Major Study: Artefact, Documentation and Presentation

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Epic Games

When considering the forefront of my field, it is impossible not to reflect on Epic Games, a studio that has profoundly shaped both game development and the creative tools behind it. Epic operates on two levels: as a developer of genre-defining titles such as Gears of War and Fortnite, and as the creator of Unreal Engine, the technology that underpins countless projects across the industry—including my own.

Figure 1 (Epic Games, (Epic Games, n.d.))

Epic’s most prominent creative work in recent years, Fortnite, demonstrates how stylization can thrive in a mainstream, globally successful game. Its exaggerated characters, bold colour palettes, and playful environments prove that a stylized approach can resonate with audiences at scale, while still allowing for technical innovation and narrative flexibility. This reinforces a principle that resonates with my own practice: stylization is not a limitation but a tool for accessibility, identity, and artistic impact.

Figure 2 (Fortnite, (Epic Games, n.d.))

Equally significant is Epic’s role as a technology provider. Unreal Engine 5, in particular, has been transformative for artists and developers alike, offering tools that make stylized rendering as achievable as photorealism. For my own final project, Genesis, Unreal Engine 5 was the foundation. Its Lumen lighting system, material flexibility, and cinematic sequencing tools allowed me to capture the painterly yet immersive atmosphere I was aiming for. In many ways, Epic provided both the canvas and the brushstrokes for my exploration of stylized world-building.

From a career perspective, Epic Games also represents an aspirational destination. Beyond their games, Epic’s internships and early-career programmes provide opportunities to contribute either to their internal development teams or to the ongoing evolution of Unreal Engine itself. For someone like myself, who has built a final project entirely within their engine, the idea of contributing to Epic feels like closing a creative loop—moving from user to developer, from someone inspired by their tools to someone shaping them as part of the next generation of creators.

Ultimately, Epic Games represents both inspiration and infrastructure. Their creative works like Fortnite show how stylization thrives at scale, while their technological contributions provide the very foundation upon which my practice rests. As I look towards the future, I see Epic not only as a studio to admire, but as one where I could contribute—whether in crafting worlds that inspire players or in refining the tools that empower other artists to do the same.

REFERENCES

Epic Games, n.d. Epic Games. [Online] Available at: https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/home [Accessed 11 August 2025].

Epic Games, n.d. Fortnite. [Online] Available at: https://www.fortnite.com/?lang=en-US [Accessed 11 August 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Riot Games

When situating my work within the broader landscape of stylized game art, it is impossible not to highlight Valorant, Riot Games’ tactical hero shooter. Valorant stands as a contemporary benchmark for what highly stylized environments can achieve within a competitive, fast-paced framework. Unlike many shooters that lean heavily into realism, Valorant embraces bold colours, clean readability, and painterly textures to craft spaces that are both functional for gameplay and rich in personality.

Figure 1 (Riot Games, (Riot Games, n.d.))

Figure 2 (Final environment fanart)

My own final project has, in many ways, been a direct conversation with Valorant’s art direction. As a fan art, I followed a map concept inspired by early iterations of Riot’s own designs, which I titled Genesis. The scene (shown above) draws from the same principles that make Valorant’s maps so distinct: clarity of form, exaggerated geometry that prioritizes gameplay readability, and stylization that supports player focus without sacrificing visual richness. The painterly touches in my textures and the deliberate use of colour harmonies are conscious choices to echo Valorant’s visual identity while leaving my personal mark on the work.

Riot Games represents the kind of studio I aspire to join in the future. Their emphasis on strong art direction, diverse styles across multiple projects, and their commitment to building worlds that resonate with players aligns with my own ambitions. Creating Genesis as a Valorant-inspired fan map was not just a creative exercise—it was a way to challenge myself against Riot’s standards, to practice working within the design language they’ve established, and to demonstrate my ability to adapt to their approach.

Riot’s global influence also underscores why I look towards them as an aspirational studio. They are not only shaping competitive gaming but also pushing the boundaries of stylized art across genres. For an artist like me, who is deeply invested in painterly workflows and stylized environments, Riot exemplifies how these approaches can thrive on the world stage. Their work validates the choices I make in my own art and motivates me to keep refining my craft toward the level of excellence they embody.

