Forest Environment

Introduction

This is my second university project that I made. This one took me 3 months to make, it was tiring but it was all worth it because I learned some new things that were out of my comfort zone and that is not how I usually do things. But I did it and I have to say that I am impressed with the results.

The Project I made is not referenced from a video game or from a movie. This is my original design because I wanted to try to do my own kind of project and see where it would take my skills.

What you are seeing is a forest with 2 different types of trees, grass and a wind effect, just to give it a bit of realism. And there are some houses, a bridge and a river under the bridge. The water is one of the new skills that I learned, and the other new skill was making fire wáhich you can see on the image and video above.

Software Used

3Ds Max
Zbrush
Substance Painter
Unreal Engine

Steps I took to make my assets in 3Ds Max

There were quite a few things to do to make my assets but I did them step by step.

Step 1 was to first make the assets to make the house as that was the hardest for me to do because I had to think on the size of the wall that I was going to reuse for my project. The other thing that made it hard was thinking of the small decorations that I was going to add to make the house look like it was from the time period I was thinking of. And the last thing was how many pieces I need that I will copy in unreal to make my house.

Step 2 was making the house assets look rough round the edges so it does not look like a cube with a straight edge.

Step 3 was making the props at the end because they were the easiest task for me to complete.

And the last step was to unwrap them so the textures that I will give them are neat and tidy.

What I did in unreal to make the environment

In unreal there were more steps to take to complete my project because there were things that I needed to make that I could not do in 3Ds max.

The first step was to add my textures to my assets. For that I needed to make a master material because I will be using that material for all my assets.

The way I made the master material is I added my base texture materials first, then I converted them into parameters so I can give each of the textures their names and it would be easier for me to know which texture I'm swapping out.

The next thing I did was add some nodes that can control the strength of each material, like control how rough I wanted the texture to be and how shiny I wanted the metallic texture to be. I added these nodes in so it can help the assets to have a realistic look on them.

After I added the nodes, I made sure that they were in groups with the texture they were assigned to so when I go to the material instance to edit the assets texture it will not be hard to know which group is what.

With that step done and all my materials were applied to my assets, the next step was to create a water material. I did not know how to make this so I went on a tutorial video on youtube to learn how to do it. The video was quite long but I got through it.

The next step was to sculpt the landscape to my liking so I went to the landscape menu and went to the sculpting mode. I used the brush to make low mountains that surrounded where I will put my assets but I made sure that I had enough room to fill the land to make it look good.

After I made the landscape I went over to the quixel store to get a landscape material that was good for the forest, so I chose the grass with some dirt texture. After I downloaded the texture I applied it to the land and I edited the texture so it can look more realistic. After applying the grass texture I went back to the store to find a dirt path texture so the environment can have a path way. After I found the texture I wanted and downloaded it I applied it to the land so I can paint over the grass.

Now that the landscape has been textured, the next step is to lay out my assets to build my environment. What I did first is build my house that I will copy a few times to spread out through the land. After I made my house I laid out some props for decoration, some of the props that I made were barrels, bowls and drinking cups. I have made some small assets like tables, chairs and a small brick wall.

I placed a couple of tables in front of the house I made, then I placed a few chairs round the tables, then I placed a few bowls and cups to decorate the tables so they don’t look boring.

After placing the tables, chairs, bowls and cups. I started to place the small brick walls, I started where the door was at the house and placed a few that led to the dirt path. I even placed some at other places that had the dirt path just to make it look better because in some of the games I played there were some stone walls in random places that had a path way.

After I finished making the house and adding the decorations, I selected all the assets, I duplicated them, I dragged them to different locations of the environment, but I moved some of the props in different locations round the house so it does not look too repetitive.

After placing the houses in different locations I started to add some foliage to the land. With the grass that I had made from 3ds max, I went to the foliage menu, I selected and dragged my grass to make it a foliage actor. This way I can paint on the landscape with the grass asset. I added a wind action so the grass does not just stand still on the ground. I added some trees to the foliage too so I can give the land some forest vibes and I even added some wind action to the leaves.

The last thing that I added to the environment is some fire torches to give the area some light as I want the lighting to be dark enough for it to be night. But first I had to make a fire. So I went to the quixel store to find a free fire system. After I found one that I liked I downloaded it to my content browser.

After it was downloaded I went to the fire settings to tweak some things. One of those things was the size of the flame so it can fit in my torch and the other was the amount of smoke as I did not want too much of it as I was not building a bonfire.

After I finished witht the fire, I created a blueprint so I can make the torch and fire as one asset. Then I placed it in the environment and duplicated it and placed the copies in different locations.
The last step to make my project complete is the lighting. So I went on youtube to find a simple tutorial on how to make a night sky and I found one. So first off I had to position the sun to where I need it, so I place the sun like a bit over 90 degrees so I can not see it, then I tweaked the colour of the sky to the colour of the night sky, then I also played with the colour of the environment to the colour blue but not bright blue just a bit darker blue so my sight does not see blackness round the environment. The fire torches actually helps aswell to light up the path and help to walk round the area.