Unreal Engine 5 Developer Shares His Experience of Creating Realistic Graphics

Ostap Gordon aka Ostap_Gordon, a well-known 3D artist from Belarus, told us how he created unusual and astonighingly realistic 3D renders using Unreal Engine 5.

Ostap has always been inspired by the atmosphere of post-Soviet countries, that appear in most of his works. Recently, he published his new work, that recreates a realistic winter yard in a typical small Russian city.

I am quite inspired by this depressing post-Soviet atmosphere. My every second work is devoted to this topic. I don't know why, but there is something special in it. Something cozy:), Gordon told “Durov’s Code."

You can watch a video demonstration of the project on YouTube, then download the scene for Unreal Engine 5 and try it out on your PC. In the scene itself, Ostap even “left a couple of Easter Eggs” for the most curious users.

The project is built using DirectX 12 with RTX, it runs on Unreal Engine 5. In order to launch the scene, you will need a fairly powerful graphics card, preferably RTX 2080 and more.

According to Gordon, it did not take him very long to create this beautiful scene. He managed to do it in just 5 days, working an average of 7 hours a day.

To create this work, a whole bunch of programs was used: it all started with 3D modeling of the environment in Blender. The author made the typical Russian panel building himself using the pipeline and Yandex.Maps:

I took screenshots from the areas that I knew,  then made texture atlases, and put them onto very simple modules, from which I then assembled the final version of the building.

Then, on top of the textures, I simply added some details, such as windows, joints, etc. I made an electrical transformer cabin using the same pipeline. I also used Blender for other objects, told Gordon.

Tires, benches, swings and lampposts were also made in Blender, and then textured in Adobe Substance 3d Painter.

I added snow using two plugs, one for Blender and one for 3DS Max: Real Snow for Blender and Poly Snow Plus for 3DS Max. I used Photoshop to post-process the final images.

Gordon has been recreating 3D artwork for years. Previously, he created a high-quality post-Soviet apartment in the GAS (Grey and Sad) demo game, Skyrim dungeons, and even presented a demo version of the Half-Life 2 remake. All of the artist's work can be found here.

Epic Games released the Unreal Engine 5 for free access relatively recently - in April of this year. During this time, some enthusiasts have already managed to demonstrate the graphics capabilities in the new engine, for example, the Japanese artist Lorenzo Drago managed to recreate a railway station, which is almost indistinguishable from a real one.

But in general, Ostap believes that for now the new version of the engine from Epic Games is far from being perfect.

I still believe that the 5th version of Unreal Engine is still very raw. Compared to UE4, the new engine has become more convenient in some ways, not so much in some ways. Apart from Nanite and Lumen, I didn't see any major changes in the new UI.

Despite this, several game studios have already announced the creation of their games on the new version of the engine from Epic Games, we are talking about new games in the universes of The Witcher and Stalker.