How to Create Futuristic Hovercraft Flight Simulator Inspired by Matrix

Introduction

My name is Volodymyr Donchenko, and I'm an Environment Concept Director at World Asia China Games. You might be familiar with my work if you've read my previous 80 Level interview. This time, I'm going to tell you about my immersive art experience created in Unreal Engine 5.

Getting Started with Gridscape

On December 9, 2021, The Matrix Awakens: an Unreal Engine 5 experience was released. It gave me hope and inspiration to make my own fan art project come to life one day. That groundbreaking technical demo is a unique concept set within The Matrix universe, which became the foundation for my interactive concept artwork.

Sad they didn't make a full game or invite me to help them make it, though!

The development of this project started 9 years ago with the first series of 3D-rendered concept artworks. A batch of custom-made 3D models was developed and rendered using Corona. Later, some of these models and concept arts became the foundation for Gridscape Unreal Engine 5 level art.

Some of those 3D renders will be recreated in UE5 later. All of this was developed in 3ds Max and Corona; no AI was used.

Those days, I was already practicing procedural material texturing in 3ds Max, which later would help me save a lot of time by using similar workflows in Unreal Engine.

It was helpful to create a main color palette for environmental lighting sources in 3ds Max and later use it in UE5.

Here you can see the 3ds Max assets that will be exported to Unreal Engine 5. They take a while to develop, especially if you are doing it in your free time. 

Some of my concept arts and 3D assets are waiting for next time. I hope I will have time to recreate them in UE5 one day as well.

I will return to the main topic of sharing details about project development in UE, but it's not necessary to share the whole step-by-step guide for now; a lot of UE workflows have already been covered by my previous contributions and other authors online.

Instead, I'll try to show you the main stages of development and some interesting things that I found while doing it.

The First Steps

The foundation of large UE5 projects is not just an idea and concept art, but a collection of 3D assets as well. As mentioned before, 3ds Max legacy 3D files were useful in the development process of this UE project. Here are some examples of my custom-made assets.

I was searching for a better and faster way to import models into Unreal using procedural texturing (NOVA) combined with the Zen Sets for Blender by Sergey Tyapkin add-on. I also baked vertex colors for procedural texturing in UE.

An unusual experience for that project was my laptop overheating, which was necessary to try to avoid. With limited hardware resources, I developed an additional handmade cooling system for the laptop. After a long search in hardware stores, I realized that the existing cooling systems were not powerful enough, so I decided to create my own.

For the foundation of my gameplay, I used a simple flight simulator template that was adjusted and modified manually to suit my needs. To make the world more alive, I also purchased the Matrix – Sentinel AI template. To make it work, I also did manual batch adjustments.

Nanite & Lumen

My technical demo puts previously showcased features of UE5, Nanite and Lumen, to the test in a dense, open-world city environment. The virtualized micropolygon geometry system of UE5 melts right into the scene in this environment.

The city is made up of millions of instances of assets, each consisting of millions of polygons. Nanite intelligently streams and processes these billions of polygons, rendering everything in film quality at super-fast speeds, allowing the project to become reality.

Using Unreal Engine 5's fully dynamic global illumination system, Lumen, allowed for real-time ray tracing to deliver incredibly realistic lighting and reflections throughout the interactive parts of the demo. Real-time ray tracing also creates a cinematic feel by generating beautiful, realistic soft shadows of an abandoned, foggy world.

This project is not a game, but this tech demo offers a vision for what the future of interactive content could be: from incredibly rich and complex cities and environments to photorealistic, visually stunning cinematic views.

Optimization

The scene was assembled into a huge environment through world partitioning. This workflow helps optimize the development of a huge space level map and improves performance while playing.

The top map with already-done screenshots gave me a better sense of my progress and helped me schedule the development process for the next parts of the map.

As you can see, developing multiple areas with different visual identities creates new artistic needs.

Here you can see how I optimized my assets for dressing up big-scale scenes using Blueprints.

For complex static mesh structures, Blueprints were created. That helps to scatter assets in the scene more effectively.

Here are some Unreal Engine screenshots. Using LUT features in post-processing in Unreal Engine is very helpful in achieving the desired mood. 

This project was not only about making assets and assembling the scene, but also about optimizing and setting up gameplay features to perform well on a laptop. The graphics card used was Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090.

MegaLights, Ultra Dynamic Sky, EasyFog, etc., were very helpful when building the environment.

Planning Your Projects

Nowadays, when a huge amount of content is developed with AI, it is hard to stay competitive and motivated to develop your own personal project in your free time.

However, I found it very helpful because company projects can take years to develop, and an NDA is important for future opportunities. It's also important to practice and show your current skills. Big and complex projects take a long time and require endurance and patience from you. Even if the whole amount of content is not available to you, it's still worth showing whatever you can. As I say, it's better to do something than nothing at all!

Here is a good example of assets postponed for some time in the future because of complications in development and my personal skills, as I am more of an environmental concept artist and level artist than a character artist. At that time, I was not able to afford the help of a freelancer, which is why the
animation and gameplay features were kept for the future.

For the videos, I found real-time capture interesting. I think that it is most logical to show marked work.

To capture the scene, I usually use OBS and assemble the video into a trailer using DaVinci Resolve with basic settings to crop the video and add music.

For gameplay videos, music is already included in the UE environment, and I directly capture gameplay from UE using OBS.

Why Create a Soundtrack

There are several reasons why I wanted to have music in the scene:

• Stronger brand identity: stronger IP value, which ultimately plays a huge role in both marketing and audience engagement; the visual and audio identity build the core of the franchise – it is the real attraction of the game and the core driver for building a fanbase;
• Memorable hook: a high-quality visual and audio combo drives my wishlists and first-day purchases; it's the best advertisement for thumbnails and social media;
• Stronger emotional storytelling: the art sets the rules of the world; the music defines the emotional
  pulse; for the audience, it's a feeling, a sensory experience; it holds a nonverbal storyline, from the bright colors to depressing sounds; it is a unique take on storytelling in narrative design;
• Cross-industry production: game art production can trigger cross-industry in-group work, focusing on one emotional blueprint to create a deeper immersion, allowing you to avoid last-minute re-syncing.
• Redefine commercial game art: it is not an upgrade – it is a new aspect of art that gamers enjoy. It turns game art and music into a combo that becomes a cultural artifact.

Here are the main points I wanted the soundtrack to have:

• Post-minimalism
• Brass swells
• Polyphonic melody
• Instruments: orchestral snare, trombones, French horns, string quartet, and synths 

I was essentially creating the elements that match the original sound and adding elements that present a unique game soundtrack composition, rather than just copying the original.

These were my principles when creating the sound:

• Harmony and arrangement: by using interesting harmonic progressions, pedal tones, and ostinato, I tried to create the perfect emotional map that feels like a level progression even if the music loops.
• Instrumentation and sound textures: I wanted to separate instruments and sounds into 3 parts, including roots, mids, and highs. I would play with the friction between dirty and clean textures to make music sound expensive;
• Dramatic arc/dynamic scale: the energy of the soundtrack lies in the contraction and intensity and can be represented as an arc. Sometimes it is not about having more of something – it's the quiet parts, the decrease of intensity levels.
• Cultural authenticity: you can't underestimate the importance of studying the psychology of intervals, modes, scales, and harmony in different cultures, IPs, and genres. It's considered the soul of art and music; it is not just about how to do it right – it is also about how not to make any cultural mistakes.

Here is how I made the track with DAW:

• Analyze and Blueprint: you need to understand the mood and emotions of exploration, combat, and tension layers, and make a main theme that is melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic;
• Instrument/sound selection: the choices can be based on the game environment, visuals, materials, or cultural aspects. By using various in-software libraries or Kontakt plugins, you can make the selections more diverse, from classical orchestra to sci-fi-like soundscapes;
• Composition with MIDI tracks: by working with draw-and-play with notes in a DAW, you can make MIDI tracks work as music tracks in fully digital form that can be re-recorded and edited;
• FX plugins and mixing: each track can be edited with EQ, reverb, echo, compression, and so on – eventually, digital music will sound very much alive;
• Bouncing: I rendered the final stereo to a WAV file, and tested it in the game.

Here's how I set up music and sound in UE:

• 3D source sound: sound comes from a specific place; it has distance effects. By attaching a sound attenuation to distance and using the Play Sound at Location node to place the sound in the level, you automatically adjust the volume and stereo panning in real time;
• Looping BGM: this is a continuous imported music track that plays throughout the levels with no distance effect. I used a sound cue and added a wave player node, and I also used the media player and media sound for streaming.

Conclusion

In general, there's no recipe for developing good projects. It's hard work and there has to be lots of genuine inspiration to develop concept art. I am very grateful for those who support me, those who promote my art, and those who comment on my personal works. Nowadays, even one like is important. Thanks for reading.

Volodymyr Donchenko, Environment Concept Director 

Interview conducted by Emma Collins