The addition of a niagara system consisting of fishes swimming around helps breathe a lot more life into the scene compared to a simple still image, which can make a lot of difference for a nature-focused composition such as this.
The majority of the components in this scene was obtained from Megascans, and placed out via PCG Graphs. It allows incredibly quick scene creation to host detailed assets in without having to have anything prepared, and was very useful during the project.
The Reference Sheet for this project. Most of the references I wanted to gather concerned getting a good angle or camera shot for the anchor itself, since I wanted the Anchor to both sink into the seabed somewhat, but to also be mostly fully visible.
Poly-Reduction Before/After in Blender. Take note of the texture breaking near the bottom; Since our Anchor sits at the bottom of the seabed, we can “mask” out these rough parts from the photoscan by adjusting the scene the anchor is in.
An overview of the terrain in Houdini, versus how it looks like in Unreal Engine with the water lighting effects disabled. The main shot itself sits nestled in a little ridge near the center of the terrain.
The final project for a Real-Time Engines course I took at the Game Assembly, which took about a week and a half to finish.
The vast majority of this project consists of assets and components that are not my own, the two primary ones being MegaScan assets for the environmental pieces, and then Karim Abou Shousha's Underwater Blueprint for the general lighting effects. The main personal effort put into this came in forming the base environment/floor itself, done via Houdini's Terrain Tools, and photoscanning the actual Anchor itself. Neither of these two was something I was particularly familiar with when starting the project, but through guidance from my teacher and a bit of crunch I was able to create something that I'm very satisfied with. If nothing else, it serves as a beautiful banner, and also just a very fun project, since the object I took came from very near where I actually live.
I'll consider whether or not to return to this in the future, as while I found the process of using so many procedural tools (PCG Graph, Houdini Terrain, Photoscanning) to be quite fun, I think I prefer focusing on smaller scale things, or more direct stuff. But its very useful skills to have under my toolbelt, especially for creating nice & quick "Showcase Scenes" for future projects!
