Seraph’s Hollow
Responsible for all aspects.
Made in Unreal Engine 5 using Maya, Zbrush, Substance Painter, Quixel Mixer, Ivy Generator, Speedtree and Gaea.
Original Concept: “Suspended Place” by SiChen Wang
I was immediately set on the concept art because I found the scaffolding, perspective and volumes really intriguing. I had also never done an exterior environment and this would only be my second project in unreal engine, so I was excited for the inherent challenges. The above depicts my weekly progress but keep reading for more breakdowns!
Featured here are materials I created in Quixel Mixer. I layered Megascans textures and used mask stacks to achieve these worn looks on the smaller dome building tiles and bricks.
Using the displacement maps from Mixer, I displaced my assets in ZBrush. Then I layered the albedo and normal maps with underlying textures in a shader so I could vertex paint and break up the tiling. This is usually topped with decals and ivy to add an extra level of complexity.
Volumes & Birds
The clouds in the final render (hidden for the purpose of these screenshots) were created using volumetric clouds with a cloud billowy material found in the engine content. These can be hidden in default UE5, but if you load the volumetrics plug in and opt to show all engine content and plug-in content, it will show in the content browser.
These screenshots highlight where I used cards to add low-hanging clouds and fog, which was key in matching the essence of the concept. I also used cards for a bird animation to help breathe more life into the scene.