The original inspiration of this project was all of the tower defense games that had shaped my childhood. Bloons Tower Defense, Clash of Clans, Backyard Monsters. I loved the strategy involved and the creativity in the design of the buildings and the layout of the bases.

This project was completed in late April, after my photo expedition to Cuba.

The Main goal was to make a aerial shot of a landscape overlooking a moon base shot from a camera in Unreal. And to be able to make a modular kit using the Unreal plugin Prefabricator that would randomly generate a unique combination of the modules. Each floor of a building could work with the other 2 floors in terms of design.

Technical Goals:

- 33 Uniquely designed modules, fully modeled, UV ed, and Textured. Using Prefabricator these modules would be arranged together depending on the type of building, and the floor number.

- A Moon landscape sculpted with the Unreal landscape tool

- A material in Substance Designer used for the Moon sand on the landscape

- Fully lit and composited

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Layout first plan

how I organized what needed to be done and what didn't.

Gantt Chart

Sketches of each of the modules 

First blockout

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After Pre Production and the general blocking of the project I moved on to materials

These nodes I used to create some mounds shapes in the height map

This was another layer of detail on the moon surface. Adding surface directionality.

These were a majority of the shapes in the material in this section

Final layer of detail

blockout with applied moon material

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 DESIGN

Transportation module design with and without UVs

Single building combinations example with prefabricator

an example of the prefabricator system operating with all the defense buildings

Unlit building layout without the transportation towers

Unlit building layout completed

Example of individual tower lighting. Being rendered real-time in Unreal.

One of the final views

This was a really ambitious project  that I learned a lot from. My first project ever in Unreal that lasted the duration of the semester. Having to design the buildings made me realize how important it is to spend time planning your actions so that the entire process can go faster.