REFERENCES

Riot Games, n.d. Riot Games. [Online] Available at: https://www.riotgames.com/en/who-we-are [Accessed 10 August 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Rare

When reflecting on my own development as a game artist, it is important to position my work in relation to leading studios that embody both innovation and stylistic distinction. One such studio is Rare, a British developer with a legacy of shaping imaginative worlds and pushing the boundaries of stylized game design.

Rare is an Xbox Game Studio that have created a lot of legendary game titles over the span of 30 years. They have had a massive success with their recent title Sea of Thieves as it continues to gain support and recognition from players and professionals all around the world.

Figure 1 (Rare, (Rare, n.d.))

From Banjo-Kazooie and Viva Piñata to Sea of Thieves, Rare has consistently embraced a vibrant, playful, and distinctly stylized visual identity. Their approach demonstrates that games do not need photorealism to immerse players; rather a strong art direction and a cohesive style can achieve equal, if not greater, impact. This resonates deeply with my own practice, where stylization and painterly approaches often take precedence over realism.

What is particularly notable is Rare’s ongoing commitment to nurturing new talent. Their internship programs are well-regarded in the UK games industry, offering students and graduates a chance to work alongside experienced professionals while contributing to active projects. These opportunities highlight Rare’s role not only as a developer of celebrated games, but as a cultivator of the next generation of creators.

Figure 2 (Rare, (Rare, n.d.))

From an academic standpoint, positioning my work relative to Rare allows me to situate myself within an ongoing dialogue in games art. Rare demonstrates that stylization is not a compromise but a choice—one that is not only viable but influential at the highest professional level. For me, this validates my own trajectory: focusing on painterly textures, stylized compositions, and cohesive art direction is not a niche practice, but part of a broader tradition embraced by big leading studios.

On a more personal note, Rare embodies much of what I hope to be part of in my career. Their commitment to stylization, their collaborative creative culture, and their willingness to invest in new talent makes them a studio I would be honoured to contribute to. My own work—stylized environments built around painterly workflows and strong visual direction—aligns with Rare’s ethos, and I see their internship programme not just as an opportunity to learn, but as a chance to grow into the kind of artist who can contribute to their legacy of imaginative worlds.

REFERENCES

Rare, n.d. Rare. [Online] Available at: https://www.rare.co.uk/ [Accessed 5 August 2025].

Rare, n.d. Rare. [Online] Available at: https://www.rare.co.uk/internships [Accessed 5 August 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

An Opportunity!

As is common in an average student life, I have been very active and vocal in trying to find appropriate art internships or landing junior positions in a game studio. So much of my time now is spent on browsing through open positions and jobs in the art department.

When I was randomly browsing through different game studios, I noticed a position available for a 3D props artist requiring no experience at all, mostly catered to fresh graduates and/or students studying full time in an art instituion. The name of the company is Dinobyte Softworks LLC. They are a remote indie games developer out of Florida and they have released and are working on small scale indie games with unique narratives.

Figure 1 (Dinobyte Softworks LLC, (Dinobyte Softworks, n.d.))

I applied on a whim and no longer than 5 minutes later, I received an email from their creative head Jonathan Reyes. He was really fascinated by my use of gradient in my projects in UE and wanted to know in detail about how I went about achieving it. We scheduled a call for a week later and it was really eventful.

He made me know about his passion and his aim with this indie studio he is running. He also made sure to know that the job itself is voluntary which was highlighted in the listing. This would mean that I wouldn't be paid for the time I worked on the project but I will however be compensated if the game is published and monetized in the future.

Since, I am also looking for internships and will apply to part time jobs, this voluntary job will be very helpful for me in gaining an industry experience and as such, I accepted the offer he put forward. With this, I am proud to say that I am going to be working on an indie game project and will be working as a 3D props artist. I am very excited to work with other talented artists and gain invaluable experience on this project.

REFERENCES

Dinobyte Softworks, n.d. Dinobyte Softworks. [Online] Available at: http://www.dinobytesoftworks.com/ [Accessed 4 August 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Reflection

Looking back at this project, I have learnt a lot about the workflow involved in game development. I was coming into this project thinking I was already aware of everything that went on behind the scenes.

One of the main things I realized about consistent visual quality is to maintain a consistent texel density. I never knew texel density was a very important step in ensuring the level of quality remains similar through tthe project and that opened my eyes to a whole new realm of possibilities.

