Wanderers Rest

In this article we deep-dive into Wanderers Rest, a cinematic Unreal Engine environment project featuring 3 stunning variations: overgrown, snowy and submerged. Brendan McGuinness joins us to go through the ins and outs of cinematics, crafting compositions and adding depth to a scene, his approach to lighting, camera setup and animation, how he used different inspirations and techniques to meticulously craft his 3 scenes and much more!

Intro

Hi there! I’m Brendan McGuinness from Amsterdam in the Netherlands! From a young age I’ve been obsessed with video games, movies and other forms of media and I knew early on that it was something I wanted to be directly involved in. From messing around with Source and making Halo Forge maps for my friends when we were younger, to now creating my own worlds and environments with the latest engines, it’s always been a passion of mine in one form or another.

I’d like to give you an insight into a recent portfolio piece I’ve finished up called Wanderers Rest, a fair to say challenging piece for me overall but one that has also taught me a great deal. Today I’d like to walk you through some of the new things I’ve picked up and hopefully give you some tips and tricks along the way!

Composition

From the start I worked while setting up the environment with some basic rules in mind. I wanted all 3 setups to have unique and wildly different results, have a noticeable focal point, give each scene a lot of depth and vibrancy and implement certain elements to create environmental storytelling.

For all 3 scenes I needed something to separate the foreground from the rest of the scene and give a helping hand in putting the spotlight on the main focal point. By placing multiple ‘broken down’ structures and stone formations closer to the camera and keeping these in the shadows compared to the brightly lit midground, added a nice amount of depth and contrast, really giving the space a sense of scale.

Besides separating each element using the lighting setup I also sculpted the environment to create several guiding lines towards the main subject. For example I’ve extended the foreground flooring and background stone formations to include some of these lines towards the subject.

With both geometry and light, or lack thereof, working together, these two fairly simple setups create an interesting to look at, and yet useful tool to help divert the attention towards the given focal point and initially keep the eyes off the sides of the image. Considering the small space the scene had to work with, lighting played a key role in giving the area a noticeable change in depth, giving the setup a better sense of scale with the different shades of brightness throughout the scene and make things feel less bland and flat which I initially struggled with to implement.

Besides having a noticeable single focal point in each scene I also wanted to add a secondary point with gameplay and storytelling in mind. I experimented with a couple of different setups, among these were opening up the stone formation in the background to add castle structures or a forest, but these only ended up working against keeping the main subject in view. Ultimately I decided to mimic a simple torch light to signal to a player there is more to explore after seeing what item or lore note the knight might have had for them. I extended the same principle to the other two scene variations with a red glowing magical light in the snow environment also helping as a contrasting edge light on the focal point, and an animated caustic light for the submerged scene signalling there is some form of an artefact to be uncovered.

Lighting

For the main lighting setup of the three scenes I stuck with the same principles but giving it a wide range of results. I wanted the viewers attention to not only be guided by the geometry, but also by the lighting, creating a vibrant scene to help the subject pop in the image. With only a couple of fairly simple sky lights coming down from the ceiling, a lot of areas in the background felt neglected, bland or simply too dark for a bright central light shining down.

To combat this issue I’ve added several bounce lights ranging from bright point lights along edges of structures or some of the nature props, to larger dim lights brightening the cave itself. Without extra bounce lights almost all of the cave was too dark to even see with one central light source. To brighten up some of the unrealistic dark spots of the environment, I’ve used several bounce lights that act as a source of light, ‘bouncing’ off the water and the remaining surface.

Next to this I’ve utilized smaller bright fairly cheap static point lights along edges of structures and some of the nature props. These lights not only helped with brightening edges that felt too dim but also helped with selling the ‘wetness’ of the scene. These types of lights work great to give your scene a nice bump in vibrancy without having to brighten up an entire scene.

Although these two types of lights are great solutions it can be a little bit harsh on performance if too many are placed without baking. But on the other hand gives you tons more freedom in terms of its setup, contrast, brightness and overall feel of the image.

