Rustic Cyberpunk

While enjoing the start of winter, I came across this lovely animation that I think is a fine intermission to the season's sentiment.

Created by Pontus Ryman.

I always wanted to capture the feeling of the serene environments around my parents summerhouse where i have spent many summer days.

The coasts with its water eroded rocks and trees bent by the wind, the deep forests and open fields has always been striking to me. When the house was about to be sold i realized it was my last chance to fully scan and capture the essence of those locations.

This video is a homage to those summer days and the experience of taking a trip to the coast through the open fields into the dense forests and to the open coast during a sunny summer day.

I kept going to the coast a couple of times during the spring to photogrammetry capture the rocks, trees, houses and other props to collect the parts needed. I also took the time to record a lot of sound, as i wanted something that felt authentic to the location. Initially this was just supposed to be a small scene of the coastal rocks but quickly expanded into something bigger to encompass the whole summer day experience.

I built the content from my own photogrammetry scans and took the opportunity to deep dive into aspects of Unreal Engine i had not done before to learn new things along the way.

On the technical side there is nothing unique about the content. The content is build from scratch after standard game budgets through a curated small set of assets with LODS + billboard final LOD for vegetation, detail textures, and contact shadows, running Real time in Unreal Engine 4.26

Big thanks and shout out to Andrew Hamilton artstation.com/andrewhamilton who gave me so much feedback and ideas as i worked on this video, it was a huge help to bounce ideas and he helped me make this into something bigger than just a showcase of nature content.

I hope you enjoyed watching this, it was quite an experience to create.

I dedicate this video to my parents, my wife and my baby daughter who accompanied me on so many scanning excursions.