Figure 1 (Texel density FAQ, (Desgreciao, 2022))

I learnt a lot about Substance Designer and I am so surprised as to how I missed the Flood Fill node. When it comes to creating tile textures inside Designer, the more the variations you can induce to the tiles, the more you can break the repeatedness seamlessly in a non-destructive manner.

I had to learn the hard way that Flood Fill is just the beginning of a beautiful adventure. It comes with its own set of Flood Fill nodes that can be used in interesting ways to bring forth beautiful variations that can instantly improve your tile textures. One very useful resource I used to tackle Flood Fill was through a YouTube video from Johnny Nodes where he explains in detail about what it does and how to use it perfectly.

Figure 2 (Johnny Nodes' YouTube video, (Nodes, 2023))

While I am more confident in my modeling and sculpting, I am still learning stylized texturing. There were times when I was stumped on how to progress forward and if I should just stick to texturing it handpainted style. However, Valorant is a tricky thing where they use both PBR and handpainted style together to craft their beautiful environments. Since, I had a bit of delay in the beginning due to attending different events, I had to let go of my plan of fully handpainting the stylized assets that would be present in the environment.

In hindsight, I could have probably done even more than what I could have achieved and while I did do certain mistakes, I am very glad as to how the project turned out to be. I am really grateful to have undertaken this final project for my MA degree and I am very happy and excited to see what the future holds!

REFERENCES

Desgreciao, 2022. Polycount. [Online] Available at: https://polycount.com/discussion/229470/how-to-get-correct-texel-density-for-a-large-model-like-this [Accessed 3 August 2025].

Nodes, J., 2023. YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wndi1DVwm14&t=246s [Accessed 3 August 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Feedbacks

After finishing my project, I sent it to my peers and artists whom I respect greatly and they offered me very good tips and feedbacks and constructive criticism. Since, I had to scale a lot back on the project due to the impending deadline, I aimed to further work on this project and then finally upload it on ArtStation.

One of my friends Darius who immensely helped me in this project gave me a long list of feedbacks he would love to see being implemented on the project.

Figure 1 (Feedbacks from Darius Jover)

Coincidentally, all of the feedbacks he gave me in regards to the project were something I was going to work on initially but had to scale down due to the deadline. I did follow some of the feedbacks he listed, mainly the 2nd, 3rd and 4th point and it helped immensely improve the project.

The water is something I need to swiftly work upon as it looks really flat compared to the vibrant environment that surrounds it. As it is simply panning the textures around to fake the water effect, I eventually want to take a look at flowmaps as it greatly elevates and automatically adjusts the flow of the texture maps based on the intense calculation it goes through. I had my fun time researching on flowmaps using Epic Documentations and this brilliant YouTube video from PrismaticaDev whom I tune in to religiously for any fun UE tips and tricks.

Figure 2 (PrismaticaDev's video on Flow Maps, (PrismaticaDev, 2024))

I also sent a final shot of my environment art project to couple of driven art community discord servers. I get some really valuable tips and resources to help elevate my project to the next level.

Figure 3 (More feedbacks on community discord servers)

Eden was super helpful in certain situations that I had difficulties navigating through. For instance, I was having a hard time trying to project decals on the architectural meshes only but it was overlaying on top of everything. He gave me a quick tip which I followed without hesitation and it fixed it pretty quick!

Figure 4 (Feedbacks from Eden Anthony)

Some of the feedbacks have been essentiall vital in improving the quality of my project as a whole. I am very thankful to all of the people that have helped me on this journey and I do plan on working on this project a bit more and improving it even further.

REFERENCES

PrismaticaDev, 2024. YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvbPnndigL4 [Accessed 2 August 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Lighting

This is going to be a really brief documentation on how I lit up my environment scene. As the deadline was drawing in really close, I had to scale down my project by a lot. Thus, I had to make careful creative decisions to make sure my scene was well lit and looked very presentable.

I first decided to check the parameters for the volumetric clouds so that I can achieve an effect that is very close to the concept art. It is a very lengthy setup and I tweaked the parameters as appropriate to make sure those clouds looked really clean and nice.

Figure 1 (Controlling volumetric clouds)

Again, I am constantly adding different sets of light to light up my entire environment. That normally includes changing its intensity and its attenuation radius. Sometimes, I also add a bit of tint color to my lights to replicate the warm temperature.

Inside the post-process volume, I set a standard manual exposure and do very little color grading. Generally, the rule of thumb in 3D is to avoid any post-process if you can as that normally helps you hone your lighting skills as an artist. I added a bit of warm temperature to accommodate that orangy atmosphere.