Learning Process

In the past most of my focus was set on 3D modeling and its workflows, rather than final presentation. So making this project was definitely a challenge to say the least. Going through many iterations and tries I’ve gained a greater understanding of composition and lighting, really seeing the potential my environments can have if both sides are used properly together. Besides techniques such as the bounce lights, the use of fog cards and camera settings and more of the technical stuff, I’ve learned to sometimes take a dive into the deep end and experiment with wildly different approaches to vibrancy, brightness and overall mood that really brought out the full potential of the scene and gave it proper art direction.

Besides techniques and new methods, I feel as though I also grew as an artist during this project when looking at how I was able to apply the feedback I was given and quickly grasped what I needed to change to apply and use that feedback successfully. When working on my previous project things took a lot longer to be applied or sometimes parts of the feedback were not applied correctly at all and my work suffered for it.

Layering Lights

From the start I wanted to make 3 unique variations of the same scene, when placing the main structure for the cave and the building I kept a potential lighting setup in mind that still left loads of freedom for other variations. Using a single light source made me think of things in sequences, what does the light hit first and what would the following events look like. What the outcome of this method was is a dynamic and highly adjustable setup through bounce lights and other atmospheric elements.

When starting the initial overgrown variation I ran into a couple of issues relating to lighting like Lumen and Raytracing. Since I built this project on an 8 year old machine I didn’t have the luxury of properly using any of these features, which in turn kind of made it more fun to work on (Let's not talk about render times and how it turned my room into an actual sauna, but I digress). Having to figure out every detail relating to light properties, how it bounces, what the reflections do and what the overall feeling of the image is. All of this combined and having set every light manually really allowed me to give things an artistic flair and quickly adjust on the go.

To get this vibrant look on each scene every small detail played a key role in the final product, from the right amount of dust particles, height fog and properly lit fog cards to creating a painterly feeling with the lighting setup. Every piece of the setup has a place and reason for being implemented and complement each other well.

Most, if not all of my earlier iterations with lighting were all extremely dim, boring and frankly very bland looking. The result of this made the image feel flat with no real definition in contrast or depth and made my focal point ‘disappear’ from the eye. The scene needed just that extra touch of vibrance. At the start I was very hesitant to really experiment with some of the lighting features on offer and to try something bold. Don’t be afraid to give things a wildly different approach, you might just like where it ends up.

I initially quickly looked at some references without really dissecting what each part of the lighting actually was doing to the scene. Getting a better understanding of how lights and colors are affecting each part of the scene together with its atmospherics like particles and dust for example, really helps with applying it to your own scene but also helps with learning and creating your own lighting scenarios from scratch if needed.

Resources For Learning Lighting

Besides scrolling for reference on ArtStation checking out the ArtStation Learning section for many free and paid courses. I’ve also had great use of several channels on YouTube with most noticeably some of the tutorials by William Faucher, Josh Toonen and Unreal Sensei. Besides these great options I also plan to use and have used several products on CGMA and Crater Training Center.

Creating Depth

To give the scene a feeling of having depth and a sense of scale I’ve used several different methods to get to the final result:

Fog Cards:

Scattered throughout the scene are several fog cards. In its basic form fog cards are planes with an opacity masked smoke or cloud texture to give it an actual cloud or fog texture or even get animated rolling fog.

By strategically placing these fog cards behind and in front of several key points in the scene you are able to make the scene feel ‘layered’ where one part of the image is clearer compared to what’s behind it. This method can be used with a wide range of instances like covering mountains in clouds or mist, a thick fog on a lab floor or in this instance give a cave a feeling of depth and atmospherics.

What sets this method apart from just a simple Exponential Heightfog element is the art direction of the setup, with this method you’re able to get a real feeling of fog that can be freely adjusted in its thickness and positioned throughout the scene without covering a scene entirely in thick bland looking exponential height fog alone.

