As a World of Warcraft player since 12 yo, I got strong fascination to landmarks in the vast world of Azeroth. 11 years after my first touch, I made this project in UE4 to challenge myself on a desert scene I have never tried before. Inspired by Stonewrought Dam in Loch Modan, I made this project in a way similar to recreate the three words that Dam brought me in WOW Classics:
Awe, Giganticity, Wonder
Tech Art Breakdown of <Dam of Oasis>
(My figma board walkthrough from concept to done)
A 2-week project - Learning by doing
The time scope of this piece only lasted two weeks
Because it is a piece of Technical Environment trial, I did not spend too much time designing individual assets
Most time is delegated to designing the pipeline, refining ways to build a vertical slice of an Environment
Pipeline is later carried over, revised, and served as the main stylized pipeline for my current title Sorelle.
Terrain - Another Gaea victory
I used Gaea (you can also use WorldMachine) for the base environment where the pond lies.
I imported a quickly drafted map, and found a good spot to place my camera. I started off making the angle from there
Cel Shading - Simple and easy
There isn't a character in the environment, but to make the pipeline I did imported my favorite character from Persona 5, Futaba, to the game to test out the cel shader
Cel shading has depth pass so I applied cel shading only to characters.
Getting characters in game early can help scale the scene better
(Similar cel shader as the one I am using for Sorelle)
(Futaba is put in)
Water Shader - A UE4 approach
After researching for a while, I used a water shader to create the "wavy" effect to add life to the game.
It sets up the tone for the pond, and becomes the "ground" of the dam
Shoreline blends the edge of water plane with the beach
Normal sections controls the wave of water. I used a fire heat map for this one
Fun fact: UE5 does not have a tessellation node, so wave function is only in this project.
Anther fun fact: UE5.3 brought the node back.
(I honestly don't like UE4's comment node...but I will go with it for now)
(Water Material Instance with its full functions)
Textures - Simple ways to modularly design scene
Nothing much to say about texture since it is the same way I did pretty much all my unreal projects.
Vertex Color Paint is used on the wall to add "broken" effect and "Stains" easily
Cliffs have their own texture, because I designed them in ZBrush and put a "top to bottom gradiant" in texture.
Plants - Wavy desert grass
Although there shouldn't be much plants in a desert, putting some water-plants would be adding details to the ponds so its better than nothing
Grass has a basic gradient for base color, with world position variations
There is a slight wind effect to give a "lively" feeling
(Grass Shader overview)
Dust particles - quality of life features
niagara particles spawned some dust in the sky
If you pay attention to the angle in video, around the grass there will be more concentrated flying particles in response to the "wavy" design
Breakthroughs - what were the biggest moments
When I first made the greybox, the perspective just looked, wrong. But finally when I toggled the camera to include a wider angle, things started to look right
A wall will be very boring from the looking-up angle. So I searched concepts that have "enormous statues" and see their thoughts. I tried making the wall into a "upside down cone" instead of straight up and down planes, the dam looks much more awe-bringing.
In order to make the helmet on Dam look big, I tried 3 different kinds of helmet models. this one in particular won my love because it simply looks like a paladin helmet. The silhouette is all that matters and it really brought us the effect.