Figure 2 (Controlling the post-process and color grading)

I could see certain emissive elements missing in my own project when comparing it side by side to the concept art. This warranted a new emissive master material I quickly created which can be applied to any basic primitive shapes inside UE itself.

Figure 3 (Emissive master material)

After applying the instances of the master emissive material to simple planes and spheres, I positioned them accordingly to the concept art. Thus, my entire project has been concluded and I could not be so much happier on how much I have learnt and achieved over the past few weeks.

Figure 4 (Final environment art piece)

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Alpha Textures and Grunge Decals

While particularly working on the sandbag asset, I wanted to add an alpha image onto the prop. The sandbags that are present in the training map of Valorant has a texture alpha present on its face.

Figure 1 (Sandbag asset in Valorant)

Again, to maximize the performance of their game and optimize the environment properly, the sandbag has a very low polydensity and has an alpha texture on it. I created a simple alpha image inside Adobe Photoshop and used it as a mask texture in Substance Painter.

Figure 2 (Alpha image in Photoshop)

To polish up the visual aspect of our project, I research a bit more about what could elevate our environment. Back into the PureRef file I went and I noticed a very interesting detail. The concept art is full of grunge textures and leaks. These are separate decals that you can just slap on the walls.

I decided to create a couple of different decal textures inside Photoshop. It is very simple to create so I won't really bore you with the details. All I did was use a pen tool and make a shape I was satisfied with, followed with filling the selection with a color tint.

Figure 3 (Creating decal textures)

The master material for the decal is super simple. You have to make sure that the material domain is selected to a deferred decal and the blend mode is set to translucent. I referenced the material functions for the color controls and the world space paint into the setup and I was done.

Figure 4 (Material setup for the decal)

A decal actor is added to the scene and a decal material is loaded onto it. After that, its a matter of scaling it very thin and projecting it on architectural walls. I go on to create a lot of different decal textures and use it the same way in the Unreal scene.

Figure 5 (Placing decals on the architecture)

With this, I can wholeheartedly say that I have finished all of the major steps involved in the environment art workflow and I am super happy with how its shaping out to be!

As a bonus, here's a direct Valorant decal I drew after I decided I wanted this one decal in my scene.

Figure 6 (Scribbly animal decal texture)

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Unreal Shenanigans

After finishing texturing most of the individual assets inside Substance Painter, I head to Unreal Engine. All of the work left is now in UE which first began with importing all of the texture maps created. I made separate organized files for different textures, meshes and material setups. Please people, organize your UE files. When working in a game studio with other artists, it is very important to ensure that you follow the standard nomenclature and organize files properly so that others don't get muddled up.

Figure 1 (Importing static low poly assets)

Since we are now dealing with individual assets that have individual textures that don't require vertex painting or tiling, we have to create a separate material shader setup for the same. I quickly create a new master material for props that can easily be used with its instances and also allows us to control the full extent of the parameters up for use.

The main thing that stands out here is that I use a new node called MakeMaterialAttributes before the final output node. This node allows you to package all of the final outputs together and returns a single output that can be connected to the master output. Kudos to people over at Epic as they have documented it beautifully in their developer logs on their website.

Figure 2 (Unreal documentation on Material Attributes, (Epic Developer, n.d.))

The other node setups are very similar to the other material setups I have created. It includes all of the material functions minus the foliage and water functions as it is literally not necessary for this material setup.

Figure 3 (Final material setup for the stylized props)

After creating an instance of the master material, I assign it to the wooden logs and start replacing the blockout with the polished final versions of it. It's a fun process when you get to see your old blockouts be replaced with a beautiful latest version of it. I start doing the same for other remaining props; create materials, assign them and replace the blockouts.

Figure 4 (Replacing the blockouts)

I would say this is pretty much the final phase of the set-dressing of the environment art workflow before we head on to lighting and rendering of the scene. Still a lot more to do but I am hopeful and it is turning out to look real good!

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Texturing

In a game environment, textures are easily the most important aspect that easily make or break the immersion apart. If you are not doing hard surface modeling, you do not need to go and make a complex model, but if you make a highly detailed model and do not texture it properly, that's when it all starts to fall apart.

