During this course, I have learned a variety of different features and techniques that are present in Unreal Engine 5.03, including creating a landscape and foliage, assigning lighting and materials and using the modelling tool.
The first step in my design process was to research and plan what I would like to make for my final environment, which would be linked to one of the themes and one of the subthemes that I had to choose from. The main themes are horror, science fiction, fantasy and historical whilst the subthemes are alien, corruption, utopia, dystopia, celebration, decay, family and beauty. I explored a variety of different options, such as creating an abandoned building in the middle of a South American desert, creating a tropical environment with a worn down pyramid (similar to the pyramids created by the ancient mayans), creating an ancient underwater environment with prehistoric elements or creating a volcanic environment that was once inhabited by a civilisation.
I ended up choosing to make a prehistoric creature for my 3D asset design, so I thought that history and alien would be a good match for my theme and subtheme especially as I chose to do ancient animals which are alien like compared to the animals that exist nowadays. I narrowed down my research to Cambrian Era lifeforms (since they were the most alien like creatures of the prehistoric era), which existed over 500 million years ago, and were primarily underwater, as life did not develop on land at that time period. So I decided to look at some flora/fauna that might have existed back then, and corals caught my attention, as the earliest known corals existed in the Cambrian Period and have not changed much since
After that, I got some images of coral environments from the internet and put them on some mood boards, from real life locations such as the great barrier reef to the fictional environments such as the Coral Highlands, found in the game called Monster Hunter World. Also, I was finding the corruption subtheme interesting, so I included some corals that have been infected by fungi, since corruption happens from an outside force, unlike decay which happens from a force coming from the inside. However, I ended up sticking with the alien subtheme since the corals I create look alien.
The final part of my research involved trying to fit a building into my environment, so I decided to make a worn down temple that would be underwater, or if I wanted to go through the land based coral route like with the fictional environment of the Coral Highlands, then it would be landlocked. After some careful consideration I decided to go through with keeping my environment underwater, as it just made sense for me to do so and a land based coral environment would be classed under the fantasy theme, which was not something I was aiming towards.
