Best Of

Hi guys! Lovely to see everyone having fun with this challenge.

TW: TRYPOPHOBIA

I attempted to recreate artist Jose Vega’s Dungeon Stage concept in Unreal Engine. His ideation process is fascinating and the featured artwork has so many interesting elements that ended up giving me serious scope creep haha.

For this project, my focuses were material blending, lighting, and set dressing. I did very minimal modeling and utilized mostly third-party props. Would have loved to make more of them myself, but can't deny the fun I had scattering these versatile assets around. At one point I hallucinated physics and had a fully intact skeleton propped against the rocks, bare-boned but holding himself together with hopes and dreams like an average 3D student.

I tried to break repetition through scale, rotation, and placement to match organic variation in the concept. The honeycomb rock material was made in Substance Sampler, duplicated with adjusted tiling values, then blended back into the original using mesh painting. Spiderweb and rock crack decals were added to reinforce wear and narrative detail.

I really like how readable the original scene is and even though there were some deviations early on, the final composition is relatively faithful to Jose’s concept. Lighting however isn’t super realistic as I used spotlights for softer transitions and for focal guidance, but I’m quite happy with it for now. I would love some feedback and advice on this area as I find lighting challenging but incredibly fulfilling.

Here's the final render. Hope you like it!

This is my first completed project in Unreal Engine. Even though my focus is on another assignment right now, I’d 100% like to revisit this environment and refine it further. Any critique is welcome!

Featured Asset Packs:
Valley of the Ancient
Dark Ruins Megascans Sample
Ancient Treasures
Dungeon Environment