Introduction
In this workshop i learnt how to use materials, lighting and atmospheric effects to create a 3D environment in the unreal game engine.
I didn’t take screen shots instead i screen recorded the process of adding the assets i made to create the forest environment. I will soon edit the video so there are no long pauses and there will be music.
Below is an image of the level i am creating. As you can see i have already placed the boulders. I used the “W” key to move the boulder down to make stepping stones, i then duplicate the first stepping stone by using Alt and drag five times. I then inserted another boulder and scaled it in and then rotated the boulder until it looked like stone pillars. This would give off the look of a stone pathway.
The next image is me creating an area of trees and placing them in groups around the stone to make a forest. As you can see in the video i am running around the level to give you a look at the level from a 3RD person perspective. I had difficulty doing the foliage because i didn’t know what settings to use and what the most suitable brush size would be.
In the image below you can see i have made a “Stone portal” which was made by rotating a boulder 180 then using the “w” key to move the boulder upward in-between two other boulders to make a portal. The next thing to do is to go to create a new material and this will be the glow material for the portal.
To make a glow material you need to make a new material. At 13:08 in my video you can see a tutorial on how to make the glow material and its very simple to follow.
Now you need to drag and drop a cube and scale it so its thin enough to fit in the the portal and small enough so it doesnt have any edges sticking out of the portal. Now just drag and drop the glow material which can be found with your assets (unless you have chose your own location). All of this can be found in my video right after the glow material tutorial.
The next task is to add a directional light which means you can rotate the directional light and it will change the time of day. Doing so, you can make the sky look like sunset or night time or afternoon.
Below are the three assets i used to make the level. A Boulder, A Tree and Grass Tuft.
To do all of these assets they all required
- Maya 2018
- UV Editor/Map
- Photoshop
Here is a link to my other blog where i show you how i made a boulder. https://coreyaizegd.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/making-a-boulder/
During this workshop i learnt how to build an environmental level by using fog, directional, foliage, and making materials like the glow material. These skills that i learnt can be used if you are an environmental artist and a level designer. The purpose of these roles is to create convincing and realistic levels and environments for the player.
Corey Aizlewood Games Designer 