Brief:

Create establishing shots of a medieval environment focusing on the digital matte painting, and 3D environment design in Unreal Engine 5.

Response to Brief

It will start in the forest: short idyllic shots of the forest trails, god rays peeking through the trees, flowers along the pathway etc. Sound will be relaxing and calm, birds chirping and sounds of branches in the wind.

The idyllic scenery will then slowly turn darker; a trail of breadcrumbs will appear in the scene, there will be placed hidden objects in the camera’s path for the viewer to discover: blood spatter on the trees, smoke from bonfire etc..

Next, the camera will move over abandoned weaponry, swords, helmets and shields covered in blood. In the distance there’s a glimpse of corpses of defeated soldiers. The peaceful sound will gradually increase to a climax for the finale.

At the end of the path the forest opens up to reveal a valley with a castle on a hill. The castle is on fire, and there’s a war on its doorstep. What seemed to be a quiet relaxing forest scenery turned out to be a vicious bloodthirsty war.

Planning

My initial idea was to create a fantasy environment mainly out of 2D objects, while focusing on the digital matte painting part of the project. The camera would then move through the forest to reveal a majestic scenery with a castle on a hill. To accomplish a 3D feels with only 2D objects I would frequently use the camera setting – depth of field, to blur out the flat images when passing them.

After some consideration; I decided to incorporate the idea of building a real-life 3D environment in Unreal Engine 5, whilst creating a 2D layered digital matte painting as my hero object. Later on after figuring out that the unreal environment will be heavily prominent in my scene, I then carried on modelling some weapons in Maya as well as 3D scanning some objects to be put in my project alongside my DMP as hero objects. The big reveal, the finale will be the castle on fire with use of fire assets.

Megascans Trees: European Beech

MAE Oak Forest 

Procedural Nature Pack Vol.1 

Forest Landscape Materials Vol. II

Nordic Coastal Groundcover

Downy Willow

Double Headed Axe

Headsman’s Axe

Blood Pack

Sketchfab models

I downloaded the free models below, and imported them into my project as stand ins. I did that to add to my bloody war story exterior, but had them in the distance or I used a lot of blur when moving the camera over them.

Cart corpse (The Darkest Red) by KIFIR on Sketchfab

 

Knight by JMFrederick on Sketchfab

 

 

Knight with spear and shield by mykola on Sketchfab

Work in progress

Started by creating a new level, from there, I made a landscape and added light, sky atmosphere and volumetric fog.

​I formed the landscape by the use of sculpt tool, and made more variety with the help of noise. I then formed the pathway in the ground. I wanted the forest trails to be bumpy and uneven to match the medieval aesthetic. Afterwards, I set up cameras to where I wanted the perspective, and started building the scenery.

 

For the illusion of a busy, well-traveled road from the middle ages, I decided to create some puddles in my path. Where soldiers on horses, wagons and carriages frequently passed by damaging the road in their wake.

The puddles were made by a plane, scaled and added a water material on top. I then started adding different tree meshes, who would be the most prominent in my scene along the trails.

 

This tutorial helped me with understanding how to sculpt, and the use of blend layers when it comes to painting a surface with different materials.

I downloaded a forest pack from Unreal Marketplace, in this pack it were a variety of different tree meshes with animation. I mainly used two trees, scaled them down/up a bit and scattered them around in my scene along the forest path. The trees in the background are a combination of some different trees I painted, in foliage mode, with high density to get that cramped forest feeling.

The water puddles were created by one single plane which I added a water material atop. To get a dirty look to it, I went into the water material and changed the color of the water from a pretty blue to a more grey turquoise.

Next, when the main trees was placed in the scene I could then start to play around with foliage and scatter plants, rocks and other objects on my landscape. I added grass, my 3D scanned logs, bushes, flowers, ferns, leaves and saplings, in all shapes and forms to make it look the most organic.

I scanned a few 3D scans to make the project more unique and mine. Above is a log I scanned at Hampton Court Palace, this model was duplicated and placed multiple times throughout my project.

I added the digital matte painting by layering it in the distance.

I decided to include a few element in my scene to add to the storyline. You can see an abounded helmet and a bloody handprint on the picture above.

I made an abounded camp, I would later include snippets of in different shots to lure the audience.

I found free models on Sketchfab I decided to use: some knights, corpses and a wagon.

To indicate it’s a war happening: I included a few defeated soldiers along the path.

I carved a few wagon wheel trails in the road for a more authentic medieval look. This made the scene look more rough and like there has been travelers on the busy road.

Afterwards, I scattered abandoned weapons on the road to create the illusion that a battle has taken place.

After the weaponry had taken its place, I then added much needed blood on top.

Instead of using the bodies that were already on the cart, I made the decision to scan my own corpses. I chose to do that due to the model’s low quality, and I didn’t want to use another person’s model so centered and prominent in my scene, having my own scan would also make it a hero object. Realistic looking body parts would also make my project more grotesque and brutal, which was the look I was going for.

Originally I was going to add fire in post production by adding inn assets. Due to little time and it being too much work, I decided therefore to add video assets in Unreal Engine. I found a tutorial on YouTube where they went into depth of how to import a video into Unreal Engine 5.

