Moodboard
For the cabin in the woods assignment, I drew inspiration from the creepy but luring forest at night. I decided to go with a more realistic version of Hansel and Gretel for my theme, where the witch lives in a wooden cabin but tries to lure her victims in through baking really delicious baked goods instead of having her house be edible. I really liked the atmosphere created when the forest is lit by moonlight and the light is dispersed through fog, casting dark shadows on the ground and giving the illusion that the forest is alive.
Reference Board
Since I decided on Hansel and Gretel, I wanted to stay true to the story and have the setting in the medieval German forest. I will model my cabin after a pretty standard wooden cabin design and add small medieval details to the home. I found references that would help me understand the architecture, textures and details of the scene so I could recreate this in a more realistic way. I then drew a rough sketch of everything put together to have a better idea of the lighting and composition of the project.
Soft Skills Checkpoint
Creative Thinking and Artistic Vision: Conceptualizing my cabin in the woods in my moodboard. I wanted to make a creepy forest that is surrounded by fog and lit by the moon.
Block Out
I did two block outs for the cabin. I made one with rough shapes at first and then I made one with foliage paintover.
Modelling
Initially, I wanted to make my roof detailed in the modelling as I wasn’t really modelling with UV’s in mind. This was my first mistake because I should have checked on the UV maps first before completing everything. So I went in and replaced it.
I also wanted to make things in a modular way so I created the walls separately. One thing I struggled with a lot was making things line up and I wasn’t sure if it fit properly or not. This proved to be an even bigger problem when it came to texturing.
UV
^Absolutely terrible
I learned that I should model things in a more simple way and this was a hard lesson that I learned because I recreated what I did for the day in 30 minutes. But I am glad I was able to learn this lesson early on!
I also learned the importance of straightening UVs and how it affects texturing. As well as grouping them together in a way that would make organizing textures easier.
After I fixed my UV’s, I assigned each section with their own material and exported the FBX into Substance Painter.
Soft Skills Checkpoint
Problem-solving and debugging: identified issues with UV’s, fixed them and kept troubleshooting as I went.
Critical Thinking and analytical skills: referencing cabins to see how they are built, following the references to make sure the proportions of my cabin are accurate.
Texturing
I was playing around with the various materials in Substance painter when I realized some of the UV’s were warped and the way I built the cabin doesn’t look good at all and so I redid the modelling and optimized my UV’s.
These were the references I looked at when I was texturing the cabin. I noted that in a wetter environment, especially near a river, there will be more moss growth and dirt on the steps/ rocks and I added more green to my cabin. The exposed wood would also be bleached by the sun and I found it helpful to have references to help me make my piece more realistic.
Wood Image: Woodfine0007 from textures.com
I also tried making my own wood texture in Substance Painter and I was able to get a further understanding of how UV’s and materials work.
This was the first time I plugged my textures into Unreal Engine and I thought that the colours came across way too saturated and the height from the “moss” was too much. It was also too glossy and I marked down what I need to change in substance.
I realized the lighting in UE5 looks vastly different from the Substance Painter lighting and I had to account for that when making changes to my textures. I would keep logging every test I ran between Substance and Unreal until I had something that I was quite happy with. I then exported everything and plugged it into my UE5 Project.
Here are screenshots of different angles of the final texture.
In hindsight, I would add more moss to the bottom of the house to make it look more realistic as well as darker colours to make it look less “clean”. I would also model it to make it have more decay and lived in.
Soft Skills Checkpoint
Adaptability and continuous learning: used substance painter for the first time, learned how to make my own texture from a seamless photo (photo was edited on photoshop to make it seamless).
Critical Thinking and analytical skills: comparing references to look at colours, patterns and various textures that would exist on wooden cabins. Playing around with the different settings such as roughness for some gloss and reflections on the surface etc.
Landscaping + Foliage
References gathered on PureRef from various sources.
Height Map: from Magnet VFX on YouTube
HDRI: Overcast Soil (Pure Sky) by Sergej Majboroda & Jarod Guest taken from Poly Haven
I imported an HDRI map from Poly Haven and set it as my sky sphere. Since my idea was a creepy forest, I wanted some cloudy skies so that I could emulate moonlight shining on my cabin.
Foliage: All foliage + glass window assets taken from Fab
One of the highlights I had when creating the landscape was making my own water shader. I added parameters to change the speed of my waves, the colour of my water and the translucency of my river. This was my first time creating a material instance from scratch and it was a very interesting learning experience!
This part took a while for me to figure out because I didn’t know how I wanted the river to curve and how to frame the shot. I thought that placing an object in the foreground would be helpful to frame the subject and decided on a tree with a split trunk for a more interesting shape.
I then tried out different foliage packs from fab and played around with the trees at different height settings, gradually settling on taller versions of them to create a sense of scale between the forest and the cabin.
My takeaway from this is to find a set reference from pre-production and try to recreate it as closely as possible, this would eliminate indecisiveness and improve my efficiency.
Soft Skills Checkpoint
Adaptability and Continuous Learning: combing everything I learned from the Unreal Engine lectures for the first time: Using height maps for the landscape, the water system for the river, importing an HDRI as my custom sky. I learned how to play around with volumetric fog to create the mood that I wanted to convey. Making my own water shader was also an interesting experience, I was able to change the wave direction, speed, translucency etc.
Collaboration and Teamwork: during this phase of my work, I asked around for a lot of feedback for my composition, whether the trees looked good or not if placed this way, how dense should I make my forest etc. I think it’s very important to receive feedback to see how the project is doing and I will make it my goal to work on asking more people for feedback as well as receiving and translating the feedback into my own work.
Lighting + Ambience
Now that the foliage was at a spot where I was satisfied, I started to play with the fog and lighting settings. I wanted to make the directional light emulate moon light, so I made it cool toned and changed the exposure of the scene to a lower point so that I could have a more intense light. I had to troubleshoot the windows because for some reason the light wouldn’t show through and would only show the window frames. I tried to change the window material to a glowing one and made it more orange to match the sinister vibe of the forest but I thought that it was just too dark and I wanted a brighter light to separate it from the background.
I then changed the window materials to be glass and pumped up the intensity of the point light to 40k and changed the radius to 15k so the camera could catch the rays of the light.
Test Renders
After adding in better lighting and tweaking the exponential height fog settings, I made a few test renders to see which one looks better.
Eventually settling on the final composition that I have below.
Final Render
I completed my first 3D project! Although it went in a different direction than what I initially intended to do, overall I am very happy with the results and I learned a lot from this project.