Subway 2041 & Italian alley - Unreal Engine environments

Hi guys! I am Tim and this is my entry for the Rookies 2021 in the game development category. I have now sucessfully graduated from PIXLVISN media arts academy in Cologne and I am really excited to enter this contest.

In the following I will show you two of my student projects and how my creative process looked like.

I am very happy that I now have the chance this year to present my work to you!
I wish all other artists that have entered the contest the best of luck!

Subway 2041

As I worked on this project I always had a story in mind and that this subway entrance would be part of a game.

"Someone is discovering a abandoned subway tunnel after a civil war..."

This Post apocalyptic environment was rendered in real-time with Unreal Engine 4.26.
I modeled the scene in Maya and used Quixel Mixer for mixing and creating new textures for the most part of the scene and some of Quixels Megascans textures to achieve a nice looking post apocalyptic scene.
Creating the ceramic wall material with the grafitti on it was my favorite part of the texturing phase because it was a process which let me be very creative.
All in all this scene took me 2 weeks to create and I am very satisfied how it turned out.

Creating a scene that could fit into a post apocalyptic game was my main goal for this project.
I approached this project from more like a game level design perspective. I always had in mind how this scene would be in a game and I also had a first person game perspective view so I could walk around and see how this would look like.

I began modeling the base of my subway entrance in Maya and always exported it directly from Maya into Unreal to get a first look. As soon as I had the whole final modeled scene in Unreal Engine I began texturing with Quixel Mixer.
This was really the most enjoyable part because I could let my creativity decide what the story and look of this scene will be. 

After getting some of the textures into my scene I already started to fill the subway with lighting. I added a few lamps on the ceiling a volumetric directional light with god rays and a sky light so that all fit perfectly into the post apocalyptic theme.

I used many assets from Megascans to give the scene the matching vibe and story. Plants and foliage are a very important part of this scene as it gives the audience the look of an abandoned subway. Without foliage it would not be the same. For that I was glad that I could use Quixels scaned 3D plants and foliage.

I have exported the scene as a playable walkthrough. So if you want to go around the Subway entrance with a playable character you can download the Unreal Engine File here (Google Drive).

- Please also read the note file -

Italian Alley

As soon as I saw this italian street I wanted to recreate it and began blocking out and modeling the scene in Maya. Modeling was the longest part because I had to add all the details of this street and wanted to get as close to the reference as possible. This was the first time I ever used Unreal Engine so it was also a new challenge for me.

In the texturing phase I also used a Quixel Mixer which I have never used before. Creating a texture that had water puddles in it mixed with other high quality dirt layer textures and stone patterns was a new experience and a little bit different than in other texturing software like Substance Painter that I have used always before. But for that project I wanted to try new things and explore the possiblities that I could achieve with Quixel Megascans textures.
To achieve that I mixed textures from the Megascans library and created my own new texture and materials. In this two stages I always exported all objects and textures directly into Unreal Engine to see how all things come together. At the end I exported all textures with a high resolution to get as much detail as possible.

A important part of this street were plants and vegetation. For that I used the Megascans library to get as much variation and quality for my plants as possible. For all the scene assets I used assets from megascans to fill out the scene and match the reference.

The lighting was pretty interesting but very simple in this scene. A directional light with god rays and a sky light. Unreal Engine made it very easy to test various light scenarios out because it is using realtime rendering and there are not long render times like in a 3D software with an offline rendering process.

The hardest challenge for this project was to learn Unreal Engine and Quixel Mixer which I have never used before. I learned a lot about these two programs and its functionalities by exploring the internet or just testing out different things and possibilites. This was a very fun and intersting part and Im happy that I have taken the challenge to create something in a whole new program. 

Down below you can slide between the breakdowns of the environment and see how all came together at the end.

In this project reference material was very important. The goal of this project was to recreate this italian street as good as I can. Without reference photos this would not be possible. I always worked closely with reference material as I wanted to recreate the street as good as possible but I also wanted to add a little bit of my imagination and creativity.

So this was it! I want to thank you for taking a look into my final projects and it's breakdowns. Feel free to leave a comment under this post and give me some feedback, that would be awesome! If you would like to get in contact with me you can use the information below. 
Good luck for you if you are also entering the Rookies 2021 and thanks for watching!

E-mail: [email protected]

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/timjagodka

Website: https://timjagodka.com