I followed the tutorial, and did what he said. Started off by adding a plane, and then insert the video file on the plane as a img sequencer. To get the video transparent one would have to go into the material and change the setting. I changed the blend mode from Opaque, to Masked. In the tutorial, the creators video plane got transparent (background removed)- only visible was the actor in the video. In my case the whole plane got invisible, only when I pressed real-time play, I would see the fire asset video. This was really hard to work with, no matter what blend mode or setting I did nothing worked. I even tried to render the asset with a transparent background to see if that helped. When I was out of luck and done with the fire did I discover the fire blueprint plugin in Unreal Engine. I therefore quit the idea of using fire assets, and rather used the plugin in UE. I could easily go into the blueprint and change the fire setting, example I removed the ember and particles. There was also smoke included, but I could also add the smoke plugin on top for extra effect.

The finished forest.

Modeling in Maya

I came to the conclusion that I needed to add a few extra pieces of hero objects to my project. Therefore, I decided to model a couple of weapons I could spread around my scene. I chose to model a sword, and if I had time left I would model a shield as well.

First off I found a photo of a medieval sword as reference image. I then put the image in Maya and set it as background, before I started to model from the picture. When the basic shapes were built, I deleted one side of the model leaving me with half a sword. The side I was left with was mirrored to create a whole sword.

For the pommel a sphere was used, the hilt was from a cylinder merged together with the pommel and guard. I used a cube for the blade and guard.

UV-Mapping

The next thing I did was to UV-map the sword. Before I started UV-mapping, I had to separate the sword by materials. I did that by adding lambert textures to the different parts of the weapon. The blade was given a blue material to symbolize  steel. The pink material was for copper and the green was for leather.

By dividing the different materials would make it easier to create separate texture-maps. Next, I started to UV-map. I divided the different UV-map layers by materials like before.

To save time, I did use automatic UV, then cut and sew as well as unfold. I straighten, moved and rotated the UV shells to best increase the pixel density.

Lastly before texturing, I had to create a high poly version, which I did by duplicating the low poly and add smooth and soften edges.

Texturing

I imported the low poly model into Substance Painter for texturing. Then I baked the low poly with the high poly model for smoother edges. I could easily paint/ drag and drop smart materials on the model as a result of making texture maps earlier in the workflow.

As predicted the sword turned out good with a blade of steel, guard and pommel in copper and hilt covered in leather. After texturing, I exported the model into Unreal Engine.

Shield

I followed the same workflow with the shield as I used with the sword. Started with finding an image I used as reference.

I put that image in Maya and started modelling.

To get an accurate model I, also here, deleted half the model and used mirror to duplicate one side to the other.

UV-Mapping

Just like the sword, the shield model was divided into material categories. Unlike the reference photo, I wanted my shield to not only consist of steel. I wanted an iron frame, with a wooden base and steel knobs. 

I UV-mapped the different material layers together in their own square before I scaled them down to fit one single square.

Texturing

I easily dragged and dropped the material over the parts of the shield I wanted to paint.

Due to haven made texture maps, I could simply open a layer and do adjustments to the UV-shells instead of having to be precise and paint by hand. Next step I did was to upload my model to Sketchfab which I could do directly from Substance Painter.

One could also export the model directly into Unreal Engine from Substance Painter. I tried to do that, but got an error. I therefore, imported the model and textures manually, made material and linked the material to the model.

That method worked fine, the only problem I had was that the imported texture looked too shiny. I tried to add a specular, change the roughness and metallic settings in material but nothing changed. Turns out the problem was with how the model was imported. Unreal Engine automatically connects all the maps as colour. What I did was to change the different maps from colour to linear colour.

3D Scans

In addition to the digital matte painting and the models I made, for extra hero objects in my scene that was purely mine: I therefore decided to scan some object. The photo scanning app I chose to use is called: Polycam. My professor recommended the app, and another classmate had already tested it out and gotten impressive results. I downloaded and used it on my IPhone XS Max.

The first scan I did was a test run of a shampoo bottle. When I got the hang of it I started to scan objects used in my project.

Objects to scan:

• A building/ ruins?
• Weaponry?
• Plants?
• Trees/ logs/ saplings?
• People? Corpses?

Since I had already built a number of weapons I could consequently duplicate and reuse them, scattered around in my scene. Being set with the sword and shield, I was thinking of scanning weaponry objects like helmets, spears or axe.

I took an adventurous trip to Hampton Court Palace, Kingston where I scanned multiple different helmets, blades and axes. Every scan did not turn out great, but the one I was most proud of and later used was this helmet below:

Next, I took a stroll through Walpole Park, where I found some logs and flowers I tried to scan. The flowers looked dull and flat but the log looked great.

I made the decision not to use the castle in my scene, in regards to it not fitting in or having a reason for being there, it did not add to the story in any way. Whilst not being in my project, I chose to include it in my prints due to it being beautiful and I am rather proud of the scan.

Following the boathouse, I also scanned some logs and plants I found along the pathway. This big log being one of them.

Last but not least, I scanned a pair of feet and arms for the grotesque reveal of the carriage. I chose not to upload the scan to any platform due to not been given consent from the actor and feet being rather nasty.