Cinematic World Building

Project Brief: Using cinematic reference, create an environment that you can light in two different ways to tell two different stories.

My cinematic reference was Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as it was the first environment that came to mind that during the day was experienced as a relatively normal, but visually stunning national park, however, once the sun sets, comes alive with alien encounters. And that is exactly what I tried to capture with my environment. Using Unreal Engine 4 for its real-time workflow, I created a procedural environment in Houdini and used Houdini Engine to bring it over to UE, where I create an auto-material that applied to the landscape. I then also created a procedural hero mountain with a triplanar material. Finally, a student from the music school took away one of the scenes and created audio to match with it, hence why the night version contains audio.

Alien Ship Model - SketchFab (CC0)
Digital Human - Character Creator 3
SideFX Houdini & Unreal Engine - DCC
Unreal Engine 4 - Render Engine