This is a forest environment made of game-ready assets and rendered in Unreal 4.

This project is the result of my master’s thesis in graduate school. In addition to making high quality assets, a big focus of this project was making the environment dynamic and ecologically correct. This means using plants that would naturally grow together in the same ecosystem, and placing these plants in areas based on the available sunlight and water. For example, plants that require lots of sun won't be as prominent under a thick canopy, and plants that like lots of water might be found near a riverbed.

I believe it's important for us environment artists to take these things into account to help make these types of environments more believable. The average person might not understand the structure of a forest, but they will likely subconsciously feel like something is off if the environment isn't put together realistically.

Programs used: Maya, Mudbox, Substance Designer, and Photoshop