Description

I wanted to stretch my knowledge of game optimization so I gave myself the project of making an environment that was as optimized as I knew how to make. This involved creating kitbash assets, trim sheets, custom shaders in UE5, and procedural buildings that used instanced meshes to cut down on load times. In creating the kit bash assets, I realized that if I changed the uvs on a very basic components, I would have to re-export every kitbash asset that used that piece. So, I created a script in Houdini that would loop through every kitbash asset and automatically update it with a button push so I could rapidly iterate through models without losing time. Once the models were inside UE5, I used the construction script to create procedural sides of the buildings that allowed for custom editing if I needed. This allowed for extremely quick iterations on the houses and left more time for focusing on specific houses closer to the camera. For the textures, I created a ZBrush sculpt for the normal map of the trim sheet, and then textured the sheet inside of Substance Painter. In total, I only used four textures for the whole environment. I also took advantage of UE5's shading scripts and created shaders that would automatically adjust their value and hue based on their position in the world to get some quick and natural variety to the textures. As a final addition, I created a shader that took advantage of vertex painting and a custom logic flow to get natural-looking stucco peeling to reveal a brick texture below the stucco of each house.