Summary

“Nürnburgring: Reimagined” is an environment created in four weeks parttime, using World Machine to generate terrain and Unreal Engine and Epic Games Assets.

My main goal with this environment was to create a high-graphic environment with both Alp vegetation and a Sci-fi feel. This map would include a real-life racetrack(Nürnburgring) reimagined to improve my skills within composition, lightning, terrain creation, level and environment design.

My idea was originally to create a playable track but I switched from a scripting focus to a composition and design focus. I created a video to see what the racetrack felt like, otherwise the focus was to create a level where almost every angle you had something beautiful to look at.

Specifications

Created in 4 weeks half time

Created with World Machine and Unreal Engine

Created using meshes and foliage from Epic Games Market place

Creating the world

Starting this project I came in with the idea and thought process to create a stunning terrain with some easy racing gameplay. My plan was to start off by doing a terrain in World Machine and then move over to Unity/Unreal engine. After looking at reference pictures and creating a mood-board I started to also look for exiting racing tracks in Europe since I was looking at references from the Alps. I came across Nürnburgring which is one of the most famous racetracks in the world. But I was not happy about just create a basic Alpish environment I wanted to develop myself further so I decided to add a sci-fi feel to the racing track to contrast the big environment and to make the level feel more futuristic.

Generating the terrain: World Machine

When I finished the mood board, I started with my work in World Machine to generate my terrain. I choose world machine to build something more realistic and to test my skills. I needed a big terrain to fit the layout of Nürnburgring so I started with a big size and a height to match the height of the alps. A valley was the goal of this terrain and to create some flat surfaces and some elevated points to make the design for Nürnburgring more futuristic. I also wanted a nice spot to place a landmark for the level.

With the some Perlins and Layout generators I started to model the terrain and create my basics (more explanation of my terrain in World Machine in the picture beneath). Once I was finished with my map I decided to import it to both Unity and Unreal to check which engine it would go best with, and I decided for unreal where I could explore more lighting and post process settings.

Once I’ve made the terrain and had decided the engine to work in, I started to save layers that my terrain should be textured. Basically how I made the terrain in the right color I chose and saved a height-map and added the right layer blend depending on how high/steep the terrain was.

Contrast, composition and lighting

One of my main goals with this map was to achieve a contrast between the futuristic road and the alp vegetation/environment. Achieving this was quite hard since I was new to creating this kind of concept, a mix with something you recognize and something that is futuristic and new could break your immersion. 

On the race track I wanted every angle to feel like you are looking at something beautiful this was hard to work out since you were supposed to drive a car fast through the map. I don't think that I did solve this problem but after following a few methods regarding composition and adding my landmark, my scene got suddenly more visually stunning than it did before. In the screenshots and the videos I tried to follow photo-techniques like "rule of third" and "rules of odds" but I don't think that made me capture the scene as I wanted it to be seen so I went back to my own basics to look for repetition(leading lines) in the terrain/meshes, framing most of the angles you here driving and then since I've already gotten a juxtapose free from the contrast I think I was able to make a good composed scene

When it came to the light I took on the challenge to create a more complex lighting than I've done in previous projects. In unreal I tried to setup my Directional Light, Sky sphere, skylights and fog to match each other and the environment.  I looked at my mood-board  and started working according to some of the pictures there. I don't think the result matched perfectly  with how I wanted my scene to look like but in the same time I think it's my best lighting work I've done at The Game Assembly. 

Potential Improvements &

Closing Thoughts

I’m certainly happy about how the project went and how the finished scene was presented. However there were some issues that I would have to deal with if I were to continue to work with this project.

• I wanted a road that showed the view from different altitudes but some of the elevations of the roads where to steep and if the road was made for a game this would be the first thing to change, probably change the elevation somehow in worldmachine.

• The performance was good overall but on certain spots in the level the fps would plummet when doing a fly-through with a camera. If the level was made for a game I would certainly need to work more with LODs and remove some meshes, lights and effects for it to have a more stable performance

Even though I started this project with a bright idea and achived a good result in the end. This project taught me I to not complicate my ideas and sometimes just to keep a simple idea simple. Since I’m interested in scripting I intended to create a racing-game I . And this is where i realized that I couldn't do both a nice environment and a good functioning racing game. I had to reiterate lots of times just to realize that a nice environment would fit to be a part of my portfolio. In the end I got the burden off my chest and started to work with all my assets and my environment and I could prove to myself that this is a good showcase for my skills and I’ve improved on many things in this project. The knowledge I’ve acquired about world machine, lighting and composition has and will certainly help me to become a better level-designer. And I’m proud to present a really nice and beautiful scene.