For this project we had to design and create an interior environment in SD and then assemble and render it using Unreal Engine 5.
This project was done in a group of six. My group consisted of myself, Josh, Liam, Kharis, Adam and Jonathan. Once we had gotten our group together we went through the list of environments we had to chose from. The list was Captain’s Cabin, Dungeon, Tavern, Blacksmith, Fairy House, Viking Hall, Ancient Temple, Prison/ Penitentiary, Garage/ Workshop and a Science Lab. We sat and discussed which to choose for a while. We narrowed it down to Ancient Temple and Viking hall, eventually agreeing on Ancient Temple.
We got tow work discussing what our temple might look like. There were several very different ideas in the beginning during the discussions for how it would look. A similarity however was they all had some sort of center piece. Originally, the most popular idea for this was to have a portal in the middle. The ideas for the portal ranged from being a big stone/ glass structure to being in the middle of an old/ ancient tree. Despite being popular at first, we eventually decided to scrap the portal idea. This was because we decided the theme of the temple would be ancient Celtic ruins, so a portal would have been more difficult to translate into this and look natural.
We put finalizing the center piece on hold and started to work on our ideas for how the temple would be designed. We each did our own research for references to share to the group. A lot of ancient Celtic structure were carved stone with engravings and designs on them. We then got the idea to implement a sort of Stone Henge vibe to the project. We started planning around having several big monoliths/ pillars in the center of the structure, surrounding the center piece which was still yet to be decided. After some time and more discussion, we decided that the center piece would be a type of old ritual looking type, engraved cauldron, which would sit on a rock podium, surrounded by monoliths/ pillars.
Now that the idea had been finalized, we got to work on creating assets for the project. We split up the workload evenly amongst ourselves. We each roughly set out to create in 3D, one or two pillars each, a few stones each, a wall each, and then after that any other object you thought would translate into the project well, such as weapons or bones or light sources.
I used Blender to model all of my assets. I began by making two pillars. I used the sculpting tools on Blender to give the pillars rough and weathered looking edges, like they once looked elegantly carved but had become damaged over time. These pillars were intended to surround the center piece of the build.
These two pillars were the most progress I made before I unfortunately completely snapped both the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in my knee, which had me away from making progress for the better part of two months, as I got my surgery fairly quickly, so by the time I had healed enough to return to class, I was away again within the week for the operation. By the time I had returned fully, the idea for the project had slightly progressed. It originally involved the center piece and monoliths/ pillars being situated in a divot in a valley between hills, but it changed to being almost underground in an exposed cave, which was more in keeping with the criteria for the project as it was meant to be the interior of something. This was when we set out to make a few cave walls each. Because of these developments, I decided to scrap the pillars I had yet to complete because there were already a sufficient amount made by my team mates and I wanted to focus on the cave walls which were actually necessary to the project coming together and didn’t want to keep the rest of them behind. I pretty much used the same process in designing my walls as I did with the pillars. I used blender to sculpt them and then used a rock texture brush set (we all downloaded the same one too maintain continuity) to sculpt the details on my walls. The two walls I made followed a similar idea. The first one had a large hole in it, which would be good for putting assets in such as weapons or maybe a lantern. The second wall I made also had a big open area, but it was more of an indented arch, rather than a big bowl in the middle.
After the walls were sculpted I used Zbrush to create a low poly model to be used for texturing. Once this was done, I brought the low poly model into substance painter and baked the high poly texture onto the low poly model. We also decided to use the same rock texture for our cave wall assets, so I downloaded that and got to work texturing. We also had a foliage texture, which I enjoyed using as it worked very well to make my walls look more realistic. For example in the wall I made with the big bowl in the middle, I used the foliage with a higher opacity than other areas of the wall, to make it look like the foliage had condensed more inside the hole (I was able to brush on foliage to areas by using a blank map then erasing parts to reveal the foliage). I used the same texturing process/ methods for both of my walls.
Once my walls were finished I was able to upload them with the textures for my group to access. We set up a One Drive to label all of our assets and textures, which we all had access to which we could then use for creating the final project separately in Unreal Engine 5.
I wanted to create more than just a couple of cave walls for the project, so I decided that I would make a sword. I once again used blender for this. I took a fair amount of inspiration from the sword Anduril, which Aragorn uses in the Lord of The Rings. This was noticeable in the bottom of the hilt and the ends of the cross guard, as they had a very similar shape. I decided after this to put a lot of symmetrical, very fine engraved patterns all over the hilt, to go with the Celtic theme of the project. However I ran into difficulty trying to get a low poly version of the sword. I spent several days exclusively trying to do this and because it was taking so long I decided to leave it be and not use it (Liam had made a Celtic sword which looked far more fitting to the theme of the project so I used it in the place of where I would have used mine).
I began to set up the project in Unreal, which was easy enough once I got into a rhythm of importing assets from the One Drive and getting them textured in Unreal. For my version I decided to present it as an old ritual ground, so to start I organized the monoliths around the cauldron. Then, off to the side in a big area were light was to break through the cave, I arranged several deer skulls all strewn across the floor, one with a sword imbedded into its forehead. I put a set of armor over in the corner of the cave (specifically in one of my walls), the idea being it was worn by one of the people who was present when this ritual deer slaughtering took place. Over at the center, I placed a harp up against one of the pillars, the idea for this being that a harp would be played while a ritual was being carried out. To top off the scene, I placed a deer skull up at the top of a pillar and again imbedded a sword into its forehead, so that it would look like it was stuck onto into the rock (I also put a candle in the hole at the top of one of the monoliths for decoration). I lastly set up a fire effect to play in the cauldron in the center.
Using 24fps I filmed my scene and used the frame rate to time how long it would be so as to match it with music I had already sourced from YouTube. https://youtu.be/euw5R_8hbc0
Once recorded and rendered I set it up and edited in Premiere Pro and it came together well. The last touch I added was to have a quick harp sound play when the camera panned up the harp.
Overall I found this project to be at times difficult, but for the most part enjoyable and a great way to learn how to use Unreal Engine 5. Through out the process, my team mates were very great to work with. The communication was great, everyone contributed the same amount of ideas, 3D models, textures and all had their assets in on time. During the process it was very noticeable how far my skills at sculpting in Blender had come since this time last year, as things that in the past would’ve taken days, only took a handful of minutes. This was the same with using substance painter. I have a far better grasp for it now than I did last year. As for Unreal, I’m not a huge fan of it, probably because it took me a while to grasp in the beginning, but once I got the hang of things like importing assets and textures, organizing them and then implementing them into the project, it wasn’t as bad. I didn’t really have much trouble setting up the camera and filming either, same with rendering it was fairly straightforward. So overall I would say I mostly had fun during the entire process.
PORTFOLIO LINK: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yxVzG3VHOVqGtOg_xu3ayHZGHDqz431x?usp=share_link