The Vale

A small project where I focused on fantasy forest theming. I'm not much of a foliage artist but I wanted to create a more forest focused environment than I had previously made before. Focusing on stylized lighting and mood to try and create a peaceful fantasy environment.

I went with some stone monoliths in the environment as a focal point with the idea of the trees growing around the centre piece. I wanted to have roots growing around and out of the base of the main monolith.

The lighting was mainly designed to be soft and peaceful. I used a simple spotlight to highlight the centre piece and some meshes for the rays of light coming through the trees. I used a background depth based fog plane to add a bit more movement to the background.

I original started this project as an Unreal Engine 5 project, however I ran into issues with Lumen and two sided foliage which was causing me too many headaches to fix (bit outside my technical skills on how to fix it). So I reverted back to Unreal Engine 4 for the final piece and a a dynamic lighting system.