Plains
3D Environment constructed in UE4 based on the American plains and Scottish highlands. References were gathered and a user story was created in order to create a strong vision. The goal was to create a calming and sentimental image with an ethereal feeling. Wildflowers and brick ruins made faux fairy circles, a viaduct stretching across the landscape with turbines whirring in the distance. Style matched to minimally incorporated Quixel Megascans.
Getting the shadow shape against the landscape was an integral part of this environment and had been important since the beginning and it turned out just how I had hoped. Another big part would have to be the foliage. There were several optimization issues that had been solved due to the system it needed to run on. While this may have caused some changes in the visual results, with some sneaky tricks I was able to react in a way I was happy with.
The foliage was made solely in Designer, and was then constructed into frills in Maya. This is my preferred method as it is easy to procedurally adjust values to create new variations. There was a load of other materials made in Designer as well, including all of the ground textures that would later become an advanced landscape material in Unreal Engine that included variation and culling distances.
Above you can see a close-up of some of those textures in action as well as some of my rock variations used to add interest and depth to the riverbed texture. Below you can find a couple of important props that I authored. The wind turbine was made solely in Maya, while the brick walls started in Maya and were then sculpted in ZBrush and baked in substance painter.
