Stargazing Island - Dev Diary

Tweaking the sunlight. Had to disable "cast shadows" on the skylight.

I added TrueSky plugin, which made a ton of difference.

Changed the river material and added a particle emitter in the waterfalls (River Water Tool bt James Stone). Rocks now have a waterline using a very simple decal with glossiness, low roughness, a bit of tint and a mask. Fixed the moss on the rocks as well.

Updated the brick building, and added a secondary color on the master material via masking.
Added some vines on the building (From the Modular Seaside Town by Matima Studio)

The telescope has more grunge to it. Also, I added more light to the telescope dome.

A telescope has been added to the scene. For the textures, I used a trim sheet.

The light was changed, and cloth simulation was added to the windmill.

Added some localized volumetric fog to create some clouds.

Adding more verticality. Also, a placeholder for the observatory and the Windmill sections.

Building kit pieces so far.

Building test to check if all parts fits.

Testing the building parts with a distant camera.

Working on the building wall modules.

More grass on the island edges.
Procedural moss on the rocks.

Testing a new approach for the island base

Working on the boardwalk modules.

Rowboat Finished

Working with some textures. I was planning to use some photo-based textures, but I didn't like the result. So I ended up sculpting the wooden fibers and plank seams into the high poly mesh.
The fabric material was created in Substance Designer.

Time to shape up the flying rowboat.

One of the main things I wanted to add since the beginning was a floating dock with a Balloon Rowboat.
I created 2 modular pieces and a boat placeholder to see if it fits with the concept.

And here is a quick walk around test I did.

I just added some placeholder textures to the rocks to get a feeling of the colors and tones I want for this level.

For this project, the idea was to create a game-ready environment. At first, I was aiming for a watermill on top of a floating island with a flying rowboat. Considering the difficulty in finding a proper concept, I decided to build a reference board to create the overall mood.

 After a while, the concept shifted towards a windmill with an observatory.

With the board completed (let's face, a board is never complete), I started blocking the overall shape of the building.

At first, the goal was to be an external shot, but I digressed to build some internals, in case I decided to be able to explore the inside area. But this is a decision I'll be making when I start building the building modules.

Then I realized it was time to start experimenting with the terrain. At first, I thought of sculpting a big island in Zbrush, but soon I realized that it would be much more difficult about painting textures, foliages, and maps.
The other idea was to create a small terrain inside UE4 and enclose it with rock formations. That idea gained more traction when I found out that you could add and delete terrain patches, allowing for a non-rectangular terrain shape. I must say I'm pretty much happy with the results.
For the clouds effect, just a simple ExponentialHeightFog.

The main idea behind the watermill was to have water and sky waterfalls. That idea should not be wasted just because I changed the project a bit, right?
For the water and waterfall placeholder, I used Tharlevfx's Water Material from Epic Marketplace. I just added the waterplane GEO to a Spline.
For the vegetation, I'm using Epic Games' Open World Demo Collection and Dragon Motion's Flowers and Plants Nature Pack.