Storytelling through 3D

Keramikhuset

After finding the book "Christiania Interior" by Tami Christiansen and Karina Tengberg, I couldn't help but be inspired and decided to recreate one of the homes in Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen. I love the look of the architecture in the book, it looks so lived in and is packed with stories and patina and i tried to recreate the same feel in my project.

I learned a lot from this project, as I got to use a lot of new workflows, programs and tools. This was my first time using Davinci Resolve, as well as Blenders geometry nodes for the animated plant outro and it has opened my eyes to many new possibilities.

The music I used is the piece "Concerto for Philodendron & Pothos" from the album "Mother Earth's Plantasia", which is an electronic album made by Mort Garson  in the 70's. It was composed for plants to listen to so they could grow better. I wanted to have a playfull theme of homely cosiness, nature and nostalgia throughout and I think this piece fit perfectly.

I used a mix of self made and downloaded assets for this project.

For my pre production I wanted to make sure that I had a solid foundation to work from, so I looked at the images in the book and deducted the layout of the house to make the scale and locations as accurate as possible early on.

I then placed all my cameras and animated them to the music, so I knew exactly what I had to focus my attention on while making the scene. After that I could focus on packing it with story and atmosphere.

Here is the first animatic I made of the block-outed scene as well as the reference images I used:

Kitchen in Sydhavnen

This was a quick project that i made in about 4-5 days to try out the Corona render engine for 3Ds Max. I wanted to make a little tribute to the small kitchens in old buildings in Copenhagen, with dining chairs that never match and old creaky doors. 

It had been quite a while since I last touched 3Ds Max and I wanted to give it a go again, since I had some spare time. Most of the assets in this project are downloaded.

Ødegården

This is a two week project that I made to practice making exterior environments in Unreal Engine 5.

I wanted to make an old Swedish red house out in the forest and got inspired by the childrens book "Peddersen og Findus". I had a lot of fun putting small details and stories into the scene to make it feel lived in and bring out the late summer/early fall atmosphere.

I used a lot of gradients in my textures and foliage to break up straight lines to make the house feel integrated in the landscape.

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″‘Have you bitten a hole in my tyre, Findus?’

‘I certainly do not bite holes in tyres,’ said Findus indignantly.

‘Must have been me, then,’ muttered Peddersen, pulling his ear.”

Lighting Scenarios in Unreal Engine 5

I made this for a school assignment at 3D College about a year ago where we had 10 days to make one scene and light it in 4 different ways. This was also my first time using Unreal Engine 5 and my first venture into real time game engines.

Looking back on this project, there are a lot of flaws and things I would have done differently, but that is a good sign because it means I learnt a lot along the way.