Hmmm… So I’m the first one to complete the Unreal Environment Design course and post about it?
Here is a video walkthrough of my level:
Thank you Michael Kocha! It’s been a short and sweet course.
I know the final part of my level could use some more work but I think I’m going to move on and apply what I learned to another project.
Some caveats/issues I’ve found:
- Adding Highest Quality foliage from Quixel Megascans killed my project’s performance with the little foliage I added. Well, no wonder. Its textures are 8k (yikes!) and foliage is not supported by Nanite, so I tried High Quality for my foliage assets and that worked remarkably well, without any big fps dips. Still, 4k textures… a bit of overkill for background assets, but ok.
- Megascans does have a collection of tree assets: Megascans Trees: European Black Alder (early access) in Megascans - UE Marketplace, though they are in Early Access and so ridiculous in detail that again, they are not viable as an option for UE 5 until Nanite supports foliage. They seem to work fine on UE4 though, I can zoom through the Asset Zoo level at 120 FPS in my ageing development system.
I ended up using these trees, very sparingly as you can see due to the performance hit: temperate Vegetation: Spruce Forest in Props - UE Marketplace - I can’t remove any foliage, just add more. I would have to delete the foliage actor and start over, which doesn’t sound like fun in a big level. Am I missing anything?
Well, that’s it. Any comments and feedback are greatly appreciated!