The Temple of Waterlilies - UE5 Environment

This is my course final for my Virtual Environments 2 class, taught by Timothy Lewis.

I wanted to create an environment that blended between conventional, painterly stylization and realism. I was heavily inspired by abandoned temples and holy sites, drawing from a lot of real-world Southeast Asian and ancient Aztec examples. I also wanted to weave in a lot of aquatic motifs to coincide with this lush, swampy environment. In order to accomplish this, I developed a lot of interesting, unique techniques that contributed greatly, both in terms of efficiency and consistency. This environment was made over the course of about 2 months, so spending a sizable chunk of this time defining an asset pipeline made iteration and art direction so much easier--and an insane amount of fun!