I have created an experimental proposal, which forms a structure and understanding of what I am going to explore…

Intent and desired output?

I am going to experiment with outdoor/ world study within a game engine. My aim is to generate a small outdoor environment using the tools within Unreal, as well as using external assets.

What do I hope to learn and why?

I am going to learn how to use the Unreal game engine software to create my environment. This will be useful for my ongoing professional development, as this game engine is used very widely throughout the game industry, as well as appearing throughout the film industry too. I am attempting to tackle a wider problem which is the process of creating a landscape and learning the process this involves. Starting from nothing and finishing with an outdoor environment that comes to life, which I have designed and created. I am refining my existing skill with the Unreal engine and learning new skills within this software which I have not attempted before.

Achievability

Regarding the limitations of this project, it may be unrealistic to expect amazing results and a super realistic world. As I have got a time limit, and currently do not have much knowledge in this area, therefore meaning I need to watch a lot of tutorials to learn, which will also take up a lot of time. As well as the project itself is very time-consuming. The journey is relatively straightforward, being to create a base map to work on, bringing in assets and creating effects such as lighting, etc, then creating a cinematic sequence of this to present. Although, within each stage, it requires a lot of tweaking and playing around to get the right results. The barriers may be finding quick solutions that require less hassle and the software having errors where I am unsure how to fix, just by using a YouTube tutorial, etc.

Resources

I would obviously need the Unreal game engine, which is free to use, this is beneficial for my project. I could maybe use software such as World Machine to generate height maps and textures which are beneficial to creating the base world map to develop. This is also free to use. There are other ways of generating height maps such as using photoshop or just finding free height map websites that can be used for projects.

Learning Resources

In order to complete my desired output, I must use resources that will teach me the skills needed for this project. I will be learning this from online sources such as YouTube/ Google search. This includes online tutorials and instructional videos. I have also looked into examples people have made which explores this subject. Here is a list of some sources I have looked into:

Example Videos: I decided to look into Maveric’s YouTube channel as I really like his style as all of his creations are stunning. Although he does use paid assets, meaning that I can only use the assets which are free.

Online Tutorials and Instructional Videos: Here are just some examples of what I could use to learn how to create a landscape.

I found this course which uses online tutorials and videos that explains the process of creating a landscape in Unreal which will be beneficial for me:

https://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/ue4/landscape-sculpt-5-step-process.php

From this, I will research and explore deeper into this process and the skills/ software I need for the production project.