Victorian Steampunk Environment

Final Week

Last stage of the project! In this week the aim was to finish the project including the best features possible, that is why this week was focused on set dressing, illumination, sequences and of course finishing the lastest assets to be included on the scene (such as the vehicle). 

Hope you like it and that you could learn something interesting about my workflow.

Seventh week

In this week my main task was to continue developing some of the main assets left, such as the floating rails and the controlled passage. I also finished all the secondary building by using some of the modular sets developed on early stages. A lot of work was also done in the textures of the buildings, specially roughness to implement that wet effect caused by the rain. Some illumination and fog features was also added or adjusted. 

Sixth Week

This week was crucial due to the implementation of a lot of detail on the scene. First of all was the creation of the street lights which allowed me to develope the lighting further. Then the implementation of the particles to simulate the rain, something that provides a really interesting look to the scene. The creation of two different sets of pipes was also really important to fill empty spaces up and providing that steampunk look finally.

Fifth Week

In this week, once the buildings were finished, I started with the creation of secondary assets such as the bridges, as they are a key part on the environment. For that I modeled two different types of bridges, the roof bridge which is intended to be a surveillance bridge, plus the metal bridges that mainly connect the buildings.

In this week I did also worked on the limits of the environment with the implementation of assets that I took from the Unreal Engine Marketplace plus a lot of work in the creation of sequencies for the final video creation.

Fourth Week

This week was focused on finishing some of the buildings left, the ones created by my plus some extra building that I created with the help of Quixel Megascans Assets. 

I did also improve the quality of the textures with the use of decals, and improved the glass ceilling of the factory a bit to give it a more interesting look.

Third week

In this week I started working on UVs and textures of some of the 3D modular assets that I developed in previous weeks for the creation of the buildings. Due to some of the UVs where finished I also improved the lightmaps and their density to see how the shadows were looking. For that reason I also did a lot of work in ilumination to start getting close to the final desired look; Exponential and Atmospheric FOG were crucial for that task such as the Postprocess Volume.

A lot of time was also expent in the use of Paralax to create the feeling of interiors through the windows as you may notice in some of the images above. Some other important tasks this week was the implementation of a Charater to the game (Revenant from Paragon) by using the Retarget tool in Unreal Engine 4. And last, I did also create some textures in Quixel Mixer to improve the vertex painting of the floors.

Second Week

The goal of this week was to finish modelling the main buildings of the environment such as the Theater and the Police Station.

Please note that the UV maps have not been done yet, that is why the lightmaps look a bit funny because I decided to do some build lighting to see how the scene was looking after importing a big amount of assets.

Another important task in this week was the creation of the floor meshes and the implementation of the certain textures to try the vertex painting material and the size of the UV maps. 

First Week.

This week the aim of the project was the development of some building modular sets to star creating the buildings due to they are a very important part of the project. I have done so far the factory and warehouse, and the hotel.

(Please note that the the UVs of the modular sets have not been finished yet, so the light maps haven't been created so far and that Is why there are some bad shadows in some areas).

Another important task that has been done over the week was the implementation of the water on the scene by using Water Planes asset found in the Unreal Engine Market place. And last but also important I also improved the landscape and created the Landscape Blendind Material. 

Liverpool Steampunk Environment:

This environment will be place on the 19th Century in the city of Liverpool, United Kingdom. The idea of this environment is to represent the history of the city but taking into consideration the fact that some of the events that happened in the city will occur in a different period. To understand this, and a little bit more about the environment we need to understand that Liverpool has always been one of the most important docks into the UK due to the straight connection with Ireland. This made the city to be an important target in the 2nd World War, causing the destruction of buildings generating many ruins all over the city. The destruction caused on the 2nd World War forced Liverpool to grow up into a modernist city with the implementation of new buildings with a different architectural style.

As mentioned before, this environment is going to be dated in the 19th Century, so the 2nd World War would be a fictional war that happened also on the 19th Century, but causing the same effect over the city. This fact would make the environment to be implemented with a combination of building ruins (due to that fictional war), classic Victorian buildings and some “new buildings” that would have a Steam Punk style.

To give to the environment a realistic style I would use actual emblematic Liverpool buildings as references, I will implement docks, but also the environment would be dotted with steam punk style assets simulating that “New Era” after war. 

References:

In the image above we can see some of the references that I took so far to begin creating an overall look of the most important elements and features that I would like to implement in this environment. Please note that more references will be added on later stage of the development.

Blocking:

The color coding implemented on the block out represent different levels of importance into the environment. Red and yellow buildings represent the main buildings on the scene and are the ones that would be created with emblematic Liverpool buildings as references. The grey color building represent the ruins left on the city after the fictional war mentioned on the pitch, and the blue ones are the "new buildings" created after war, so we will see a more Steampunk style on them.

Green color assets are the ones that I consider hero assets, such as the docks, boats and bridges, and are the ones in charge of adding the Steampunk effect on the environment.