These are the WIP world cinematics that will be driven by my Live Stream Cinematic Transition System (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bg25Qv). A WIP stylized environment built in Unreal Engine 5, inspired by the alpine landscape of the Central Oregon Cascades. The scene leans into a vibrant aurora and a heightened atmospheric treatment to push the landscape into a more cinematic, dreamlike register while keeping the underlying geology grounded in the real range.
-Terrain-
The mountain and surrounding terrain were authored in Gaea, building out the silhouette and erosion character of the range before bringing it into Unreal. Still a work in progress, with refinement passes on the material breakup, foliage, and small-scale detail planned.
-Sky and Atmosphere-
Lighting and atmospherics are art-directed through Ultra Dynamic Sky, which gave me fine control over the aurora's color and intensity, the cloud layer behavior, and the overall mood of the scene. The aurora is the centerpiece, and everything else in the lighting setup is built around supporting it rather than competing with it.
-Particle Work-
The twinkling stars and shooting stars are an original Niagara particle system authored from scratch, tuned to layer naturally into the aurora without pulling focus. The twinkles drift subtly across the sky, and the shooting stars fire on intervals timed to feel ambient rather than scripted.
-Foliage-
Custom ponderosa pines are being authored in SpeedTree, alongside a broader set of high desert and mixed alpine vegetation to match the real ecology of the Central Oregon range. The environment is currently running on billboard foliage as a placeholder, with a handful of deciduous trees pulled from the Megascans library standing in for the mixed alpine setup in the cinematic shots until the SpeedTree work is complete.
-Cinematography-
Final shots are framed and recorded using Unreal cameras and Sequencer, building out a library of cinematic clips intended to feed into a separate broadcast project: a custom cinematic transition system for my Twitch stream, where these renders serve as the visual backbone for every intro, intermission, and transition.
