Final Project: Moodboard to Creating a Scene

Upon reflection, I acknowledge that my process has been delayed significantly due to my mental and physical health this term. I have been unable to finalise on an idea that I want to work on, also being behind in class has really struck on my confidence in my skill and vision. This has always been a struggle for me as a 3D artist & being affected by social media. Though seeing other artists’ works can be great source of inspiration, it has inevitably got me lost and anxious into choosing a direction to move forward. This is why I have had many UE5 scenes being made then abandoned, yet they all have somewhat helped me practice my knowledge in UE5 just by remaking new scenes over and over again until I made something that really fulfilled my creative vision. I am thankful for the patience and help I got from my classmates and tutors throughout this term <3

For this project, I want to go purely for an aesthetic to help me conclude and practice what I have learned throughout this VFX Fundamental Unit. I have always love the beauty of nature mixed with fantasy that brings a familiar sensation but at the same time transcend further into something out of ordinary. Below are illustrations/concept art that conveys the mood and the aesthetic that I have been looking for in my work. They tend to bring a sense of peacefulness, while act as an invitation for us to step into that world and explore further.

My creative process has always been rather intuitive and experimental, so I didn’t exactly planned or blocked out my scene. I went back and forth a lot in creating this scene, my process is definitely not linear, however I will try to summarize the techniques I used below.

I was envisioning a pond at first, and have attempted to tried out different water system before decided on using Water Body River, as I prefer its type of wave more than Ocean or Lake. I really like the original flow curve of the river already, so I went back and forth between sculpting the landscape and extruding the river, morphing it into a yin-yang shape. I also didn’t like how the landscape is square and wanted a continuity between the river and the ocean body, so I used Flatten brush to push all the surrounding land down to connect the river with ocean. I also reduced the flow of the river water so the waves look more calm.

For the landscape material, at first I tried out the technique of creating different material layers to paint on, yet I didn’t like the result very much as I need more variation to my surface in order for the landscape to look realistic. Yet it only works up to 3 layers, any more layer I created after that started to make the paint glitches and not showing up properly. So I found this Foliage addon that has the type of grass I wanted to use, but also a landscape material that consists of many organic layers that look realistic while being used together.

I was going for more of a dreamlike palette, so I changed the colours/tint of all the materials by going into the base color textures and modify the hues.

I initially was going to model my own trees and foliage, but ended up using add ons I found on the marketplace as I wanted a realistic look and it is very time consuming to start from scratch. However all the models and foliages looked very basic at first so I went in and modify all the textures to turn them into something of my own.

I spend a lot of time painting the foliage and changing its colours, mixing between shades of white, green and pastel blue to further enhance the dreamlike look. I bumped the foliage density up really high for most part as I want the land to look like a cloud floating on water.

Similarly I did to the mushrooms here, but I also increase all of its sizes to make them look more surreal, like how in Alice in wonderland everything is either too big or too small.

At this point I am very satisfied with the overall look of the scene. For the environment I purposely increase the fog’s density to make it more cinematic and creating a god ray effect through the trees. I also changed the cloud material, speed and hue to match it with the overall look.