Ashton Maltie IV
Art Creation
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Technical Material Creation in Unreal Engine 4
My thesis aimed to capitalize on the Two semesters later, I have a nifty little
creation in games by presenting a vignette materials. I became familiar with the
advancement of the texture and material
of an ocean scene that utilizes high-
quality textures and materials within Epic’s
Unreal Engine.
I was inherently curious as to how much
I could do with Unreal’s Material Editor,
which is an abstract way of writing
shaders for materials. Influenced by
games like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black
Flag, I wanted to create realistically
moving water with a twist: I wanted to
vertex paint more details onto the surface.
That twist developed further by also
adding custom vertex painting to other
materials to create effects like wind and
rain puddles.
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ART CREATION
scene full of technical, customizable
Material Editor and gained a lot of
knowledge of the nodes and what they
do. I learned a good bit about exterior
lighting and overall using Unreal Engine 4.
I also got some valuable experience with
profiling and benchmarking performance
of art assets in games, which is
something I feel game companies will
always need to balance, no matter how
advanced technology gets.