I realized I had a brief blog post written from several months ago that I forgot about. Decided to put it out even if it's outdated!
Creating an Atmospheric Gift Shop Scene in UE4 - 8 months later
To start things off, here is a brief breakdown list of sorts that outlines my usual workflow with environments.
Pre-Production
- Reference Gathering
- Moodboard
Production
- Modeling & Texturing
- Layout & Set Dressing
- Material Creation
- Lighting
- Post Processing
- Final Renders & Video
Pre-Production Phase:
Reference gathering & Moodboard Creation
The overall story I planned for is this: A character struggling to survive a blizzard stumbles upon a National Parks gift shop that has been occupied by another person trying to survive. I wanted to reflect the harshness of the environment by making the scene into two parts, Exterior and Interior. Having these two sections helped convey how intense the harsh conditions outside were versus the calm and cozy interior of the gift shop. I started gathering images for the moodboard after thinking this story through. I usually organize by Lighting, Colors, Props, and Materials. Having the images organized that way helps me immediately see the elements I find useful in each reference image. I can then download those images from google drive and create moodboards from them. A handy tool I like to use is https://www.photocollage.com/. You can drop the images you want into the canvas, then auto organize the images into a moodboard. Here is an example of some of the moodboards I created for my Spring Creek Environment:
Above: Exterior Lighting/Foliage/Color
I went for a dark, cooler toned scene with heavy fog and very diffused lighting. I used references from other video games, photography, and even some movies. All of these images have a common theme.
Next I gathered reference for some of the decor and products that will be used for the gift shop interior. I went for a cluttered but still semi-organized look with lots of different products for different types of customers that you would see visiting a National Parks gift shop.
Above: Interior Decor/Furniture/Clutter
Another moodboard I felt was valuable to have is a lighting moodboard. Having this moodboard as a reference point for my lighting was invaluable during the production process.
Above: Interior Color/Lighting
I discovered these moodboard images through Reddit, Pinterest, and other environments on Artstation. I often stumble across an image that has a mood, color scheme, composition, or subject matter that sparks the need to create something that captures the same emotion. Most of my environments have been the result of this. Once I finish moodboarding I move onto primary production of the environment.
Production Phase:
Modeling & Texturing Assets
This step is pretty straightforward. I use reference images to model the set pieces first, then minor assets that help tell the story and add visual interest. My modeling workflow looks something like this:
Having too many assets cluttering the scene can cause unnecessary visual noise in your composition. If it doesn’t need to be there, then don’t make it or place it in your scene.
Scene Layout & Set Dressing
The longest amount of time I spent on this project was deciding where its various elements should be placed to help guide the players eye and also tell a story in a linear fashion. I knew early on I wanted this to be a walkthrough that had a start point and end point with a set path. Knowing this helped me decide where to create the paths that lead to the cabin and where to place the supporting assets to make an effective composition.
This is the final layout of the exterior setpieces. You can see a clear path for the player to follow and a clear focal point to go towards.
The interior was the most difficult to set dress for me. That is because I needed to keep a clear walkway for gameplay but still have it appear organized in some areas and unkempt in other areas.
The interior is orderly and clean national parks gift shop that has been used as a shelter from a blizzard. The character has used products from the shelves of the gift shop to survive. This balance of order and disorder is the main theme of the environment.
Master, Landscape Blend, and Special Use Material Creation
At the start of the project, I decided to make a master material that most of my assets will be instanced from in Unreal. This approach meant that I had to create a robust material that a lot of options.
For my landscape blend, I followed tutorials by Pure Polygons to get a displaced snow landscape material that had two variations: smooth and stepped on. Having these two variants let me paint in the paths that the trails were on to give the player an idea of where to go.
Lighting:
Interior Lighting
For interior lighting, I decided to emulate soft diffused light shining through the curtains as the main source of illumination so the viewer can see what’s going on inside the cabin. All of the lights in the scene are stationary and were baked to add more quality to the shadows and increase performance. Due to the curtains being closed, I had to cheat the amount of light entering the windows to be a lot more than what would realistically shine through. I chose deep blue to tie the colors into the exterior. I added the gas lanterns in the scene after struggling to find the scene’s focal point. The lights give the viewer somewhere to look, which progresses the narrative of the space.
Exterior Lighting
The lighting of the exterior environment is straightforward and simplistic. I chose to have a diffused light very dimly lighting the scene from above. I did this by setting my stationary directional light to face directly downwards and gave it a very high source radius but low strength. This gave each object a subtle diffused shadow that helped it separate from the solid white snow. I kept my skylight at a very low number to darken my shadows and give the scene more depth. Although fog is less of a lighting tool and more of an FX tool, I am going to put it in the lighting section. I used fog in this scene as an aid to the dim lighting in a way that gives depth but also feels claustrophobic for the player. It gives the scene a clear foreground, midground, and background.
I needed visibility to be high enough to only see the gift shop, but low enough where the scene still feels small and confined to make the blizzard feel more urgent and unsettling.
W/ Fog
No FogPost-Processing:
Post-processing has always been a process that starts early on in the blockout phase. This allows for dialing in the look of the environment earlier on and make starting points for how I should pursue the mood of your scene further. If you are finding that the colors and your lights are going well together, try working with that to create a solid color scheme of your scene.
The post process effect I use in most projects is a sharpening post process material. This adds detail to an environment and is a valuable tool for your post processing workflow.
Final Renders & Gameplay Capture:
I presented Spring Creek in three different ways- a first person walkthrough, flythroughs, and renders. Establishing an aspect ratio for your final renders early on also contributed to where I placed assets in the scene. Setting up cameras early is a good habit to get into so you can work to make the certain angles tell the story better.
Above: First Person Playthrough
Above: Flythrough
For doing final screenshots, I fullscreen my viewport, take a screenshot at 3x res, then bring it into photoshop to downres to 4k. This makes the image very sharp and detailed, while staying at a manageable file size of under 10mb.
That's about it. Thanks for reading!
