During my time at Welevel, I was working on an upcoming survival MMO RPG with RTS elements, developed in Unreal Engine 5 for PC and next-gen consoles. My job there as a technical artist included procedural world generation and level design, building complex materials, blockouts of procedural buildings, environment art, lighting and time-of-day settings for a dynamic lighting system with seasons, testing, bug tracking and optimization, and integration of a dynamic weather system in the world.
Open World
The game features a procedurally generated open world, created with the help of the Voxel Plugin. I was responsible for the creation of the world and its materials, populating it with foliage, villages and animals and the lighting of it. The world consists of multiple biomes and different places for the player to explore and build their empire. Metrics and gameplay were also of course at the center of attention, as the world seed is different for every playthrough.
Environment and lighting
The game features realistic graphics and makes use of Quixel’s Megascans. Optimization is key, as creating this vast world filled with foliage remains a challenge, even with next-gen hardware. I was responsible for the quality and performance of the environments and the integration of a dynamic weather system with it. Lighting and weather was realized with the help of the amazing Ultra Dynamic Sky asset, found in the Unreal Engine marketplace.