Introduction Apodemus is an interplanetary refueling station in a future where rocket engines are still widely used for planetary exploration. The station is located on a low gravity Titan-like planet, with extremely low temperatures, thick atmosphere and seas of liquid methane. It is a slow world where it is easy to land, takeoff and where even a brick could fly with a little effort. The station is a complex of three platforms situated in the middle of a crater that contains a lake of the organic compound, which is locally refined, turned to fuel and supplied directly to the coming ships before continuing their expedition to the rest of the solar system. Looking up from the station one can see breathtaking views of a tidally locked twin planet and other satellites of the local system of moons. _____________ Watch Apodemus animated at vimeo.com/541271454 before continuing to the rest of the document, where we will see how this project came to life in Unreal Engine.
APODEMUS
INT ERPLANET ARY REF UELING ST AT ION
substance designer/master graph
original digital painting
master graph as a node
Inspiration and first steps When I decided to create a work sample in a game engine, I knew immediately that I wanted to build a level in Unreal Engine inspired by one of my last digital paintings, which I did a few months ago. First of all, I decided to take the chance and work extensively with Substance Designer, to learn the software better while texturing my sci-fi assets. After completing the graph for my first model and in order to achieve consistency throughout the project and save time, I cleaned it up to make it functional as a node for the rest of my assets to come. Every asset was modeled and unwrapped in 3ds max, before being imported into Substance Designer for texturing. A low polycount/high texture resolution approach was followed, hence most of the bitmaps exported from Substance Designer, dedicated to the larger assets, were in 4k resolution. On the right side you can see the graph editor and previews from that stage in Substance Designer. Main tower -preview
Base color
detail
Modeling and testing the assets Having my painting as a reference, I modeled a set of architectural elements of various sizes that follow the same color palette and dystopic aesthetics characterized by heavy wear and leaks. A small detail that indicates functional difference is the intense rusty corrosion on the pipes, in contrast to the dark leaks on the rest of the assets that come from dust and dirt. Next step after finishing modeling all the assets was to make a composition in 3ds max and a quick test render. My intention was to do a last check to confirm that everything was working well together, before moving to Unreal Engine. After importing my elements there, I created a main master material and instances for my geometry and I did my first light set up in real time. To achieve the same lighting and mood, I used a BP_sky sphere with a low intensity vertical direct light to bring up the stars, a skylight, atmospheric fog and intense exponential volumetric fog to produce the same strong atmospheric depth as in the painting, as well as the lower layer of fog at the base of the platforms. Then, I tweaked my exposure settings with a post process volume for a low light result. It didn’t take long until I was content with my first results while trying to match my reference, even if I was rusty after four years away from Unreal Engine. After this point I was free to move outside the frame and start imagining more about this world and how could someone explore it. I didn’t feel obliged to be completely faithful to my reference anymore however, my background mountain range and the two moons in the sky where still missing, which takes us to the next stage of the project.
Assets
Test render 3ds max/Corona Renderer
early test in Unreal Engine
Completing the environment Starfield dome
From this moment and on I continued discovering this world while building it. I came up with the idea of a lake with large low frequency waves, contained in a crater, while experimenting with volumetric clouds and different ways to make my fog more engaging. To achieve the final result, I made a blueprint to create a brute force volumetric by layering planes on top of each other and by creating a material the opacity of which was connected to a noise map linked to the z axis. Even without fully understanding the instructions to achieve this, I was very pleased with the result. The crater landscape was created in Gaia and its mountain ring functions as a background while it sets the limits of the level at the same time.
2nd cloud dome
Afterwards, I set up the lighting from scratch again and created my own starfield in Substance Designer. The sky sphere material was customized to keep only the clouds and another dome was placed beyond the mountains as a second layer of clouds, to add more depth to the scene. The twin planet and the moon where placed between the clouds and the starfield dome, as self-illuminated discs. These celestial bodies where textured in Substance Designer and rendered in 3ds max.
1st cloud dome
satellite surface - substance deisigner
low frequency waves
lake blueprint for stacking layers
crater created in Gaia
Setting up the flight simulator and adding animation With this level on my hands Ι couldn’t finish the project with just capturing still images. I modeled a small spaceplane and after exploring different approaches to flying, I created a blueprint that would simulate flying aerodynamically in low gravity. After some practice I recorded a flight with sequencer and with the addition of cameras and extra animated elements, I created a short clip of the level. Hopefully, you enjoyed the presentation of this project as much as I enjoyed creating it. It was the first time I attempted to do a personal project of this theme and scale and it was definitely a journey. It took me roughly five weeks to complete it, while most of that time was consumed by tutorials in Substance Designer and problem solving in Unreal Engine. Feel free to visit my website and see more samples of my work at alexstogiannis.com. Thank you very much, Flight simulation blueprint
Alexandros Stogiannis