As I am not going for a one to one realistic texture represenation, I have to be very strict with what I use to make sure the stylized assets look stylized and not realistic. Before we can start texturing, I first export a high poly and low poly meshes that we just sculpted. Let's use the wooden log as an example as I believe it would be a very good example on how to properly texture a stylized asset. The low poly mesh can easily be created inside Blender by duplicating the highly sculpted asset and decimating it to a lower polydata.

Figure 1 (Creating a low poly mesh off the high poly wooden logs)

Once it is complete, I import the low poly mesh in blender to quickly UV unwrap it so that I can bake the details of the high poly mesh onto the lower poly mesh. It is very important to note that Substance Painter requires proper unwrapped UVs for us to texture any mesh.

Figure 2 (UV unwrapping a wooden log)

After that ordeal is finally complete, we begin the texturing phase of the mesh. We import the low poly mesh inside Substance Painter and then bake the details of the high poly mesh onto it. If the orientation of both the low poly and the high poly mesh is incorrect or if the UV islands are overlapping each other, then you can expect to be a lot of baking artifacts and errors.

Figure 3 (Baking high poly data onto low poly mesh)

I start by adding a simple base color to my logs with a brownish tint. I continue adding color variations with different grunge masks to get grungy details on the logs. The colors of the grunge masks is completely subjective but I would always suggest to keep rotating it around the base color as it would look really nice and warm.

Figure 4 (Adding stylized grunge details)

If you recall, I kept praising Slope Blur as a wonderful tool to add a bit of stylized brush stroky blur to the grunge masks. I also employ it here as a filter on top of those grunge masks. You also have different blending modes with an opacity slider underneath it for more versatile control.

Figure 5 (Adding edge highlights)

In a stylized asset, you will never have sharp edges unless you are sculpting a very sharp object, like a sword or a knife. In this instance, logs are not very sharp when in fact, they are naturally deformed with interesting shape variations. The edge highlights help pop those details out a lot better. It can be achieved by using a levels node and controlling its dials. It provides beautiful silhouettes that stylized assets often imitate.

I also add Ambient Occlusion using the same principle but I invert the levels node and use a black tint to gain control over its shadows.

Figure 6 (Adding finer details)

After making sure that we include those important details, I also add gradient to make it more interesting. Lighter overlay for its body and a darker overlay for its chipped ends. This is topped with an overlay using a new filter Adobe recently released called Stylization. It adds stylization so to speak. You can select different default presets like watercolor, washed, painterly and so on which you can tweak as it tries its best to replicate said artstyles. I add a bit of handpainted stylization and lower its opacity value so as to not overdo it.

Figure 7 (Handpainted details)

Just so I can get the wooden logs to look a bit handpainted, I add a new layer and in its black mask, I start painting light overlay of its adjacent color at different position on the wooden logs. And as such, I was done with my stylized asset that I textured in Substance Painter. I normally follow this workflow while adding new details necessary or removing redundant layers to texture stylized assets. I then export the texture maps for the stylized wooden logs in an Unreal Engine packed format. This option helps create an automatic ORM map which works perfectly inside UE.

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Sculpting

Valorant prides on creating well optimized stylized assets that integrate beautifully with its environment. However, they are very low detailed except for actual sculpts that they use as hero assets or placeholder statues. Of course, since its an actual live service game, they have to cut back A LOT for optimization. But for my project, I was not really limited by the optimization and since it was going to be a small static environment piece, I decided to up the stylization for the meshes.

Figure 1 (Importing blockout into ZBrush)

My choice of software for sculpting stylized assets is ZBrush. Its the most I am confident with and I love utilizing every small secret options at its disposal to elevate its final output. One set of brush packs that I swear my loyalty to is the Orb Brushes released by Michael Vicente. It's a wonderful set of brush presets catered to stylization and I use it in every scultping project of mine.

Figure 2 (Orb brushes from Michael Vicente, (Vicente, n.d.))

I use Dynamesh and Subdivision side by side to increase the pixel count of the imported blockout so that the sculpt is more fluid. I use a couple of alphas to get a quick start on getting a concrete base for my stylized prop.

Figure 3 (Using alphas to sculpt the wooden log)

It is a very quick way to get a base that you can further refine and sculpt on top. You do have to be very careful to prevent from overdoing it and making sure the alpha sculpt actually makes sense. Then, simply inflating or deflating the mesh would extract the alpha sculpt inwards or outwards and you can start sculpting on those.

