UE5 Environment Creativity Exercise - "Relief"

This scene was put together over the course of 4 afternoons, with the last afternoon being used for rendering and editing.

Lately I've been so focused on, and weighed down by working on portfolio pieces with the aim of finding a job in the industry, that I felt like I was losing sight of why I started making 3D scenes and environments in the first place. That reason being, that I love putting together a beautiful environment, being creative and existing "in the moment", and watching as an environment gradually comes to life. So to bring myself back to understanding why I do this, I decided to do a scene where I moved as fast as I could. Making a dreamy, pleasant, and calming scene of a stag enjoying a beautiful lake. I decided to just start putting stuff in the scene, moving fast and breaking things, as well as making use of as many marketplace assets as I needed. In most of my portfolio work, I would make as many assets myself as I could, but with this scenes creation, it wasn't about the assets, or how complex they are. It was about putting something together quickly, and existing in the creative moment.

Entire scene was made inside Unreal Engine 5, using Quixel and marketplace assets. Final result was rendered in 4k with render que. Render was edited and had its colors adjusted inside DaVinci Resolve.