

These are some of the assets I made to dress the scene, I made some atlases to optimize the project

Of course I made a Block Out to get an idea of the size and distribution of the environment.

I spent about 3 weeks making this project. I know there is still some work to do but I am satisfied with the result.

With this project I had the opportunity to learn a lot about interior environments. Both the artistic part and technical one.