The Dock & Alchemist Chest

This is the last project I've been working on using Unreal Engine 5. With this environment I have tried to get a realistic sci-fi themed style but with elements of nature and the use of ancient structures, for this I have used a concept art by Xiangzhao Xi.

To achieve this I have used assets and textures created by hand and on the other hand I have also used Megascans to get the most realistic result possible thought for a videogame project.

Starting from the main camera shot that looks more like the original concept I have also experimented with other angles:

BREAKDOWN

The first decision I had to make was to choose which concept art to choose for the creation of the environment, for this I decided to use one of the artist Xiangzhao Xi, which fit with what I was looking for although it had some elements such as the main nave or the roof of the structure that represented a challenge.

The first thing was to start with the blocking and to square the general volumes and try to understand how certain structures work with each other that are not clear or well defined in the concept and at the same time start to square the lighting of the scene.

The next step was to import into the engine and start substituting the different structure assets based on the blocking.

Once the structure was completed I focused on adding the vegetation of the environment and start placing small objects in a way that explained that there was life in that "hangar" and that it was not abandoned.

On the other hand the creation of the ship was done in one of the final steps so I could focus on it once the other steps were finished.

Finally I changed the camera settings and used a "LUT" and added "FOG" to get as close as possible to the concept environment.

CREATION OF ASSETS AND MATERIALS

The creation of the environment assets focused on different techniques:

For the creation of the floor I used "displacement maps" combined with tiles that I modeled in Zbrush to bring out the volumes and then I superimposed different planes with their respective materials to create variations taking advantage of "Nanite" since UE5 has no tessellation unlike UE4.

For the creation of assets like the walls I used Blender and Zbrush to create the base of the walls and then I used Quixel Mixer to combine several textures together with the displacement and then finally in Blender apply the displacement to the mesh.

For the creation of specific models such as the ship, use 3DS Max to create the high poly model of the ship and prepare it for the lowpoly and textures.

Once ready for texturing I used Substance 3d painter to texture the ship based on what I could see in the concept art.

For other smaller models I used a trim texture to optimize the materials and not create too many.

Here are some examples of where I used them:

For the UE5 materials/shaders I created a "Main" material so that with it I could create instances and only activate what was necessary.

Among its functions I used "vertex colors" to paint different materials in terrains and assets, "dither" to create a "blending" between different meshes without a very hard transition between them.

I also implemented other functions like scaling and moving the UVs of the textures of each material, tinting the BC of a material and using masks in meshes that can be imported from programs like Substance Designer or Substance Painter.

On the other hand I also implemented a function to be able to make a mask that reacts with the Z axis and in this way make the rocks have a moss effect or if you want, snow.

As with the ship I used Substance Painter to achieve the desired result. In the case of the tubes that connect to the ship I applied a fabric simulation to create the effect of the fabric being affected by gravity and then added scratches and dirt in addition to sand as in the ship:

ASSET BREAKDOWN

In this project I aimed to get a "hero prop" all handmade based on real objects and combining them to get a AAA finish as realistic as possible.

BREAKDOWN

The first thing I did was to create a Pure Reff file where I was adding all the references of both objects and textures.

After that I started to build the blocking together with the high poly taken from 3ds Max AND some objects like the handmade skulls in ZBrush as a first variation.

The next step, and the one I spent the most time on, was creating by hand in Zbrush the finishes of each material and defining the proportions as well as adding some additional objects.

Then I made the lowpoly and UVs of each of the pieces and made the bake using Marmoset Toolbag and left it ready for texturing in Substance painter.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I am very happy with what I have learned doing with these environments together with the result of them, and I am sure that with what I have learned I can continue improving and creating better scenes.

Finally I want to thank everyone who has accompanied me during the process of creating these two projects, I hope you like it!