Behind The Scenes: Quartz Portal Level

In the creation of environment art, artists can adopt several effective strategies to craft individual assets that work seamlessly together to contribute to a cohesive thematic experience. This blog will explore my creative process, specifically detailing various techniques I use to utilize materials and assets that significantly enhance the reusability of individual elements.

In the development of my “Quartz Portal Level,” I went through multiple phases that included a thorough investigation of the key aspects, such as establishing style, selecting appropriate materials, lighting, and overall staging of the environment.

Concept Iterations

My goal was to create a high-quality environment that reflects attention to both functional VFX pieces and aesthetic composition.

I started by answering the 5 W’s to establish the different storytelling elements that could be reflected in the layout of the environment. I then collected references on Pinterest to explore what a magical cave could look like. This helped with formulating primary and secondary focal points to create a balanced and engaging composition.

For inspiration, I looked at games like Sea of Thieves and real-life rock formations to set the tone for style and interesting rock structures to give the scene a more organic feel.

Rock Blockout in Unreal Engine

Next, I created a 3D blockout. At this stage, I played with composition to create a skylight and organic rock arrangements. I used a method similar to Sea of Thieves where I got an arrangement of rock assets and rotated, changed size, and stacked these assets to create an illusion that there were different variations of rocks. Some minor goals at this stage were to reduce distractions to avoid pulling attention away from the center of the cave.

The assets that I used can be found here.

Art by Tommy Hallam

Lighting The Scene

At this stage, I added Point Lights in between rock formations to complement the rock and crystal materials. The blue glow highlights how magical the environment is and connects the scene to the purple lighting placed within the portal visual effect. The warm lights within the water were to balance the cold color elements in the seen to create a contrast of coziness within the mood.

Shader Graph and Substance Designer

I knew moving forward the rock formations needed to tell the player that this environment was untouched by other adventures with a touch of surrealism. The crystal materials suggest that the cave has been here for countless years, while the stylized rock textures contrast the bright emissions from the crystal gem substrate materials.

For landscape painting, I created two textures and normals on Substance Designer. Below are some of the screenshots of textures I have created.

Using the Niagara System

Here are the building blocks of the magical portal created using the Niagara System. The biggest problem I had was designing a way for the portal to spawn while also not crushing the composition of the environment and matching the style of the portal. With the surrounding environment having little movement and suggesting the scene has been untouched by adventurers, I wanted a dynamic visual effect to contrast the static movement of the scene.

Thanks for reading!