I began my first unreal project by choosing the theme of Beatrix Potter and recreating a painterly style. This, along with general lookdev was my key focus, Since my last post, I have updated my scene a lot. Developing the environment further with a pond, foliage and adjusting the lighting to have a deeper light. I also updated my teapot model to be fully UVd and have better overall detail.
My shader interpreted the water very harshly and slightly transparent water wouldn't show at all, so I opted for water that had full opacity and therefore would be seen, but it also shares the colour palette of my scene.
It was surprisingly difficult to find the correct sound to fit with the pond, but I managed to add a few instances of foley to give my scene more atmosphere.
Adding particle effects within Unreal was something new to me and so took a bit of learning. With the help of a variety of tutorials I was able to produce fireflies, and stylized smoke and fire. Getting the fire to remain within the chimney and not just go straight through it was a challenge, Adjusting the velocity and overall size of the particles, which were originally incredibly small due to the size of my original base model, solved this issue. I was able to reverse this for the chimney smoke that continues on an upward curve for a while.
I also had issues with my light glowing through my teapot mesh and causing a massive bloom effect, it was reacting to the fog where it was unnecessary and distracting. Playing with the settings for a long time and I eventually fixed this problem, although unsure what exactly worked, the scattering certainly contributed heavily. I also turned off the light from reacting to the fog. Changing the lights to movable instead of static also gave a much more dramatic lighting effect, that I had previously been missing, much to my disappointment. Working out the cinematic camera system with the rails was very interesting, I also learned that the final rendered outcome is quite different from within Unreal itself, so this took a couple of adjustments to have a look I liked.
