Creating Immersive Forest Cabin Environment Inspired By Alan Wake 2

Introduction

Hi, my name is Evgenia, and I am a recent graduate of the Think Tank Training Center. I am originally from Russia but currently live in Finland. Before attending Think Tank, I worked in software marketing. However, when the war started in 2022, it became impossible to work remotely for Russian companies due to the sanctions, and I lost my job.

As a result, I had to find a new path. I have always been inspired by art, so combining my experience in the tech industry with my passion for art led me to enroll in Think Tank Online.

References

This project is inspired by Alan Wake 2 and the concept of Aleksey Pollack. I began by collecting references and creating a basic layout for the piece. My mentor, Raja Ghosh, taught me a lot about studying the reference board.

To achieve a realistic environment, I needed to ensure that the trees, plants, and houses fit well together. For that, I chose a real location: Olympic Park in the USA. I picked this location because many atmospheric movies and games, including Alan Wake 2, were filmed there. I researched the types of trees, ground plants, and soil in that area. I also looked into cabins that are near wetland environments by the lake.

Details are important. I built a wooden shingle roof and added moss on top, focusing on how moss grows on wood, not stone or metal. 

The reference board has been very useful throughout the whole project. Even after I finished all the assets and textures, I found more ideas for set dressing. When I looked up images of abandoned houses in the forest, I noticed many showed fallen leaves and ivy on the cabins. Adding these details to my scene was a good choice, even though they were not in the original concept.

Blockout

The blockout I started by creating very basic houses in Maya and matching the camera angle with the concept art. Then, I uploaded it to Unreal Engine 5 and sculpted a landscape with the Landscape tool.

This was the initial blockout:

Modularity

I created simple modular pieces in Maya and uploaded them to Unreal to check if everything was going well.

Once I checked that everything was fine, I took 3 wooden logs to ZBrush, sculpted the wood to bake it in Substance 3D Painter later, and used this texture for all the wooden logs.

I found this wood sculpting tutorial by Jeetendra Sharma easy to follow and full of useful techniques:

For the roof, I used a tileable texture and modeled single shingles meshes so the roof doesn't look flat. I usually model an object first and then add textures. In this case, I did both at the same time. After making the basic shape, I applied a tileable texture. This helped me measure the size of the shingles and model them accurately.

Tip: I had to place many shingles on the first row to avoid a straight line.

To create a stone foundation and stairs, I sculpted individual stones in ZBrush and assembled them into a small wall using the Move tool. 

Hero Props

In this scene, I had 3 main hero props: the door, the wooden sign, and the boats. For the door and the wooden sign, I followed the most common high-poly to low-poly pipeline. Modeling in Maya, sculpting in ZBrush, and baking and texturing in Substance 3D Painter.

Tip: In ZBrush, I mostly sculpted the big details, but the small details and wooden grain I made in Substance 3D Painter using height maps from photogrammetry wood. Just upload the displacement map from Megascans texture to the height map in Substance 3D Painter. 

Boats were made simply in Maya using a mid-poly pipeline and textured in Substance 3D Painter. I could probably put all the boat details in a single 4K texture, but I wanted to get a nicer resolution, so I used 3 different 2K textures.

Vegetation

I created all the trees using SpeedTree. For most trees, I used a common LOD method. However, for the trees closer to the camera, the trunks needed more detail to appear realistic under light. To fix this, I added displacement to the trunks in SpeedTree and used Nanite in Unreal Engine. The leaves still use the LOD method.

I recommend checking the Forest Environment course by Michael Gerard. He explains how to make trees with hybrid logic.

The forest I created with a simple PCG. Then, I manually placed some important trees.

I used Megascans atlases to create ground foliage and ivy, and I built the meshes in SpeedTree. To design different shapes of ivy branches, I made an ivy generator. This tool lets me easily change settings like leaf size, number of branches, and branch length.

It's explained quite well in one of the Fast Track tutorials:

Landscape & Path

I sculpted a landscape by myself in Unreal Engine using the landscape tool. The path is a simple mesh created in Maya. Then I utilized a spline to place and adjust the path in the scene.

Texturing

I used three methods to texture all the assets except for vegetation. These methods are: unique textures created by baking in Substance 3D Painter, tileable textures made in Substance 3D Designer, and trim sheets also made in Substance 3D Painter.

I used unique textures for important props, like the door and wooden sign. For larger assets, such as the roof, that don't need baking, I applied tileable textures. I chose trim sheets when I wanted to add baked details to larger assets, like the walls of a cabin.

All the assets in the scene have a texel density of 1K. I set this texel density using specific numbers in Maya:

If I am working with a tileable texture and want to maintain a texel density of 1K, I set the texel density to 10.24 and the map size to 1024. For unique textures, I first measure the size of the object. If the object is approximately 2 meters, I increase the map size to 2048. For a 4-meter object, I set the map size to 4096 while always keeping the texel density at 10.24. Additionally, if I have extra space on the tile, I try to UV map several objects within one tile to reduce the number of textures used in my scene.

I enjoyed making abandoned or destroyed scenes because they have interesting old textures. Creating textures for new objects can be hard, but adding details like dirt and damage to old objects is fun. It helps tell a story and makes the objects more engaging to look at.

For the entire scene, I created just four master materials with customizable parameters and then assigned material instances to each asset. The vertex paint shader I used for the modular kit and the props:

The vegetation shader allowed me to change the color of the foliage:

Path shader helped me to blend the path with the landscape using vertex paint:

Vertex paint on splines works in Unreal Engine 5.5, but it doesn't work in earlier versions. I also made a landscape shader that I could use to paint ground foliage.

Set Dressing & Decals

Once the scene was assembled, I started set dressing to enhance the level of detail. During this stage, I've added fallen leaves, branches, moss, and decals. The most convenient tool for set dressing is Dash. It has a Physics tool and scattering that is convenient to use. 

Creating moss for this scene was a bit complicated, and I used two different methods. The moss on the roof is made using decals. I created a tileable moss material and then made several opacity masks that I combined in the shader within Unreal Engine. For the moss that appears close to the camera, such as on the sign, I used moss cards. I created small moss cards in SpeedTree and scattered them on specific objects using the Dash tool. Afterward, I manually adjusted their shape by removing some of the cards.

Lighting

First of all, I set up the ambient light. For that, I used Skybox with a matte-painted sky, SkyLight with an HDRI map, and a Directional Light.

Next, I've added Exponential Height Fog.

Then, it was time to add local lights. The moonlight with god rays is just a Spot Light with a high volumetric scattering intensity placed between the leaves of the tree. The lantern is a Point Light tinted with a warm color.

The fog in this scene was made with both fog cards and local volumetric fog. The fog cards are more suitable for the locations where the player doesn't go.

I also tweaked some post-process values in the shadows and tinted the scene in blue.  

Conclusion

I learned a lot while making this scene but couldn't have done it without feedback. My advice for beginner artists is to ask experienced people for help. The 3D artist community is full of friendly people who want to support you. Don't be afraid to reach out to professionals when you need help. This is also a good way to grow your network.

Evgenia Greciano, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins