— PROJECT NAME
Wizard's Homestead
— ROLE
3D Environment Artist
Design
Layout
Lighting
Cinematic Shots
— DATE
April 30th, 2025
A Year long project. There was a lot of research and development put into this scene and I am very proud of it. This was a huge learning opportunity for myself in time management, organization, planning, as well as skillset wise.
Conceptualized, modeled, textured, and rendered by myself. Megscans textures for landscape. Landscape sculpted, painted, and lit in Unreal Engine. Materials and blueprints were built by myself utilizing Unreal Engine Documentation and online research.
Fireflies are created in the Niagra Particle System. Lighting is using Ultra Dynamic Sky with post processing volume.
BREAKDOWN AND FINAL RENDERS DOWN BELOW
Day-Night cycle
Process
Wizard's Homestead was originally planned to be a small floating island diorama with a wizard’s tower, an orrery, and a greenhouse farm area.
I had created basic blockout shapes to plan where assets should sit, like the farm beds and the greenhouse. I had an outline for the Orrery created already. I took initiative to teach myself Speedtree Modeler, where I created pine trees for the scene.
Although I had an idea of how the scene was supposed to be laid out, the floating island did not end up being the final idea for this project. I was challenged by my professor to work on a larger scale, and thus changed the direction and scale.
Process
You can see the original Floating Sky layout that was soon modified.
To achieve the ideal landscape, I used different heightmaps found online and adjusted them in photoshop, and finally came to the ideal shape of my Unreal landscape. I started to fall in love with my environment.
Because this project was 2 semesters, I focused on creating a village on the left side during my first semester, and focused on the magical aspects during the next semester.
Semester 1:
Farm clutter
Water well
Modular Homes version 1 (Later updated)
Vegetation
Fences
Lanterns
I created a fence blueprint system that procedurally generates when placed, and also a Light/Lantern blueprint system that allows me to reuse lighting and place lights anywhere on the map to populate the scene.
Here are some progress photos with how the scene slowly became filled.
Process – Landscape Blueprints
I created custom material functions for Nanite Tessellation in the landscape, and created a separate material function to mix different Quixel Bridge textures for landscape painting.
This allowed for more depth and to create pathways to divide the areas.
Process
After filling in the village on the left side of the scene in Semester 1, the right side was later filled with more magical elements.
Semester 2:
Wizard’s Tower
Stone Foliage Assets
More vegetation for the farm (Tomatoes, Corn, different bush types)
Orrery
Observatory – Detail View
Updated modular homes – Detail View
The mountains were filled with homes and a reusable lighting fixture blueprint was created to populate the scene with lights.
Process – Finishing Up
Once the scene was populated, the finishing effects to make the environment into a fantasy environment was implemented.
Ultra dynamic sky, Lighting, Niagara effects, Color grading, and more.
Final Renders
Cinematic Video
Cinematic Area Shots
Assets for the Project
