For this project my group and i decided to recreate the environment of Ajan Kloss from Star wars: Rise of Skywalker and Star wars: Battlefront 2. My Job in this project will be to make and texture some assets as well as building out and rendering the environment in unreal engine.
Assets
Box
Before starting in unreal i wanted to get started on makes some assets so i gathered some reference of the base on Ajan Kloss so i started building out a specific box that stuff could sit on. I modelled out the box and then took it into substance paint but when i brought it in i thought it was lacking detail so i went back to maya and added some detail. After i modelled some extra bits i took it into substance again and put on a smart material to add some wear and tear then i put a dirt layer over to make it look like it has been in a forest area. I then used a image of star wars UI as an alpha to make it more based in star wars.
Pole
This asset is a data pole that will be used throughout the base so it will be a nice and easy asset to reuse. To start with my modelling process i got some reference so i could arcuately model it. The model itself was quite simple as all i really needed to do was extrude out edges. The hardest part to model was the mesh at the top as i originally tried extrude a cube along a curve but it just didn't look good and was all out of proportion. After a quick UV unwrap i took the model into substance painter and just added different layers of imperfection on top of the initial texture.
Lights
This was another key asset that i wanted to get as it is also used throughout the base i used a cylinder as a base to start with the light i then added some loop holes and extruded them inward to make a more unique silhouette. Then i created the light by extruding a cube and then insetting a face to make where the light rests. In substance painter i added a worn metal material for the edge wear to make it look used and abused. I then put some dirt over it to make it look like it has been in a jungle environment. I then rendered out different textures with varying colour and dirt.
X-wing
The X-wing was probably one of the harder assets to get into unreal we used many different assets and they wouldn't work for many different reasons for example if i exported from substance painter it would output way too many textures for me to apply individually so after lot and lots of trial and error i eventually got it to output it as one set of textures that i could much easier apply in unreal. For the actual texturing I made three different versions one was a normal x-wing the second was one with some damage and dirt to embed it into the jungle setting. The third one had much more damage like scorch marks, dirt and cracked glass.
Building out the environment.
Terrain
In order to make the terrain I used a height map to generate the base landscape in order to add texture i made a master material (More here) so that i could added textures and then paint the selected textures on to my environment. Once i had all that i started to sculpt out the environment to something a little more suited to what i wanted
Populating the environment
Now i had assets and the terrain i started placing out where I'd want the assets. after i made the different areas i used assets from the quixle mega scans library to make things like the cave using their bigger rock and coastal cliff assets. Once i knew the areas that would be used in scene then used mega scans of ferns and shrubs and foliage painted them in, i used the same method to put trees in to the scene.
Other things that i added where sticks that i painted around the edges of paths so to show that the paths are used. I also added embankments around the edges at the bottom of things like cliffs or something so that i could cover the seams with something high detail. Another detail that i was happy with in the environment was using cable actors to connect between the different poles throughout the environment which i thought looked great and really tied the scene together.
Rendering
Sequencer
Before i could start to render out my environment i had to create a sequence and put my camera in the sequence so that then i can animate it to my liking. I made a few different sequences some showing off the environment and a few showing off ships like an damage X-wing landing that i hand animated and attached a fire particle emitter attached. I rendered out each sequence from unreal and if there was any issues like for example if i left anything i didn't want in the scene i could re-render it in seconds so that was really helpful.
Compositing
Once i had my shots rendered i took each of them into after effects and added a vignette to focus the shot more towards the centre and then i added dirt overlays i did this to make it look like the camera has been in the jungle.
Edit
Editing
Once i rendered out my shots from after effects i brought them all to premier pro and laid them out in the order that i wanted and then added some star wars style transitions between the shots. Also added a title crawl at the beginning to make if feel more like a star wars project. For the sound design i got sounds off of YouTube like ambient jungle and cockpit sounds which is used for most of the edit towards the end i used fire burning sounds for the damaged x-wing landing. The final touch i added for the edit was cropping an adjustment layer so that give it a cinematic aspect ratio.
Conclusion
Looking back on this project now that i'm done with it there are a few big things that i wish i could change the first would be my camera moves and edit i think the edit is too faster and the transitions between it aren't good enough. A way i would fix this is by redoing the sequences in unreal and letting the camera take its time. My second issue is the dirt overlays this is one of those occasions where less is more i think some shots are fine with them but most of them i went over bored with them so if i was to do it again i would really lower the intensity of them.
Things i'm happy with are things like the environment that i was able to build out using asset my teammates and i created. Another thing was x-wing landing shot that i added at the end and the aspect ratio was another addition that i was pretty happy with as i thought it made it look more cinematic. I un