My personal growth - made it worth the oath!

Lakeside Respite

A personal project made in Unreal Engine 5

Lakeside Respite is a school project made using Unreal Engine 5. It showcases a medieval environment, enriched with Quixel Megascans assets. The primary objective was to construct a game-ready environment employing essential engine tools.

I utilized Landscape and Foliage tools to initially create the terrain and further populate it with rocks, vegetation, trees, and debris.

In terms of lighting I used Lumen, while Nanite was utilized for optimization purposes. Additionally, a custom layered landscape material was created to enhance the visual fidelity of the environment.

Moreover, an interactive firepit blueprint was integrated, featuring a UI popup upon player proximity and enabling fire control through key inputs.

I have also utilized DLSS 3.5 functionality with frame generation to improve the performance. It reliably increased FPS without any noticeable quality drop. 

In addition, I have created a volumetric fog material that is applied to a box over the lake to hide repetition of water surface and give extra depth to environment. 

Tokyo Street

Work in progress project in Unreal Engine 5

"Tokyo Street" is a work-in-progress environment that I'm developing in Unreal Engine 5. My aim is to capture the vibrant energy of Tokyo at night while incorporating the iconic Blade Runner and Cyberpunk aesthetic.

To bring my vision to life, I am utilizing a modular environment approach. I'm also using PBR workflow techniques and highpoly-lowpoly model creation, to ensure that the scene looks realistic and immersive.

As any other work this one started from gathering references. In this part of a submission I will show you my journey of learning how game environments are created.

I've started from creating a rough blockout based on the reference image. Later on I started to analyze the shapes and sizes of the buildings to create a modular system. That will allow me to make more variations  and keep the work flexible for further iterations.

One of the most exciting aspects of the project is the use of neon lighting to create a colorful, bustling atmosphere that reflects the energy of Tokyo at night.

During the creation of a blockout and modular kits I constantly was importing my updated models to Unreal to see how everything is working in an engine.

Throughout the creation of this project, I have been learning a lot about game creation pipelines, specifically in regards to creating modular environments. Additionally, I have been exploring the use of Substance Painter and Substance Designer to create highly-detailed textures that add an extra layer of realism to the environment.

Overall, "Tokyo Street" is an exciting project that has allowed me to learn a lot about game development and 3D art. I am looking forward to continuing to refine the environment and bringing my vision to life.

Texture creation

A set of textures inspired by Tokyo streets. Made with substance designer. Rendered in Marmoset.

This three textures were my first dive into Substance Designer. This program showed me the diversity in texture creation and how simple things by multiplying, adding and subtracting can lead you to a flexible and paramrised texture creation.

During the material course at Futuregames I have learned how to create more intricate and detailed textures. Also explanation and framing became a part of my workflow. I have learned how to create a proper parametric materials that later can be exported in .SDBAR and used in Substance Painter as a parametric texture with appropriate nodes and functions been accessible for further tweaks.

Game props

Neon sign for Tokyo Street

This asset is a part of my work in progress scene. It's a Karaoke neon sign on a small busy street of Tokyo. The reference is a photo of a real sign combined with some weathering and rust. This prop is a main attraction point in a future UE5 scene, so I tried to make it detailed and at the same time game-ready. 

Textures are PBR validated, all baked in two UV sets, first for the sign and second for neon tubes for the finer adjustments inside of Unreal. Also textures are packed in ARM (Ambient - Roughness - Metallic).

Charging Battery Scene

Personal project based on real-world reference. In the process, I tried to recreate real objects by analyzing their shapes, material properties and functions, as well as keeping accurate dimensions. Developed skills in UV Unwrapping, Texturing and Baking.

This was my first practical application for my skills and a start of my journey in Game Art. While I was creating these assets I was constantly using Marmoset to check how the props might have looked in the game engine. At that time I was scared to touch "real game engines" but my passion was slowly driving me forward.

However my mesh was far from "game ready" at that time. But later that was a fun practice to retopologize the car battery mesh and rebake all the maps on a new topology. After that practice I found out that this approach is actually used for photogrammetry meshes and I was satisfied that I am heading for the right direction.

After that it was time to make a beauty shots. I used Twinmotion to assemble environment with help of Quixel asset library. This practice gave me so much vibes and a faint hint on how exciting it is to work in a game engines.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading through my 3 year journey of becoming a game artist. From the latest work we came down to the roots of the first project that lit a fire of exploration in me and gave a great chance to explore my passion in games. Till this very moment I haven't stopped learning new things about game dev and I believe that every small thing matters on the path to my dream! 

Create games, good luck and have fun! 

Thank you!