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### Unreal Engine ###

According to the [Unreal Game Engine](https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/features) web site:

>Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of development tools made for anyone working with real-time technology. From enterprise applications and cinematic experiences to high-quality games across PC, console, mobile, VR and AR, Unreal Engine 4 gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow and stand out from the crowd.

>A world-class toolset and accessible workflows empower developers to quickly iterate on ideas and see immediate results without touching a line of code, while full source code access gives everyone in the Unreal Engine 4 community the freedom to modify and extend engine features.

https://youtu.be/WC6Xx_jLXmg
*Credit: Epic Games & Their  Customers *

### Creating The Port Of Tears Keep ### 

 

![HighresScreenshot00006.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmdkBengHFAw3d9rARTeh7nNfo1caT5uuJGqymvYEFVFfr/HighresScreenshot00006.png)

There are times that I truly love my job. I get to create places that have never existed and make them into either an actual reality or a virtual reality. The main body of my work is architectural design and environmental art. I have designed office buildings, retail buildings, restaurants and even a performing arts center. My work generally ends up in one of two different types of customers. Either my work helps architects and developers sell their projects to customers or my work ends up as digital sets for use in TV and movies. 

From time to time I have used various different tools to render out my designs. Sometimes it I will use a piece of software like 3DS Max from Autodesk. This usually is for when it is a high dollar cinematic quality scene where photoreal or nearly photoreal output is needed. More often than not I use a program like [Lumion 3d](https://www.lumion3d.com) or [Twinmotion](https://twinmotion.abvent.com/en/). Both of these programs offer the advantage of having an easy to use interface and rapid rendering. Most recently I was asked to develop the concept for a digital set: 'The Keep At The Port Of Tears'. For this project I wanted to create fairly good looking pictures but the client does not really have the time or budget to do high end rendering for this project. I still want to blow them away so I turned to a trial of the latest version of Twinmotion. Twinmotion 2018 has been rebuilt from the ground up and now sits on top of the Unreal Engine. 

![HighresScreenshot00007.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRg7yH1116AQpf9jPEHnWivkXPcKR5G7oU4YN2aw3uaix/HighresScreenshot00007.png)

 
Considering the  quality of what can now be accomplished in the Unreal Engine  I was excited to try the new version of Twinmotion. The only problem was that no matter what settings I used there were artifacts in things like materials or the program would crash while rendering the images and animations. 

Here are a  few examples of things that were rendered in Twinmotion 2018:

https://youtu.be/njZmap9YlAE

This sequence came out okay. I am not very happy with the density of the plantings. This is from a presentation that I am working on an audubon observation building that I am working on. I have some gripes about various parts of this but one of the most distinctive is that there is some odd banding on the glass and the workflow in the program is pretty strange.

https://youtu.be/9kqXOwkdS94

Okay so from this distance it is a little hard to notice but the glass is wonky at best. Plus I know from watching unreal demos that it can look so much better than what those two clips look like. The following was a demonstration video that was developed by the Unreal Engine folks. It uses really high end texture and lighting techniques and is truly a work of art. 

https://youtu.be/Yo2-Pgcmh8U

### Get Real ###

So it hit me, I have the Unreal Engine development kit installed and some really high quality assets. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and start to learn how to use the engine. I had dabbled a little bit with it but mostly I found out what not to do with it. After all it does use the graphics card to render things and mine while good is definitely not top of the line. I am a poor independant artist doing her best to keep up with the crowd. For the most part I don't do the rendering on high end projects. I send that work out to a rendering farm. So as I started to actually watch a few tutorials things started to finally click for me and the scene is starting to come together. 

![HighresScreenshot00012.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQMNQMkuFWHn8rzd18BDh91VVhQ6FsHSu5J2NeqR1AETq/HighresScreenshot00012.png)

![HighresScreenshot00014.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQQqjxsYkXLDL7hZQGT4UEBkrPains1Vj4GvKB3WkCRmt/HighresScreenshot00014.png)

![HighresScreenshot00002.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmb7hfQ9ofWn1FmYeMWrgePvZLvY5sQVvqBHX6QVJbScXQ/HighresScreenshot00002.png)

### Overall ###

I am feeling overall encouraged with the progress that I have made. Soon I will be done with the building and will begin to embellish it with more props and develop a cinematic flythrough. I will add more dramatic lighting and some special effects. After a long time struggling with how to do some things this project is now moving along nicely. 

### Thank You ###

To those of you who have been so kind to follow me and upvote me thank you!!! I truly appreciate you. I do earn part of my income posting articles on here and your support does mean something. I am also grateful for some of the people that I have met along the way. One humble request if you liked this post consider sharing it with your followers. I want to grow my audience as much as anyone else and I look forward to hearing what people think about my work. So thank you in advance.