I start using a couple of different Orb brushes to smoothen the jagged edges and flatten the sharp edges. After I finish sculpting my mesh, I also add a few wooden cracks and chips to the wooden log and create small stylized bumps.

Figure 4 (Sculpting with the Orb Brushes)

No wooden prop is without its own set of imperfections. For my logs, I decided to introduce a bit of deformation to my log so that it appears more organic and stylized. After this, I created another variation of the wooden log and I was done with my stylized wooden props. I will not document any more on this phase as this is literally the same thing I do for any other props that need sculpting. But I can say, I am fully satisfied with how the sculpts turned out and I am very ecstatic to import it to Unreal Engine.

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Foliage Layout

I now work on laying out the foliage throughout the environment as identical to the concept art. This will instantly make the foliage pop out more and make it more vibrant and lively.

I decided to use Blender and import those ivy kits. This is where I got to channel my inner kid and be creative with how I lay it all out.

Figure 1 (Laying out the vine kit)

This process tends to get a bit more repetitive as its mostly duplicating different kits, resizing them as seen fit and trying to match the concept art. As such, this entry will be a bit shorter than the others. However, I did have an absolute fun working on this.

Figure 2 (Vine kit on the roof)

After a grueling yet fun process, I finished laying out the ivy kits on my architecture. Variations of those kits allowed for an interesting look that totally fits the Valorant artstyle. Riot is notorious for using beautiful variations of ivy kits and I am glad to have achieved that for my own project.

Figure 3 (Final ivy layout in Blender)

Figure 4 (Importing to UE)

Again, I am working simulatenously between tweaking things in Blender and perfecting details in Unreal Engine. I decided to import the entire ivy layout as a combined mesh as it helped optimize the frame rates of the game environment by a lot.

As it so stands, I needed to create a simple foliage master material that I can apply to any foliage mesh I import to the scene. While creating a material for the foliage, I enable the Two Sided property to make sure its both two sided as it increases the fluffiness for the foliage.

Figure 5 (Master material for the foliage)

The master material setup for the foliage is pretty simple. It's basically plugging the material functions we created earlier into its correct slot with the only unique thing being using a blue color node with a TwoSidedSign to introduce front facing and back facing property for the foliage through the camera lens.

Figure 6 (Importing foliage inside Blender)

It was time to start dressing up other pieces of foliage for my environment. That includes trees, bare trunks and bushes. In the same manner, I start laying out my foliage in my environment and since the material is the same, I only need to create material instances for different foliage types.

Figure 7 (Foliage in UE)

I finish laying it out in Blender and then import it inside UE. The material instances were very handy and I just had to reassign materials to said groups of foliage.

I noticed that the foliage meshes inside my Unreal scene had weird splotchy artifacts and that again was due to nanite being turned on for the meshes. After that, I finished my foliage pass for my environment project and I am really happy with the way it turned out.

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Creating the bush foliage

This was probably one of the most confusing phases of my project. This stemmed when I was creating my bush foliage. I have always created bushy foliage by utilizing the hair particle system of Blender. How I would normally do is create stems for the bush using a curve which uses another curve as a point for tapering the original one. I would then apply a hair particle system on the stems and the hair particle would be replaced with the image cards of the leaves.

Figure 1 (Bush foliage created using the hair particle system)

However, you can probably notice that it doesn't look really bushy. I tried my hardest to control its shape by fully tweaking its parameters but alas, I could only get so far! It looks like a plant that would be on a vase rather than bushes that would flood the floor platforms.

While searching for a better alternative to create foliage, I came across an addon named Treebox from a talented artist Justin Wallace who had perfected his foliage generator using geometry nodes in Blender. Since, I am not really well versed in geometry nodes, I decided to give this addon a go to see if it would be a better fit for my project.

Figure 2 (Treebox addon for Blender, (Wallace, n.d.))

I integrated it into my project and my goodness, the difference was clear as day and night. It also allowed for custom texture inputs with smoothen function to export as an fbx mesh that can be imported inside Unreal Engine. I also had A LOT of controls to make sure the bush looks bushy.

Figure 3 (Hair particle generated bush on the left and addon bush on the right)

I was very happy with the result and I created a couple of more variations for the bushes so that they all appear random and spontaneous. With this, the foliage is now ready to be exported as a static mesh inside UE and can be used with the material functions I created earlier.

