This is Crescent Island, an island I made in Unreal Engine 4. The basis of this project was for an interview assessment and this is the finished product before the deadline was up.
Crescent Island is the first landscape I've made in Unreal 4 as well as the first practical application of the tools within it. All of the textures and assets were pulled from the Quixel library and I used asset packs for the water, skybox, and trees.
It was an excellent learning experience and I've added a lot to my personal skillset and arsenal for my workflow. Having only Unity experience prior yet vested interest in Unreal, it was a great opportunity to finally dig in and really get more familiar with the engine.
The requirements for this environment were very lax and not much clear cut direction was given so I took that as a chance to really do what I wanted to do without much obstruction.
My aim and vision with this island was to attempt to give a small narrative with the landscape and provide some level of mystique. I wanted to have an area where there were clear signs some small civilization that used to exist here on Crescent Island. I really wanted to have some questions be raised and some answers formed within the viewers' minds as to what became of this small village. I believe I achieved some of what I wanted to do, but not everything.
On top of the time constraint, there were technical limitations on what I believed to be possible with the landscape tools as well as technical issues that arose while I was developing the island. While making material functions and trying to apply them, I ran into problems where they either didn't work nor did they work as they should've intended. Due to time being a consistent variable, I couldn't afford to spend more of it to try and troubleshoot the problems. I needed to pivot and prioritize on achieving as much as I could while I could. At this point I became very familiar with the landscape tools so if there was a need to change anything structurally or clean up an area that needed it more than others, I was able to swiftly.
Overall, I'm content with the final result but I know I can do better. After the time was up, I took some time to reflect on my journey with this project and where I was just 2 weeks prior to coming up with this idea. My ultimate goal with this was to become more familiar with Unreal and managed to finally have a project under my belt with Unreal. I'm very excited to learn more and do more in Unreal while constantly honing the skills I've gained from this project moving forward.