The House of the Wise Hermit

Introduction

This Viking Environment was a final project for my "Development of 3D Environments" class which lasted approximately 5 months. It was a really fun experience, full of new knowledge in which I became more familiar with Unreal Engine and the video game pipeline.

Respecting and putting into practice the stages of concept, modular planning, modeling, texturing, lighting, etc. helped a lot to have a nice time organization and also to achieve a good final result.

Render View Modes

Props Presentation

Working on these these pieces was quite interesting. Understanding the context of the scenario as if it were a character was crucial for being able to plan each one.

What was sought was not only to present a setting with its beautiful landscapes, mountains and structures, but a story in itself.

LOW POLY VIEW

Modular Kit

Since there aren't many structures in this environment, I took the liberty of building the house as a solo carpenter would. I made different sizes and widths for the structures I wanted to make, and also some color variation in case it was needed in the build.

I made 2 Trim Sheets, one for the wood planks and metal elements, and one for the wood logs.

TRIM SHEETS

MODULAR KIT

Hero Asset

The HeroAsset underwent different variations in concept art. The idea was to create something where the culture was clearly visible, but also seemed to be there many years before the person who lived there arrived.

First I thought of a God made of carved wood or a wooden board carved with some Germanic characters, but since the whole environment seems handmade I need to find something that looks ancient and also majestic. That's when this monolith appears.

The plan was to make something ancient and magical that someone would adapt over time or build on for mythological purposes, which is why it is surrounded with wooden structures and rock stairs, which were affected by the radiant essence that this monolith possesses.

LOW POLY ASSET

VEGETATION

In this part of the environment I only worked on the Unreal node texturing. The modeling and creation in Speedtree was created by two other colleagues: Priscila Treviño and Alejandro Cantú.

The process was similar to the landscape and props. I used a Lerp Node to combine 2 textures (Snow and Vegetation). In the Alpha channel, I use some Scalar Parameter Nodes to control the falloff and contrast of the snow, a Component Mask Node in the Blue channel to affect only the Z axis, for movement I use the SimpleGrassWind node and finally for The Emissive I used the roughness texture map with a color vector parameter.

NODE MANAGEMENT

VEGETATION

Niagara System