Torii Forest
1.Reference
The Torii is based off the Atago Shrine which is a Shinto Shrine on Mount Atago, north west of Kyoto. I chose the winter season in order to play with the snow shaders in Unreal and make the red Torii truly pop out from its environment.
Reference Board
2.Modularity
Customized Unreal Blueprints were used to swiftly change modular parts on individual assets.
Torii Blueprint
Statue Blueprint
StoneSlab Blueprint
3.Models & Textures
All the main assets were modeled in Maya and detailed in ZBrush; the tree was created in SpeedTree. Unique textures were authorized in Substance Designer and then placed on assets in Substance Painter.
Main Assets (rendered in Unreal)
Detail Sculpts (made in ZBrush)
Japanese Cedar (made in SpeedTree)
Japanese Cedar Bark & Leaves (made in Substance Designer)
Snow and Snowflake (made in Substance Designer)
4.Movement
Movement adds life to a scene. The three elements moving in this scene are: snowflakes, trees and rope parts. The snowflake texture was applied to Unreal’s particle system and customized to create desired the effect. SpeedTree’s node was applied the the world position offset of both the branch and leaves materials to affect their movement; Unreal’s wind directional source was used to increase/decrease the wind. The rope had key parts of the meshes vertex’s painted, vertex color is in grayscale (black indicates no movement and white is full movement). In Unreal a wind offset was applied to the rope’s material and material instances were used to effect individual parts.
Rope Vertex Colors
5.Lighting
Lighting was baked in Unreal. The Japanese Cedars were placed at ideal locations near the main path to guide light rays toward the Torii’s. The background fog has a hint of blue infused to add to the cold mood of the environment.