God Rays and Light Shafts:

By placing an exponential height fog element into the scene set to volumetric you’re able to not only give the overall scene better light saturation and depth but also create some beautiful lightrays in the process. This height fog by itself combined with light rays and a single lightsource can feel very flat with no real definition in depth. To help make the light rays a little more interesting I’ve added extra lights from the original source position varying in strength and positioning to strike the right amount of atmospheric response and varying brightness

Atmospheric Elements:

Besides these key lights I’ve also added a Niagara particle emitter pushing out  thousands of dust particles in a relatively cheap sprite configuration. The amount of particles and their position varies per scene, but for the main overgrown scene most of them are positioned inside of the central lightray. By placing it in this position the lightrays gain a dynamic grainy feeling and feels less flat and static. The above methods were key in making every scene work but to really show how much of a difference this makes, the submerged version shows it best:

Camera Setup

When working on the camera setup for the scene I’ve tried to take a more cinematic approach with some of the settings, I set out to replicate some of the effects and lens settings of a real camera, applying similar principles to the scene to maintain a grounded and authentic feel. Before I started working on the environment I made sure to set up a few camera’s with a set aspect ratio of 2:39:1 and different focal lengths to help get a better scale of the space I’m working with. These being 35, 25 and 16mm focal lengths with 16mm being used for the main camera shot. These settings mimic real lens sizes commonly used in cinema and related fields. Using these help with giving it just that extra touch of realism and cinematic feel. I used a great blogpost by Alec Tucker, Cinematic Post Processing Tips & Tricks in UE4: Part 1 showcasing exactly what rules to use and how they apply these principles to working digitally.

For most of the variations shutter speed also played a role in giving it that final touch, this is most noticeable in the snowy variation where a lowered shutter speed is giving the snowfall a slight blur in its path without losing sharpness with camera movement. Think of this setting as driving a car during snowfall while you see it fly past the windshield and leave blurred lines behind. Use this setting cautiously as I ran into a few issues early on with rendering dust particles over the rotating wheel, causing it to blend into each other and create some very funky unwanted results.

After finishing up the environment and setting up the rest of my shots I wanted to add some animations to make sure the camera wasn't too stale and static. By moving the cameras in different directions you’re able to keep things dynamic, help with displaying a sense of scale, and depending on the project add some nice parallaxing effects to your work.

I also added different sets of camera shake animations to the shots to emulate the feeling of a handheld camera or a cinema camera on someone’s shoulder. You can make the coolest environment you’ve ever made but it can quickly lose its appeal if you just have static shots. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up these two types of camera animations but makes all the difference with your end results and makes your scene feel way more alive. All this is done in the same way as before but on a static camera moving from one direction to the other, essentially ‘swaying’ slightly in different directions. By adding these as animation templates to existing shots and setting the animation to a looped stage, every shot gains just that extra touch of realism and dynamic feel and can be reused to however long the shot is.

Foliage

Part of making every scene believable lies in the placement of foliage, initially I tried to keep most of the foliage the same in each scene but that really worked against keeping things grounded and the environment lacking a sense of location, just dumping some snow on it and calling it a day was never the right option.

When I started on the overgrown scene I knew I had to have foliage that would counteract towards the brown and grey colours of the cave formation and its muddy surface. I wanted this scene to feel overgrown, abandoned and taken back by nature. Besides this I wanted the piece to have almost a serene and peaceful look which would complement the visual storytelling. To achieve this look I played around with a couple of different setups, but ultimately decided to mimic the look of a meadow with flowers poking out of a thick grassy surface.

This same thought process was applied to the other two scenes to have the foliage play a part in the storytelling and add a piece of authenticity to each scene, conveying a sense of location and mood.

Foliage Material Setup

What also played a pivotal role in the final presentation was the usage of subsurface scattering, this played a key role in giving, especially the submerged and overgrown versions, the right brightness and vibrancy. This really helped to sell the authenticity of the submerged scene when looking at the various types of kelp scattered through the scene compared to real kelp that almost gives off this glowy see through effect. Besides kelp and underwater life this type of setup helped immensely with giving the mossy grass in the overgrown version a well needed boost in vibrancy, help calculate the right amount of shading and also give the grass that feeling of being hit by direct sunlight, emitting this almost green golden hue on the right hour of the day.

