Development: 2-3 weeks
Team: just me
Software: Unity, Maya, Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Topogun, Marmoset
Plattform: PC
Software: Must be stylized, must have one interaction
Beelight
Project Overview
About - First-Person Exploration Concept
This project is a first-person exploration experience, featuring a single interactive element. While the primary goal was to create a visually engaging environment for artistic purposes, I designed the space with gameplay potential in mind.
In a full game scenario, the player would journey across four distinct islands, uncovering hidden secrets and piecing together the narrative. The core idea revolves around breaking free from a mysterious, ever-repeating story cycle—each island bringing the player one step closer to escaping the loop.
Screenshots
Development - Terrain
This project began as a conceptual sketch inspired by the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. The idea was to create a scene where the islands appear to generate a vortex-like pull, drawing the viewer’s attention inward.
In Unity, I sculpted the islands using terrain tools, focusing on creating a dynamic and stylized landscape. I developed a custom water shader and object shader to match the visual direction, giving the scene a distinctive stylized aesthetic. For atmospheric depth, I created several VFX elements to simulate fog and enhance the sense of mystery.
The terrain material was built using 4 custom textures created in Substance 3D Designer. These materials were layered using tessellation to maintain high visual fidelity based on the current field of view, allowing for detailed surface quality and smooth transitions.
Trees
Development - Trees
The original concept for these trees was to create “honey trees” with dripping honey elements to give them a unique, stylized identity. Due to time constraints, the honey effect had to be cut, but the core idea and visual essence of the concept were preserved.
All trees are low-poly and utilize my custom stylized shader. This shader overlays baked normal and ambient occlusion maps directly into the diffuse channel, allowing for a detailed yet minimal texture setup. This approach supports both visual clarity and performance optimization.
As a small narrative or gameplay element, one tree trunk includes a bell—designed as a potential interactive feature for future implementations.
Environment Props
Development - Evnironment Props
The grass is rendered in clumps with built-in variation to create a more natural and immersive appearance. It also reacts to player movement by detecting a capsule in front of the player, simulating grass being pushed aside as the player walks through it.
The bridge is built using a modular system, allowing individual pieces to be easily stacked and arranged.
Most foliage elements use 2D cards (billboards) to maintain high performance, especially at scale. Tree trunks are modeled in full 3D to retain visual quality in key areas.
Coaches
This project was coached by Prof. Jan Berger
Team
Just me this time
