Stylized Desert Shrine

Stylized Desert Shrine Scene

This scene is a personal project I’ve been working on for the past few months as part of my studies at CG Spectrum. A special thanks to my mentor Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh who provided invaluable guidance. This is my first full stylized scene. Every model, sculpt and texture was made by me. This game-ready scene was assembled in Unreal Engine 5, with dynamic lighting and no nanite, utilizing performant meshes and materials.

The scene is based on the fantastic concept art drawn by Joker Chen.

I mainly used Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter and Unreal Engine 5 through the entire process. I used various techniques such as vertex painting and masks to allow further customization inside Unreal Engine. All assets are low poly meshes with high poly details baked in. All foliage are made from cards and not individual models.

I learned many valuable lessons throughout the while process which will surely help my next scene be even better and will allow me to make less mistakes and save time.

The process consisted of blocking out the scene first. Then I used Maya, ZBrush and Substance Painter to create the assets. The assets were created with a modular mindset, creating assets that can be re-used in other areas of the scene multiple times.

Here are some screenshots of the props and various closeups of them in the scene.

I wanted the lighting to convey a calm and cozy feel, so I tried to keep the overall contrast down without the scene looking too "flat".

Base Color, Roughness and Normal maps.