As a last step in setting up my foliage for each scene I applied foliage animations to each piece, I created a very easy and rough version that was able to be applied to each piece of foliage in a different way. This is most noticeable on the submerged scene as I wanted all of the kelp to have a calm but noticeable flow in direction, this helps a ton to make the scene feel alive and actually being submerged besides only changes in lighting and various particle emitters.

Reference

For the three different scenes I wanted to make sure they were distinctly different and in a sense make a wild turnaround of the main scene. Key to this process was studying and dissecting each of my picked references.

Overgrown Variation

Starting off with the overgrown scene there were several key points in the reference I wanted to capture but still leave some room for my own art direction in the scene.

1. What stood out immediately was the use of varying brightness in the scene, this ranged from the darker edge lighting in the foreground to the really bright centre piece giving everything a nice vibrant and dynamic feel. To capture this in my own scene I applied the same ‘rules’ that were applied in the reference by using several skylights in a wide range of brightness to also lead the eyes towards the focal point .

2. Looking at the atmospheric element of the reference,  the thing which  stood out the most was the use of particles and fog for the light rays. To make this work for my scene I added the right amount of fog to make the light more visible but not too overbearing.  This combined with dust particles and film grain in post processing to give it that final slightly grainy but dynamic look.

3. Next to these changes was a noticeable use of bloom in the image almost giving off this slight halation, I applied the same modifier to my own project to give it just that extra push in contrast to make the brighter parts of the image pop out compared to the darker background.

Funny enough I had  most of my struggles with this first scene, I struggled to emulate the same brightness and its wide range in contrast, I learned a lot by trying out many iterations and made the remaining lighting scenarios a million times easier.

Snowy Variation

Next up was the snowy scene, for this piece I chose a different style of reference where the other 2 had fully built out 3D scenes to work with. For the snowy scene however, I chose a 2D concept art piece to see if I could capture the same mood from a different medium, here is what I picked up from it:

1. What stood out to me instantly, or at least how I interpreted it, was the layered structure with the darker snow layered foreground to the serene white with its contrasting subject and gloomy yet chaotic background. To capture this mood towards my own project several things had to be changed. From the darker coloured foreground and guiding lines towards the bright middle ground, to the heavily contrasting tree colour. Every piece is layered in a way to emulate the same feeling.

2. Looking at the atmospheric elements in the reference, the white smoke against the red background came to mind. To apply this to my own scene directly wouldn't really work so instead I played around with some added foggy snow effects slowly coming down besides the normal snow particles. This also acts as a fog card to give the scene more depth and helps make things feel alive.

3. As was really well done by the lighting in the reference image, is the light diffusion. With how much smoke is coming from the background and usually cloudy conditions within snowy environments, sunlight diffuses shadows into a really soft blurred out look. By placing two spotlights overhead with different brightness values and soft shadow amounts, I was able to create this blurred out shadowy look while still keeping a more defined shadow where necessary. 

Submerged Variation

To get the feeling of actually being underwater just right, what played the biggest parts were the atmospheric elements and foliage usage:

1.  When looking at the camera in the reference and using real life footage and examples, we can see a clear effect of chromatic aberration adding a sense of lens distortion to the scene. This effect is caused by water acting like a prism separating light wavelengths. This together with the failure of a camera lens to focus the shorter and longer wavelengths onto the same focal point, results in the light bleeding to the edges, this is most noticable with cheaper wide lens cameras like a GoPro, Applying this to the scene really sells the effect of the environment actually being submerged.

If you’d like to know more on why and how this happens I found a great research paper published by Petra Helmholz about just these effects: Investigation of Chromatic Aberration and Its Influence on the Processing of Underwater Imagery

2. Next is the atmospheric elements in the reference.  To get the effect of being underwater just right I increased the thickness of Exponential height fog by a large amount, leading to the scene getting this murky ocean water feeling. To also get the streaks of light scattering off the surface and make the scene feel alive, I added an animated wave texture to give the water a dynamic caustic effect while having a simple animation setup of planar mapping it in the material editor as a light function.

