Building Cozy Cottage House In UE5

Introduction

Hi, I'm Jeffrey Garcia, and I am currently a 3D Environment Artist from Los Angeles, CA. I have been working professionally for about 5 years, doing some freelance work as well as spending the last two years working at Lost Boys Interactive, where we helped co-develop the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion for New World and New World: Aeternum.

Goals for the Project

Some of the main goals with the Coloma project were to gain a better understanding of Unreal Engine's shader graph, practice my trim and kit-building techniques, and world-building abilities, focusing on composition and storytelling.

Reference & Blockout

I ended up choosing a concept from Hwi. I felt this particular one had all I was looking for in order for me to focus on the areas I was aiming for. I began by searching for reference images and brainstorming metrics and kit pieces needed, and planning out my trim. For this project, I wanted to get the most out of my trim as possible, as it would be used to also create a set of props to be used later.

Kit Creation

The Kit is made up entirely from tileable textures and the trim texture I created. In order to get variety, I used mask and shader options to control color, saturation, and normal intensity. This allowed me to use the trim in a variety of different ways. The reusability I was able to achieve granted me the ability to create small buckets for a larger wagon. For the walls, I vert-painted between plaster, bricks, and dirt. Using height to blend between the damaged parts, where it would typically be found. The different material instances allowed for variety for the prefab homes set in the background and for the awnings created that would be added later.

For the rock wall and around the circular frame entrance, I sculpted 7 rocks, baked them, and imported them into Unreal. In the shader, I added a detail normal to control the tiling and add much-needed detail to the stone. I converted them into Nanite meshes and assembled the stones to match the concept. This was the most cost-efficient way to go about this, as it saved me time and didn't require making this a unique piece. Creating the rock kit was a great way to add secondary props to my environment as I created rubble piles and rock walls to place along the road. Creating prefabs allowed for quick iteration and testing.

Shader Graph

This project presented me with different opportunities to learn to use different nodes inside of Unreal. Creating world-aligned materials to color variation based on world position, the entire learning process is what made this project fun.

I became a big fan of the Named Reroute node, this helped me not get overwhelmed with the node network and break things down to easily keep track of what I was doing. This made it easy to work on an area, close it down, and come back and pick up where I left off. This came in handy for creating the roof and plaster master materials, creating parameters to control height, color, saturation, and intensity makes adjusting and changing a breeze. Applying different values to different material instances for different prefabs was simple and quick.

Lighting & Final Touches

Lighting was originally utilizing Unreal's default daytime, once the scene was more established, I switched to using the Ultra Dynamic Sky plug-in. This helped me attain the cloud look I was aiming for. To highlight certain areas used a technique from Karim Yasser that he used on The Traveler UE5 environment. In which he added some lights to adjust the global lighting. I used this technique on the foreground house to highlight the road and lead the eye down the road.

The road is one aspect that went through a lot of iteration, and it was the final thing I touched in the scene. Initially, it was done by sculpting the road on the terrain, but this did not achieve the look I had hoped. After receiving some feedback, instead I took the route of creating the as a spline in Unreal, creating a simple mesh inside of Maya, and using that as a base. The mesh itself was vert painted to help it blend with the terrain and add to its believability. Lastly, I wanted to add some movement into the scene, adding the crow on the roof and the birds in the far background added some much-needed depth that the environment needed.

Retrospective

This project ended up being a great learning experience and exercise to improve my skills. I was able to focus on the areas I had set my focus on and gain a better fundamental understanding of how to bring cohesion to a scene.

This would not be possible without seeking feedback and bouncing ideas off my peers. Making changes and iterations are vitally important to bring out the best in an environment piece. I would like to take the time to thank all my fellow artists who took the time to give me feedback and critiques. Thanks as well to 80 Level for this opportunity, hope you enjoyed the read!

Jeffrey Garcia, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine