Level / Environment Design

This was my first project in Unreal Engine. I wanted to start small and build a basic scene/level to learn the basics of navigating the Unreal Editor. I decided that I wanted to make a fantasy/medieval village level inspired by RPG series like The Elder Scrolls.

I was stuck on how I wanted to theme this village however,  the asset packs I was using had a mix of both grassy and snowy terrain and foliage, my idea at first was to make a grassy forest village, but having seen so many foresty villages from looking at tutorials, I thought I'd challenge myself with making a snowy village (it also helps that around the same time I had finished 100%ing Skyrim which happens to be snowy in most areas). 

I decided to start off with the landscape and ground, as to actually build village houses, plant foliage, and all that fun stuff, you need something to put it on. This led me to the landscape tool, where I created a flat landscape grid with a snow material. Then I used the landscape sculpting tools, moving my arm back and forth, to create a "randomized" natural-looking terrain. For fun, I created some planes and attached a water material to create a river and a lake.

Now, here's the problem: the terrain didn't look great; it was very flat, and the ground had the same repeating snow texture. Ideally, I wanted varied terrain with rocks and hills, but no matter how much I messed with sculpting the terrain or painting rock material, it still didn't look good. This led me to boot up Skyrim, and analyzing how the terrain is built in that game, I noticed that a lot of the geometry for what I was trying to make had pointy edges and looked like actual assets sitting on the terrain rather than something sculpted from the landscape.

With this knowledge, I returned to Unreal and obtained some snowy rock assets. I started throwing these on the sides of steep hills and heavily upscaling them to create large rock mountains. It was a HUGE upgrade to the terrain, adding much more depth and detail while helping break up the repeating snow.

From here, I wanted to continue my landscape building by adding foliage like trees and grass, but I found I was deleting a lot of foliage I'd placed to make space for buildings and props, so I pushed that off until later so I could sculpt the foliage around what was already there.

So I started working on building the village houses. I used a modular medieval house kit and references to medieval architecture to create more interesting houses rather than boxes. I then added chimneys and smoke FX to enhance the cold environment, since the citizens of this area would likely use fireplaces to keep warm, and fireplaces normally require a chimney.

I then ran into another problem: the houses looked very out of place sitting on the snowy terrain. This was because they had a nice, bright, colorful roof when everything else was covered in snow. Unfortunately, this housing kit didn't include snowy parts, so I had to improvise. I duplicated all the roofs, raised them slightly above the originals, and changed the roof material to the snowy ground material. I think this experiment worked really well for the most part and made the houses look like they'd been snowed on! 

From here, I added decorative props onto the houses and along the stone path, like signs, crates, and hanging lines. This helped to make the town look much more lived in.

One of the town's highlights is the mine. I was doing some light story building for the town to shape the layout, and was wondering: why would people live in this snowy, cold, mountainous area? Due to the abundance of hills and the giant mountains next to the town, and the cold weather making it harder for agriculture, I thought it'd be cool to have the town sustain itself mostly from a mine. I also chose to place a blacksmith on the road near the mine, since the smith would use the harvested materials. 

After this, I thought I was done! But I still felt like I could do more with this scene, like there was something missing.

One thing about the snowy setting I wanted to add was a cozy, warm vibe, but it didn't feel very cozy or warm, since the whole landscape was glowing white, and the very bright daytime setting only added to that. So I decided to change the time of day to night.

Coincidentally, at the same time, I began learning Blender and was learning about HDRI (High Dynamic Range Image) textures that could be placed in the viewport to add detailed lighting and a skybox for your modeling. I thought that if they could be used in Blender, they could probably be used in Unreal, so I looked up some night sky HDRI's and found an aurora borealis night sky HDRI that looked beautiful. I created a giant cube and applied this HDRI material to it, which produced this beautiful, colorful night sky. I messed with the saturation and brightness just a bit so the sky wouldn't be too overwhelming, but also so the colors would pop more.