3. When looking at some of the foliage in the reference I noticed a lot of subsurface scattering on the kelp and other elements. Applying this to my own scene helped brighten up some of that kelp in darker areas which without adding this almost became too dark to see and gives them this authentic ocean kelp feeling.

Passion Of The Unknown

What I love about game development is the sheer magic of creating entire worlds from nothing! It’s a blend of storytelling, artistry, and problem-solving that feels almost limitless. Every day is a new challenge, whether it's creating lighting that will make or break a scene to designing a level that flows just right. I love that moment when everything clicks—the mechanics, the art, the emotions, the music—the moment it all comes together to create an experience that players can fully immerse themselves in. It's about bringing ideas to life, experimenting, and constantly learning. The best part is knowing that what you’re creating has the potential to evoke emotions, build community, and leave lasting memories for players. That’s an incredibly fulfilling feeling.

Growth As An Artist

I’ve always been a massive fan of movies, cinematics, and other animated media and have had a fair few ideas to make one myself but they sometimes felt out of reach in terms of what I thought I was capable of. Making the above environment and previous projects have gotten me closer to the goal of creating my own some day. With motion capture software becoming more accessible by the day without having a massive studio setup for the task, it has become a much more feasible job than it used to be. After seeing some of the recent developments with Unreal Engine relating to Nanite Skeletal Meshes and Megalights it made me all the more excited to get started!

Inspiration

I find inspiration everywhere around me, from simple light shafts coming trough trees in a forest to finding a new masterpiece of a movie to obsess over. I find myself dissecting what makes certain scenes so great and how it’s set up to create the feeling from a shot with every element involved. I think taking inspiration from different mediums like music, books, classical art, movies, animation or photography is priceless. Although some of these visual mediums are great I find the most inspiration for original ideas comes from music or books. Just hearing that one melody or tone in a song can get me to come up with the wildest idea or worlds to create.

Feedback

I seek feedback in a couple of different places, probably my most important one for this project were my friends who are into or do similar things in design, to get a few different set of eyes on whatever I’m working on. Besides this the Experience Points Discord is a great place to get critical feedback from like minded people and industry professionals. In the end us creators are all in this together and want nothing more than to see each other succeed and push each other in whatever we end up making!

Small Highlight

One of the main projects I’m the proudest of was a technical showcase I did at NEP media together with esports organizer ESL. Being an avid Counter Strike player for many years, this was a very exciting project for me. For this project we ended up rebuilding fan favourite maps Overpass and Train so we could put the casters of the showcase inside of the level being played!

Additional Advice

As much as this could come over as a bit cliche, stick with it. What I mean by that is sometimes building these larger projects can become a bit overwhelming or some form of fatigue towards the project can kick in, take a break, get your mind off trying to solve a problem and come back with a fresh set of eyes.

Often just taking a break can make you realize the steps you need to take or a change to get a project to its full potential. Even during this project I remember asking ‘what am I doing wrong, come on it shouldn’t be that hard, why can't you just get it’ After a break and some encouragement from a friend I was ready to pick things back up and get it over the line. The progress I made in understanding what needed to be done after this was immense, so all in all stick with it and try again!

Future Work

I’m currently in the early stages of planning out a new environment that could potentially be used for a short cinematic (very optimistic, but up for the challenge) hoping to gain a better understanding of character animations and motion capture. Besides personal projects I’m currently on the lookout for Lighting or Cinematic art gigs in the game industry and hoping to make my start somewhere soon!

Outro

First of all I’d like to thank Experience Points for allowing me to write an article for the website! It still feels a little surreal seeing my work next to so many outrageously good artists and designers. I had a lot of fun working on this article and hopefully I was able to give you some tips and tricks along the way from the skills and concepts I’ve picked up working on this project. 

If anyone has any questions about the project or related questions you can find me on ArtStation and Instagram or shoot me a message on brendanmcg.art@outlook.com, I’m always happy to help out if I can! Thank you for giving things a read and hopefully I’ll be back to share some more insights on future projects!