Fae's Treehouse

Fae's Treehouse

In-Game Assets

The majority of the assets were made using Maya, Zbrush and Substance Painter, while certain trees were created using SpeedTree. I also explored the creation of modular props and trimsheets, enhancing efficiency by enabling their use across multiple assets.

Process

I began by creating a blockout in Unreal Engine and progressively refined the scene's aesthetics. Throughout the process, I had fun continuously learning and integrating new things. Notably, the foliage, runtime virtual textures, material shaders and lighting which played a pivotal role in gelling the different elements in the scene together.

Delving Into Substance Designer

Exploring using Substance Designer for creating procedural texture was a new endeavor for me. Transitioning to a new workflow posed its challenges. However thanks to the guidance from online resources and insights shared by my lecturers I was able to familiarize myself with program.

Below are some of the SD graphs of textures I have made for the project.

Stylized Brick Texture

Stylized Grass Texture

Stylized Plank Texture

Stylized Roof Texture

Vertex Painting

Making use of Unreal engine's vertex painting feature I was able to selectively break up repetitions in the trimsheet and introduce more variations through the blending of multiple textures.

Lighting

For lighting, I used three directional lights: one served as the primary source for shadows and direct illumination, another enhanced indirect lighting, and a third to add additional color into the shadows. Furthermore, I made use of a post-process volume to implement bloom and color corrections, to achieve a more stylized visual aesthetic.

Light Function Material

I made use of a light function to simulate cloud shadows, akin to the method for creating the illusion of wind in the grass. This involved dividing the UV of a texture and panning it across the material to achieve the desired effect.

Water Material

In this material, I utilized the depth fade node along with distance fields to transition colors along the edges and depths of the water. The wave effects were achieved by panning a normal map across the material.

Thanks for reading!