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Mateo Linares
Level Artist @ Ubisoft Toronto
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Nordic Forest | Unreal Engine 4 Cinematic

"Do not go alone into the forest.
Behind its alluring beauty lies something ancient and sinister."

For this personal project I created all the foliage and the statue in Blender/ZBrush/Speedtree, using my own photos alongside Substance Designer to create the plant texture atlases. All lighting, level art, and cinematics were done in Unreal Engine 4.

The rocks and broken tree stump are Quixel Megascans assets. I also created the landscape shader using Megascans textures.

I tried to keep my asset library fairly limited for this project. The shrubs and grass were done by hand in Blender. The trees were done in Speedtree using my own pine needle atlas textures.

I tried to keep my asset library fairly limited for this project. The shrubs and grass were done by hand in Blender. The trees were done in Speedtree using my own pine needle atlas textures.

The foliage was created from photographs I took over the summer and used as a guide to make high poly versions in Blender. These were used in Substance Designer to bake out a detailed normal map along with the other atlas textures.

The foliage was created from photographs I took over the summer and used as a guide to make high poly versions in Blender. These were used in Substance Designer to bake out a detailed normal map along with the other atlas textures.

All ferns and shrubs share a single material atlas. The pine needle atlas was created using a similar method, with the textures created in Substance using a high poly model I made in Blender.

All ferns and shrubs share a single material atlas. The pine needle atlas was created using a similar method, with the textures created in Substance using a high poly model I made in Blender.

This workflow creates photorealistic 2D materials that react extremely well to environment lighting while still being optimized.

This workflow creates photorealistic 2D materials that react extremely well to environment lighting while still being optimized.

I made custom LODs for the foliage with the general rule of halving the poly count with each iteration. I find that creating them by hand can have better results than the auto LOD feature in Unreal Engine, but its worth testing both.

I made custom LODs for the foliage with the general rule of halving the poly count with each iteration. I find that creating them by hand can have better results than the auto LOD feature in Unreal Engine, but its worth testing both.

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