Unreal Engine 5 Cemetery Environment

In the begining I had a rough ideia about making some environment with gothic cemitery theme. With this ideia in mind, I had started to look out for some concept art on the internet to get a reference, when I found a perfect concept made by the amazing artist called Leo Amaral, who gave me the permition to adapt the 2D art for 3D environment.

I hope you enjoy this first version of the scene with nightlight, now take a look of another version with daylight!

That is it!

Now take a look on the breakdown content!

Let's me explain the pipeline I followed:

1. First off, I started by shaping all the models in Autodesk Maya, without worrying about the polycount. I just wanted to get the shapes right, making them high-poly.

Note: Zbrush was used to sculpt the statues.

2. Once I had the high-poly models, I began the retopology process, taking my time to optimize them as best as I could.

3. In this step, I made all the necessary cuts in the low-poly models to create UV maps, which I could later use for baking.

4. For baking the models, I used a new feature in Substance Painter called "Match By Mesh Name." I simply renamed each object, adding "_highpoly" to the high-poly versions and "_low" to the low-poly object names.

5. Now, it was time to get down to texturing! I fully textured all my assets in Substance Painter.

6. After wrapping up the main assets, I figured out I needed more stuff to complete the background of the scene. So, I decided to dig into photogrammetry a bit and use it as a starting point for the walls. Then, I tweaked the rest of the walls to make sure they fit together nicely. I used this cool software called Polycam to generate the photogrammetry models.

7. Once I had the high-poly photogrammetry models, I proceeded with the retopology process using Autodesk Maya.

8. Next, I used xNormals to transfer the texture maps from the high-poly models to the low-poly models.

9. I still not satisfied I thought it would be great to create some trees using SpeedTree software, to later use them in Unreal Engine 5 with the Nanite resource.

10. Finally, with everything at my disposal, I assembled everything inside Unreal Engine 5.

11. Even though I had set up the scene, I still needed some crucial elements to complete it, like ivy. So, to get some top-notch ivy, I used this awesome plugin in UE5 called Crazy Ivy.

12. To achieve a more realistic floor, I used materials and decals from Megascans to create a blend material, resulting in a high-quality outcome.

13. However, I still wasn't satisfied with the number of items for the background composition. So, I added some assets of flowers, small grasses, and bushes from Quixel Megascans and the Epic Marketplace. Additionally, I included some insect particles.

14. Now it was time to work on the lighting, both for the daylight and nightlight versions.

15. Lastly, I applied post-processing effects to ensure the overall setting looked coherent with the lights.

I hope this clarifies the entire process of my work. Thanks for following along!