Elderberry Trails is a whimsy adventure game about a young lumberjack and her mission to rid the forest of corruption.

The player is emersed in a very saturated scene with prevalent orange/red fall tones which directly contrast with the purple and blue tones of the 'corrupted' parts of the forest as well as the enemies(seen below).

Development took roughly 5 months by a team of 6 students. It was shown on floor (Magic Spell Studios) at GDC 2019 and was part of the Intel University Games Showcase.

As the environment artist on the team, I took on the tasks of modeling, UV-ing and texturing all static assets in every scene. 

Optimization and functionality and aesthetics were our top priorities. We focused on creating a product that was polished as much as possible within the time constraints.

Process and workflow

• This game was created in UE4.
• For texture creation, I used a mix of Substance Painter and ZBrush for textures on foliage and most props. 
  • Maya (Modeling and UV Unwrap)-> Zbrush for high poly sculpt -> Bake maps in Substance painter + use of smart materials -> UE4
• For the landscape master material, I used Substance Designer in order to create seamless procedural textures.
• During the creation of this game, there were a lot of iterations and back and forth between my work and the technical artist on the team. The tree occlusion shown in the video only works from a specific height and distance to the player so the height and polycount of the trees were vital. 

Some  of the Zbrush high-poly sculpts of props

Other in-game renders