Project Background

August 14th, 2022. I finished the game Stray. I was stunned by the cinematic-like final scene, its composition, its color pattern and its atmosphere make me feel so fascinated. As a level designer, I am able to operate the Unreal Engine and simple modeling tools such as Blender. From the love of this game, I decide to start a small personal project to create the last scene of Stray in Unreal Engine 5. There is also a chance for me to get more familiar with the features of Unreal Engine 5.

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Project Scope

Goals:

  1. Keep it small. It’s a sprint project, as I am not a professional level artist.
  2. Keep it quick. Try to recreate the scene the scene in 3 hours. (For the first sprint)
  3. Keep it focus. Only use resources created by unreal engine 5, blender and megascan.

Non-goals:

  1. There will be no gameplay in this project.

Delivery:

  1. Final result in image format.
  2. Final result in a short video to demonstrate.

Project Process

  1. At the beginning of the project, I made this document to setup my project scope. It includes what I will do and what I will not do to make the creative process more clear.
  2. The next step is to find the resources and references. PureRef is a useful tool to help me do the reference job through the process. Then I start analyze the reference, which is the screenshot of the scene (on above). Based on this, I search the Quixel Megascan to choose the suitable surface materials and also 3D plants and assets. Unreal Engine 5 has built-in Quixel bridge into the pipeline so the whole process is smooth and convenient.
  3. Get into the unreal editor - create and setup a new project & world. Disable the auto-exposure. Setup the cine-camera actor, lock it in position and start blockout with simple boxes.

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  1. After the basic composition has been setup, I start to put the assets into the scene, and use them to replace the simple boxes.
  2. In the plant painting process, I choose to paint the plants in layers, which would be more nature and detailed. I start with the grass, followed by the mint leaves, then the larger beech fern, then the shrubs, then the trees… layer by layer. In this process, I also paid more attention to the outline shapes, and based on that to choose the correct plants.

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  1. Modify the light settings and post-effects.

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