What is it? This is a linear level where the player crash lands in a forest, and must find space parts in a underground cave in order to repair his spaceship and escape.

Process:

• I wanted to make a more traditional forest level as most of the art and levels I make rely on a unique artstyle, unique concept, or some other gimmick.

• I started by creating a basic paper map of the map layout. This actually took a long time as I made this map for a rpgmaker map. I really liked the design so I adjusted it to work in 3D

  
  

• When I initially worked on this paper map, I did a lot of research on how caves worked in real life and with how the Resident Evil 2 police station level was laid out (in my opinion one of the best interconnected levels).

  
  

• I then greyboxed the level. The forest section translated nicely but the cave section needed a lot of adjusting. When making this for 2D, I used legos to conceptualize the different floors, but when in 3D, I used clay to mimmick the more natural layout of caves

• I then sculpted the landscape in Blender as I figured this would allow me better control on how I want the landscape to look and I'm more familiar with Blender than the landscape tool in Unreal.

  
  

• After this, I went on to texture the environment. With some help of my friend Dakota Thatcher, I was able to make a triplanar projection material that automatically changed the texture based on the x,y,z coordinates and smoothly transitioned between textures.

• From here, I added the various foliage, props, lighting, and color graded the level to give it a Twin Peaks-esk vibe.