Korean classroom - Unreal Engine

It's my first entirely self-made Unreal environment following the constraints of video games. It was inspired by the Korean series "All of Us are Dead" in which a high school is attacked during a zombie infestation. I thought it would be more interesting to use the layout of the rooms in Korea as they have these windows overlooking the corridor which implies greater risks during this kind of situation.

It's also the first time I've tried storytelling in one of my scenes.

Since at my school we tended to study 3D for the cinema, I had to learn all the optimization techniques for video games and all the constraints that had to be respected. The project was a lot of work, but I learned so much from it !

First I collected references in PureRef for objects, textures and lighting. Then I started the blocking in Unreal. I wanted to do the blocking in a tidy room first to get a better idea of how the students might have moved the furnitures around.

Then I modeled the objects in my scene in Maya. Here are all the assets used for the scene.

I tried to optimize the number of polygons in my objects to make my scene as light as possible. I used the high to low method and then bake in the details with Substance Painter.

I used Marvelous Designer to create different types of curtains. The knot was a little bit challenging to make but with a little patience I managed to get the result I wanted.

I've made texture atlases for sheets, books and posters. I did a lot of research to make sure everything made sense in a Korean High School and to be sure not to put any real school name. I even went to look at the Korean curriculum to make sure the lessons on the sheets were at a high school level. We can't really read the sheets but it was important for me to have more consistency and credibility.

For the handprints on the windows, I wanted to create my own alphas. So I made my own handprints with white paint on black paper. After cleaning them up in Photoshop, I imported them into Substance Painter as alphas.

Some of the objects were textured in Substance Painter but for some elements like the floor I used Substance Designer.

Some of my objects shared the same type of materials. So I used Substance Designer to create a basic plastic material and a metal one. Then I set these up as Master Materials in Unreal. This allowed me to create customizable material instances to optimize my scene.
I could've made the materials directly in Unreal but since I wanted to train myself with Designer I decided to use Designer.

For the lighting, I wanted to use cool tones for the doors and warm luminous tones for the windows. I wanted to show the contrast between the zombie infested corridors and the window with the rope made with curtains which represents deliverance and an escape.

This project was a lot of work and I had to do a lot of back and forth but this was so much fun to make and I learned so much !