The Rut

Inspired by Rabbie Burns poem "My heart's in the highlands", this short technical art demo explored capturing the changing Scottish weather over four biomes, drawing on rosemaling stylisation.

I created all assets. Made in UE4.

Overview

Studio

Personal

Role

Solo Developer

Platform

Date

2017

Key Skills

Technical Art

Materials

Lighting

In a rose male style, a deer runs through a sunlight forest with flowers in the foreground, and trees in the background.

Process

From concept to asset creation, materials to effects, I built up each biome layer by layer.

Techniques

To quickly make patterned bushes...

I laid out the different mesh UVs to not overlap in a 0-1 space, then applied a a stepped radial gradient centred on (0.5, 0.5).

Five mesh UV shells are laid out in a UV editor.

A screenshot of the material graph for the bush.

Button

A row of bushes with three part gradients to them.

A flower is moved side to side showing how the colour of the petals change with the movement.

The flower colours were randomised...

From a set palette through a dynamic material instance, to provide variety as the foreground repeated.

I faked the island reflection...

By inverting the geometry and then applying a downward panning material which offset the vertices to create a 'wibble'.

A tree on an island is reflected in the water, with it's reflection wibbling.

A screenshot of the material graph for the reflected mesh.

Button

For the twinkling stars...

I created a mask using dots with values between 0 - 0.5. In the material I assigned different behaviours to these values, e.g. slow twinkle, fast twinkle, steady, etc.

*Please note the video contains rapidly flashing pixels.

A screenshot of the material graph for the stars.

Button

And I made the aurora shine...

By panning gradient ribbons along planes to offset their vertices and create the gentle rippling movements.

In a rose male style, a deer runs through snow high on a mountain, with coniferous trees in the foreground and the aurora and moon overhead.

A screenshot of the material graph for the aurora.

Button

In a rose male style, a deer runs over wet mud leaving footprints. Rain patters down as hills are barely visible through the cloud in the background.