I wanted to make sure that for the ivy kits I had created initially, they swing low but stay static from where they are hanging. I was talking with Axel Blin about how we went and achieved this effect and he sent me some interesting techniques he employed and some I could potentially employ in my project.

Figure 4 (Axel Blin's tips on wind effect for the ivy kit)

I talked with Eden Anthony about this and he said that the most easy way to go about achieving the wind effect particular for the ivy kit was to weight paint. That way the painted information is stored and when wind is applied to that exported kit mesh inside UE, it follows the rule accordingly.

Figure 5 (Weight painting the vines)

When painting weight, you normally paint it in grayscale. In this instance, the black painted portion of the mesh will receive the wind whereas the white painted portion of the mesh will remain static. That way, I achieve that real life effect of a swinging vine. It is subtle, but it is always the subtle things that count the most in 3D!

Figure 6 (Weight painting the other kits)

With this, I formally conclude my work on foliage completely. I created interesting variations of bushes that would populate the scene as well as adding weight information to the vine kits that would inherit the wind property inside UE accordingly. These are ready to export and I am ready to move to the next phase.

REFERENCES

Wallace, J., n.d. ArtStation Marketplace. [Online] Available at: https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/8Gg7y/treebox-for-blender-geometry-node-foliage-for-games [Accessed 16 July 2025].

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

More Vertex Painting

We continue onwards with our vertex painting of the architecture. There is no right or wrong way to do it, but there are a couple of guidelines you can follow to make sure that the vertex paint doesn't look outright horrible. Don't overdo the vertex paint, it might end up entirely covering the texture underneath it unless the art direction calls for it. Always try to mimic the concept art as close as possible and utilize the parameters of the height map to gain better control over your vertex painting.

Figure 1 (Vertex painting on roof tiles)

Similarly to how we vertex painted our wall architecture, I am doing the same for our roof tiles. I wanted to make sure that the foliage which hangs from our roof tiles blend with each other. Again, all of the individual modular pieces of the roofs needed to have their nanites turned off in order to access the Paint tab inside the Mesh Paint mode.

Figure 2 (Basic lighting pass)

I am simulatenously adding a couple of point lights and spot lights here and there to add lighting information to our scene. It was super dull and dark at the beginning, but having a couple of lights in my setup also allows me to precisely set the values of the color tint and the PBR data. As an environment artist, we are to juggle most aspects of 3D ourselves. This would include modelling, texturing, set dressing, lighting and rendering the scene. I would normally advise people to stick to spot lights as they are much more cost efficient than point lights.

Figure 3 (Continuing vertex painting)

In some cases, I had to use my own creative decision on whether to keep the color tint of the bricks as close to the concept art or to maybe try match the color of the plaster texture for visual blending. Valorant does both of it and as such, I decided to replicate both scenarios through my environment project.

Figure 4 (Vertex painting on floor platform)

I do the same for the floor tiles as in the concept art, its evident that there is a lot of moss buildup present. I decided to use the same mossy texture I had used for the roof tiles. I wouldn't consider this necessarily finished as it is always subject to change. I would definitely say I am making a good progress!

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Material Setup and Vertex Painting

I start working on testing the tile textures I created in Substance Designer. I made this my first priority inside UE as I could troubleshoot any errors I run into while working on it.

I first import all of the textures I created inside Substance Designer into Unreal Engine. This would include all of the maps we created like the albedo map, the normal map and the ORM map. Just for extra security, I also imported all of the separate texture maps though I highly doubt I would use those separate texture maps over the ORM maps.

Figure 1 (Importing texture maps inside UE)

It is very important to note that many people forget to set the correct compression settings of the textures they import inside Unreal Engine. This will result in low quality outputs and texture integration errors. The ORM maps will normally be set to a default compression and you need to change it to a Masks compression setting.

Figure 2 (Changing the compression settings of the ORM maps)

I work on creating a master material for the architectural pieces that will utilize vertex painting. It's not really a difficult setup and you can probably find a couple of different vertex painting node setups online.

I made use of reroute nodes which can always be referenced with the data its connected through to organize my graphs and make it look more cleaner. The idea of this setup is to use a Height Lerp node that takes data from the two textures you want to use for your vertex painting (or more, depending on how much you want). It also references the various different material functions we created earlier like ColorControls, RoughSpec and WorldSpacePaint.

