Father's Courtyard | UE5 Environment
Day & night cinematic shots. Rendered in UE5.1, intro/outro added in After Effects, soundtrack sourced from Uppbeat.
Daytime shot 1
Daytime shot 2
Nighttime shot 1
Nighttime shot 2
Modular Kit utilizing weighted normals. Textured with trims and tileables made in Substance Designer.
Props - Most utilizing trims, and as well as the high-to-low pipeline for the largest assets.
Foliage - Sculpted in Zbrush, baked down to a plane, textured in Substance Painter, assembled in 3dsMax. Edited normals to be upturned for all smaller foliage, while for the tree canopies, I referenced its normals from large lumped spheres.
x7 Tileables & x1 Trim made in Substance Designer
Designer nodes for my more complex materials: trimsheet, plaster, roof tiles, and potted dirt.
Vertex Painting clean/damaged plaster
UE Master Material nodes. A few variations of these nodes were created for a few specific props that needed it.
High-to-low poly asset example. The same pipeline was used to make the pottery kit, broom, carpet, and small decor items - although those smaller assets shared a UV sheet in order to maintain even texel density throughout the scene.
More prop sculpts - pottery kit, seed bags & ornament
Foliage Trim - Sculpted in ZBrush, textured in Substance Painter. I blurred the SSS to achieve softer transitions between colours. Roughness and AO maps were also made and controlled in the UE material shader.
Progress GIF
Referenced this courtyard by KUEI for my scene's architectural base. I photobashed and painted in a few elements I wanted to have in from the beginning. Then dressed the scene up to fit my own story.
Further artist references / mood board
This is my first large-scale UE environment made with the goal of learning modularity and making my own materials. This project was also a tribute to home and childhood - to my family who loves gardening, pottery and art.
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All modular structures were made in 3dsMax utilizing weighted normals, and were textured with trims and tileables made entirely in Substance Designer. Prop kit also utilized trims, while some of the larger items were made using the high-to-low pipeline. Set up master materials for all textures, vertex painting, simple wind, and transparent shaders for decals and glass. Crayon drawings, bits of leaves, trash, dirt and damage decals I made using a combo of Photoshop and Substance Painter to dress the scene with story.
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A big thank you to all my peers who gave me great feedback along the way!
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Butterflies - Flock Particles by Jil3RGames
Water - Ultimate Water Shader by Meshingun Studio
Sky - Ultra Dynamic Sky by Everett Gunther
Soundtrack - 'Turn Away' by Yeti Music on Uppbeat