Abandoned Mine

Environment Breakdown

Choi Yong

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Choi Yong

Intro

Hello. I am Choi Yong from Korea I am working as an artist leader of the 3D environment at Netmarble N2.
Today, I am going to talk about the Abandoned mine that I made at the challenge hosted by Epic games Korea.

The Challenge

02_Challenge

On December 13, 2021, Epic Games Korea held a challenge called the Unreal Engine 5 Challenge for the Korean community.
The theme was to create a wonderful piece of artwork with detail and lighting using Nanite and Lumen. The project deadline ran from December 15 2021 to December 28 2021, which was two weeks.

Project Goals

This challenge was very difficult to participate in, as there was a lot of work to do within 2 weeks. I had to pick background music and render cinematics. So, I looked at how much I could use the Megascans data from Quixel to make the theme of the environment I was going for. To shorten time I designed small scenes and filled them with interesting objects.

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Planning and preparation

On December 15 I began the challenge. The theme was released, so I began working on the main level design and whole composition quickly.

I collected the appropriate data to make the theme. Next, I began thinking about how to express the final outcome which would be reflected in the video shoot.

 

Reference

04_Reference

The theme I decided on was a small abandoned village and mine, I found similar reference to what I wanted to go for, it was difficult to find the exact reference in my brain, so I found some images close to it. Finding as much ref as you can is key to making your environment look realistic.

Blockout

I think the blockout is one of the most important tasks. Doing it well now will make the environment look great later. However, since I did not have much time in this project there is not much I was chopping and changing to fit the final outcome. To prevent errors in the directionality of the concept, the blockout and scenes layout should be utilized well.

05_01_BlockOut

In the image above, I did not have enough time to do the full blockout. But you can see I was gradually completing placement around the grey boxes, which is the most important part.

05_05_scean-layout

The image above is a gameplay-level development screen from the Last of Us P2. When I make the scenes by myself, I first distinguish the necessary parts and the unnecessary parts within the blockout, And then I express the layout of the scene as shown. If I do that, the scenes I want to express become a little clearer. I can choose and concentrate on the scenes I am making hence giving myself more time for further polish.

 

Software Used

I found Quixels Megascans good at filling many of the scenes with high-quality assets in a short time. And while I was working on this challenge,  Sketchfab was acquired by Epic Games recently, I thought to take this to my advantage. Because I was using Unreal Engine 5, I was able to use the photometric data of Lumen and Nanite to create good results.

06_sketchfab-scaled

After watching the Melhem Sfeir YouTube video; Metaverse in UnrealEngine 5 will be this PHOTOREALISTIC! (https//www.youtude.com/waitch?v-8LNQgT gE-gqg) I found that I could use this photometric data to my advantage.

 

Rendering

The final rendering was performed using the movie render queue in the Unreal engine. Perhaps many people already know a man named William Faucher. He’s a great mentor. It was very helpful to see his render queue on his Youtube.

William Faucher Youtube video about the Movierender queue: (https//www.youtube.com/waich?v-FxvF3zncClA) Improve Your Renders With Unreal Movie Render Queue PART 1 – Goodbye Sequencer?! (4.26)

07_result

While writing this article, the results of the challenge came out and I took second place in the general sector of the Nanite Challenge. I had to make this in a short period of two weeks, so I omitted a lot of progress, but I learned how to use the time well.

My ArtStation: www.artstation.com/yong5958
My IG: www.instagram.com/choiyong84/
Thank you for reading my article. I hope this article will help you become an inspiration or get good information

Please feel free to contact me with additional questions related to or unrelated to the article!

Thank you for giving me a chance to write this article Games Artist.