Figure 3 (Master material setup for vertex painting)

Here is a more clearer look at one of the graphs that houses the node setup for the color texture for vertex painting. All of the other setups for the normal and the ORM maps follow similar node arrangement. All of them are then fed into the final attributes respectively.

Figure 4 (Clearer look for the color node setup)

Once in the viewport, you can toggle to the Mesh Paint mode to start vertex painting your layers. For some reason, I was not able to select the Paint option inside the Mesh Paint mode. That arose due to my architectural pieces having nanite turned on. Case in point, whenever you want to achieve vertex painting, always turn off nanite for your meshes.

Figure 5 (Mesh Paint Mode for vertex painting)

Using the material functions we created before, we can also actively control the tint, normal and pbr values of the tiles to make sure it looks identical to the concept art. Here, I am trying to match the color of the tiles. I decided to use the plaster material as a base and vertex paint the bricks over.

It is absolutely essential to always create material instances from the master materials for the textures so that we can separately control the parameters of the material setup. We can duplicate those instances which are independent from the other instances and can swap textures out for new textures, allowing for a smoother and faster workflow.

Figure 6 (Controlling the parameters of the material instances)

I am happy knowing that the big setup we initially created for the vertex painting along with the material functions and the texture maps we created inside Substance Designer all integrate properly inside Unreal Engine. It would always look decent inside 3D modeling softwares but the ultimate test is to make sure that it looks beautiful and cohesive inside the game engine of your choice!

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Water Functions

I come to the final stage for the creation of material functions. This is going to be a complex and lengthy function that would serve as the water that covers a lot of the concept art. I didn't want to go and try creating water with the help of particle effects or vfx systems as it would prove to be very costly for our environment map. While I am prioritizing detail over performance, I also am striving to achieve a balance between the two.

I first start by working on the color function for the water. It's a big system that includes a lot of setup for different parameters like foam lines, normal masks, color tints, low foam and the fade distance.

Figure 1 (WaterColor Function)

I now start working on creating a new function for the water material. This is separate from the colors for the water and will act as the opacity function for it. Similar to the water color function, this function also includes a Depth Fade node to control the opacity of the water. This function includes a couple of different parameters like opacity distance, opacity shallow and opacity deep values, strength, refraction and so on.

Figure 2 (WaterOpacity Function)

Finally, I work on the last function for the water material that would control its normal values. Again, just like textures, I am using my own custom normal masks but Unreal Engine also comes with a set of their own default normal maps that can be used for the texture input slots.

This material function includes a couple of different parameters to control the normals for the water material like normal map tiling, normal distortion tiling, normal flatness and so on.

Figure 3 (WaterNormals Function)

With this, I believe I have concluded all of the material functions I need to get started with the main master materials for all of the different meshes I have created for my project. The project is going swimmingly without any big issues or delays and I believe we are ready to move onto our next phase of the project.

[majorstudyfinal]

Artefact, Documentation and Presentation (Aryan Raj Adhikari)

Foliage Functions

As I finished my material functions for the basic utility for all meshes, it was time for me to focus on creating certain material functions for the foliage. You really don't need that a very elaborate material setup for foliage, but I like to do it as it makes the parameters more intuitive and looks more organized with a lot more control over the foliage mesh.

Figure 1 (MF_FoliageShadow setup)

Important to note that you might be thinking I came up with the entire setup. However, internet's a very beautiful thing and a couple of those formulas are floating about in the air. I just compiled them and blended between existing formulas to use it for my project.

For the foliage shadow function, it includes parameters like adding a color tint for the shadows, controlling its brightness values, the softness and the strength of the shadows. It's always rerouted to a function output node to close the data chain so that it can be referenced without any missing data links.

After the creation of the foliage shadow function, I created an elaborate function for its wind property. Normally, you can just achieve this by using a SimpleGrassWind node and call it a day. But, I wanted to see if I could refine the function a bit more. I also made a parameter setup to control the branch wind for the trees independent of the leaves.

Figure 2 (FoliageWind setup)

This material function is beautifully executd and includes a lot of parameters. Some of those include controls for billboard scale, inflate, wind intensity, wind speed and so on. Later, when I want to apply wind to my foliage, I just need to plug the data into this function in the master material for foliage and watch the magic happen!

This concludes the material function setups for the foliage meshes. Static foliage kills the immersion of video games and that also goes same for foliage with irratic movements. As such, I took a lot of time in making sure this would work perfectly.