UE5 - Aerondight Cave - Shader & Effects
UE5 - Aerondight Cave - Shader & Effects - A collaborative environment study with my friend Matt Cexwish.
In order to add more life to our environment, we needed a couple of specific shaders and effects. I have created setups for dynamic water, local fog, emissive foliage, material blends driven by vertex color input and particle effects for falling leafs to suit our needs.
Based on Jens Fiedler´s 'Sword In The Stone' concept https://www.artstation.com/artwork/w8qLyO.
Special Thanks to Alexander Bräunig, Mark Hans and Mario Carlino for their valuable help and advice.
To create a sense of the outside world, we have added particle effects for falling leaves and sand as well as wind effects for the vegetation.
For the cave ground we needed a more dynamic local fog solution to further set the area apart from the other zones.
Customizable local fog shader with switch for static and animated states. Based on a tutorial by Michael.G Art on YT.
In order to achieve the "lit from below" look of our reference, I made a customizable water shader with emissive properties.
Customizable water shader with adjustable waves, ripples and other surface characteristics. Based on a tutorial by Captain Raymond on YT.
Tweaking the emissive strength of the plants is reflected in the lumen light propagation after a short while.
I have added emissive inputs to the SpeedTree Master material and fixed a bug in the Speedtree wind shader. To my understanding there are a couple of problems in the current wind implementation and I could not achieve the same nice wind as in the modeler.
The "Witcher Camp" location is revealed by the flickering light of a cozy little campfire.