The desert aesthetic was replaced with hyper-realistic visuals and lighting.
Solo Game Developer and UE5 enthusiast known only as Nic shared a collection of impressive demos over the past few weeks, showcasing a marvelous 3D recreation of one of the most iconic game levels of all time.
Leveraging Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5, the developer recreated Counter-Strike's legendary Dust 2 map, painstakingly translating its layout, albeit on a smaller scale, and gameplay features and adding custom-made keyframed character animations.
Furthermore, the developer has replaced Counter-Strike's regular first-person view with a bodycam perspective similar to Unrecord, an upcoming shooter by the DRAMA team that took the world by storm back in April thanks to its hyperrealistic graphics.
The original map's desert aesthetic and general feel, however, weren't retained by Nic, who opted to utilize more urban-style assets and colder lighting for his UE5-powered Dust 2. Attached below are some of the demos shared by the creator, you can check out more by visiting Nic's YouTube page:
Notably, this is not the first time we see one of CS's maps being remade with UE5. Earlier, 3D Artist known as Cger also unveiled a cool recreation of the Assault map from Counter-Strike, made using Megascans assets and Unreal Engine 5 with the goal of recreating a familiar map using modern software:
And here are some guides on how to use UE5 to create realistic lighting in particular:
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