The Adventure Inn

So this started life as my project for Peyton Varney's https://www.artstation.com/peytonvarney CGMA Course back in 2023 https://www.gameart.cgmasteracademy.com/courses/166-environment-art-for-games-in-ue4 I was trying to bridge the gap of knowledge from UE3 to UE4 and UE5 and wanted something that would keep me on a timetable. I wasn't particularly into the example concepts that were provided with the class so with instructor approval I picked out a concept I'd had in a "would be fun to model" folder for a while which was this concept art by Vsevolod Slavutych https://www.artstation.com/seva here https://www.artstation.com/artwork/w8m4Q6 The bright saturated colors, potential for expanding the scene slightly beyond the bounds of the concept, and whimsical elements like the eyeball about the door and giant submerged statue made for a rich and entertaining starting point.

Between the complexity of the concept, full-time Environment work at Hi-Rez and life being a bit hectic, the piece wasn't fully where I wanted it to be by the time the course was over. Soon after that, work started ramping up more significantly and this piece got put on the back burner indefinitely.

Fast forward to earlier this year when I and a bunch of other folks got laid off from Hi-Rez, and now I decidedly had the time to devote to this kind of project again.

I ported it from UE4 to UE5, redid some of the sculpts, models, and materials I wasn't as happy with, and basically relit the scene from scratch. I really wanted the piece to hew much closer to the concept in the primary camera view than it had in the version I submitted for the class. I made big changes to FOV, camera angle, camera distance, and a whole bunch of rebalancing of the lighting to try and really blur the lines between that straight on shot and the original work.

I'd likely approach some if it differently if I was building it fully from scratch, some of the underlying structure of how the models were built or the trim sheets laid out could be more functional. But I was happy enough with how much of the scene was working to simply work on polishing what was there and apply that sort of knowledge to future projects.

Revisiting this without access to my studio licenses for programs did present a challenge. I tried out sculpting in Blender for the first time when revising the big face rock in the background. And I put together the final renders using Clip Studio Paint. I was obviously a bit sad to lose my mainstay programs but excited to learn new things about what the alternatives can do! I also had some fun playing with the level sequence system to add the frantic eyeball movements and set up some video shots of the environment which was new to me.

All in all I'm happy with the final product. It was nice to get back into the swing of making something at this scale just for myself!