Environment Design: creating environment + final video

To start with; I created a landscape plane and added some rough bumps to it to give it a somewhat natural look as I don’t want my forest to be that hilly but entirely flat looks unnatural.

Then to a small bit I increased the bumps in a circle to make a crater from where the space ship crashed.

from there I roughly painted in grass aswell as some paths and clearings to make room for a forest environment.

as I could get easily bored instead of doing things one by one like doing the foliage then making buildings then props etc, I decided to divide it into zones and tackle them one by one. I started with the general forest.

I got a wide variety of foliage from 3 different packs to populate my environment with and picked all the ones I liked out of that.

So I populated the outer forest bits with trees it looked a bit weird so I retried with a more structured approach of the tall, low-poly trees at the back then the smaller and more detailed at the front to give a sense of distance

I started on the main path, path 1, I lightened and thinned the bit of path leading towards the living area and crash to just make it look more hidden but still trodden on. I then utilized the stone texture more and decided to make that path look more official, like someone had paved it long ago, to add to this I used the landscaping tools to add banks to the side; like it had been dug out a bit.

I then added more foliage along the edges. to make it look more alive.

I added some fences along the edge to make it look like humans had been using this path, unaware how close the aliens were.

I then went on to path 2. I wanted this to look sort of magical but full of resources that the crashed aliens had found and been using for food. so i put a lot of bushes and mushrooms there.

Next i did the clearing. I wanted this to be where the aliens started getting wood and such, so I added stumps, one with an axe in, and quite a bit of foliage.

I used a cylinder and cone then other assets form the packs I had downloaded then changed the material to coloured metal.

I then added lights in the crater, and dead foliage nearby to make it look like it had be burnt and destroyed by the crash.

To start I made an rag-tag entrance way.

I used wood and natural material objects from two of the packs, to create an outline of the alien’s shelter. I then used the modeling tools to create bits for the metal from their ship and supplies for the rest. And ended up with this for the hut exterior. I then moved onto details on the outside

I made a generator type thing to show how they got power to their base, I used similar tactics to the spaceship of putting objects of a good shape on some primitives then changing the material.

In the corner, on the other side of the wall to the generator I set up a coffee table with generator powered TV.

I created under stairs storage so they had a small place to relax and also store the things they saved from their ship.

Inside the shelter I added their rag-tag sofa and temporary beds.

Back at the exterior, I made the fabric more colorful, added an outhouse, cooking area and seats to the upstairs bit to make it seem more lived in.
With that the environment is done!

So every attempt at recording a video, OBS, unreal cameras, failed in various ways, so I came up with this compromise, a goofy thematic presentation! So imagine a group from a county council gathered around and discussing aliens, and this is their video.

Overall despite my numerous obstacles: Having to restart, the amount of stuff breaking, etc. I am really proud of my achievement. I like the mix between tech and nature looks cool and is a concept I’d want to pursue.

I was proud of working out I could use pre-made assets and change the materials to make cool objects, and that was a fun technique that really helped the final product.

The flaws sort of come from time crunch and me rushing it, I didn’t refine bits and certain bits come off as messy or very chunky. If I had more time I probably would of warped some planes in blender or Maya for the metal sheets to make them seem like bent metal instead of just using squished cubes in unreal. I also would of done more with the landscape painting and foliage, as i think it’s quite messy so for future projects I want to practice those more espessially in a natural setting.

But overall pretty happy, about a 8/10 in my brain.