Icelandic Lumen World

As an aspiring Environment Artist, I leaped at the chance to start learning Unreal Engine 5 as soon as it came out to see what I could be capable of as a beginner in Unreal as a whole. 

I wanted to create an epic, larger than life landscape shrouded in fog, strange mountains, and have a photo-realistic approach central to the lighting and models. To build a scene that could evoke exploration in a mysterious land - and Icelandic and Norwegian environments were a huge source of inspiration for this. My motif was to take those visual influences and make them bigger and bolder in my world. 

Lumen and its bounced real-time global illumination made the process of art directing the scene front and center, meaning I could change layouts and 'move mountains' in real-time, seeing the creative effect immediately and iterate on my hero shot constantly following feedback from peers. Not only am I super proud of the final work, I've learnt so much as I practiced about working in real-time, and hope to continue even more in future.