As a lifelong fan of World of Warcraft, our founder, Nick Jacops, wanted to revisit the nostalgia of his childhood by reimagining one of the game’s iconic areas, the Scarlet Monastery—this time in Unreal Engine 5. To push himself creatively, he layered in a second inspiration: the moody, atmospheric style of Dark Souls.
Every asset in the scene was crafted in Blender, then textured using Substance Painter or Quixel Mixer before being brought into Unreal Engine 5. The lighting setup is realtime Lumen with loosely physical values as night scenes are almost impossible to get physically correct without generating too high contrast for pleasant gameplay.
[Above] The final still image. There were so many ways I could go with this scene but I eventually decided to go for a slightly magical fantasy look. It was entirely possible to go for a more raw, Dark Souls look but I eventually decided that I liked the more fantastical look of this final image and decided to keep it as the main frame.
Nick wanted to capture as many moods as possible to see what the environment was capable of portraying.
The entire progress of the project was captured in a slideshow which can be viewed above.