I then added some lights inside the windows and doors of the houses to make it look like something was happening inside, and put street lights all over the village and the road. This helped to light up the village in the dark. I chose orange lights to add to that warm feeling I wanted to capture. I also added a giant moon sphere very far off into the distance to have a moon in the night sky.

There's still a lot I could change, improve, and add to, but I thought that, for a first project, I had done an okay job. With the lighting now done, I decided to close the page on this winter fantasy village. 

I really loved working on this project; it was my first formal introduction to Unreal Engine and more "advanced" game development. One of my favorite parts of video games is their worlds, whether its the intricate decor and props of a building or the shape and spectacle of the landscape, there is something magical about thinking and looking at these things, I loved being able to be the one to create these things putting together this landscape and learning new tools to make my vision and ideas come into this small world. I hope to do more like this in the future. 

I am currently creating a YouTube tutorial on how to create a level just like this one, so stay tuned!

Assets used:

• Lowpoly Handpainted Environment: https://www.fab.com/listings/d7408876-2301-468a-a2e9-6eea38ddc10d

• FANTASTIC - Village Pack: https://www.fab.com/listings/52529a12-e88e-41a0-8834-b87306f20c24

• POLY - Medieval Camp: https://www.fab.com/listings/436d467a-6955-4aac-be0d-a05c99966ea2

• Medieval Village MegaKit: https://quaternius.com/packs/medievalvillagemegakit.html

• Night Sky HDRI 007: https://ambientcg.com/view?id=NightSkyHDRI007

The Clambering Clydesdale - Blender/Godot Interior Design

This was the interior of a bar/tavern/speakeasy. I made this for a college game jam project: https://itch.io/jam/vgdc-osu-s26-j2/rate/4619734

The theme of this game jam was "not the main character." My team and I decided to create a game where you play as a barkeep and hand out quests to "main characters" like a tavern in an RPG game. For this interior, my team wanted a fusion of medieval fantasy and prohibition-era industrial New York.

To start, I wanted to create a small box interior. I wanted to experiment with making my own models in Blender, so I started with a simple building kit with walls and a floor. I experimented with this a bit, mainly trying different stones and tiles to have the New York look. I decided to go with this brick because it had that "hole in the wall" vibe, and was on the line between medieval with the bricks and industrial with the red color. 

After making my interior, I started adding the decor. Due to time constraints, I used some downloaded assets while trying to make some bigger pieces of furniture on my own. Big highlights of the decor are the pipes, inspired by steampunk architecture; they really helped add to the industrial theme. Along with that, I also added pieces of technology, such as the gramophone and radio. 

Now to make the bar look more fantasy, I added less realistic elements like the wrapping vines, green and blue fires on the brazier and candles, shields on the wall, potions instead of alcohol, and a sword under the counter for the barkeep to reach for. 

After making this interior in Blender, I ported it all over to Godot as a GLB. Once in Godot, I created the fire particles for the various fire sources, such as the candles and the fireplace. I would've made them in Blender first, but rendering fire in Blender destroys my computer. 

Assets used:

• FANTASTIC - Dungeon Pack: https://www.fab.com/listings/25c67cda-991e-48a8-a194-478624ae4c0e

• Rusted pipes modular kit: https://www.fab.com/listings/34256d20-0124-4fb0-a673-0db89b4b7cf6

• Snail Vine - Free Download: https://www.fab.com/listings/047429ef-af21-4768-bd3a-f8391dfffa40

• Stylized Library — 48 Cozy Interior Props: https://www.fab.com/listings/6150cf8e-8105-4da0-9209-3edbc2afb673

• The tables, bar counter, chairs, walls, floors, and door was modeled by me, if you would like these models, let me know and I will happily give them for FREE!

Project Fallout (PFO) Zomboid

PFO Zomboid is a mod project for Project Zomboid recreating elements from Fallout 1 and 2 in the Project Zomboid game. I was on the team from August 2022 to June 2024 primarily as a mapper but also worked on making tiles, 3D modeling, and media management. I unfortunately deleted a lot of the original files of what I worked on, but I will share images here that I saved or could find from old messages!