An Environment Artist’s Ode to Berlin—
an Unreal Engine 4 project
2020–2022
An Environment Artist's Ode to Berlin is a personal project realized in Unreal Engine 4, Cinema 4D, Substance 3D Painter, and Quixel Mixer from 2020 to 2022 to express my love for my home city.
After finishing school, I started an internship at Effekt-Etage because I wanted to work in the 3D Industry before committing to it in university.
Ten years later—in 2020—I finally started studying international media and computing at HTW-Berlin. My long-term goal is to combine my artistic and programming skills in a technical director career.
That summer was the first time since starting school that I had months of free time, while the world felt like it stood still due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I began to notice my surroundings while taking walks, shot reference images, and began modeling and texturing.
At the start of the second semester, I finished the first version of this scene.
A first work in progress version of this project from 2020, still very empty, artificial looking and unfinished.
After letting it rest for a while and polishing some of the assets I created to sell in Turbosquid, I completed my environment and produced the new animation in winter 2022.
I added many details and props either custom built or taken from Sketchfab, Quixel Bridge and sample projects provided by Epic Games. I also reworked the lighting and added something that would be called a sky box in the past, based on the Nordkreuz railway triangle.
A model of a typical Berlin mailbox.
There is an abundance of 3D models for American cities available online, but not many assets for European urban environments. Therefore I created a lot of typical Berlin assets based on references I collected. They were modeled in Cinema 4D and textured in Substance 3D painter. Of course they were also optimized for real-time usage with clean topology.
Many neighborhoods in Berlin have typical mixed use five-story buildings. I created a modular kit to show a wide variety of buildings while also being able to fill a big area.
I created white base materials that could then be combined with fitting wall or roof materials in engine.
All modules of my building kit.
I also used Quixel Megascans and Quixel Mixer for texturing. Streets and sidewalks are textured with three texture sets with vertex painting to add variety like puddles or fixed potholes.
Lighting is baked in a high resolution. Real-time global illumination could not reach the same quality yet, but I am looking forward to trying out Lumen in Unreal Engine 5.
I animated nearly everything in Cinema 4D. Cameras are enhanced with real tracked footage to gain believable camera shakes. Rendering cinematic movies in Unreal Engine did a big leap in version 4.27, with multiple frames combined for better motion blur and anti-aliasing one frame rendered about half a minute on a Geforce RTX 2070.
Finally, I edited and graded the resulting footage in DaVinci Resolve.
It is always a good idea to challenge yourself for personal projects, even if there would be easier ways to get there, and I learned a lot. I'm looking forward to testing this scene in Unreal Engine 5.
Thanks for reading, don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments!
The following are some of the references I gathered.
Used 3rd party 3D assets:
1995 Fiat Punto GT – Karol Miklas
1975 Porsche 911 (930) Turbo – Karol Miklas
Trabant – haricsiko
Railway Light – abduo ghazaly
Railway Bridge 76m – Szakal
Pubg Bridge – NarcosXtreme
Industrial train Dr14 – vitefait
BVG Dora train wip – Harry Bond
Cistern Wagon – Victor Hernandez
Low-Poly Cars – Troublesome.
low-poly Cars – MaX3Dd
Streets of Montmartre prop preview – Bryan van der Linden
gumball vending machine – meditat
Drinking Fountain / Kaiser Brunnen – Urban Photogrammetry
1995 Fiat Punto GT – Karol Miklas
1975 Porsche 911 (930) Turbo – Karol Miklas
Trabant – haricsiko
Railway Light – abduo ghazaly
Railway Bridge 76m – Szakal
Pubg Bridge – NarcosXtreme
Industrial train Dr14 – vitefait
BVG Dora train wip – Harry Bond
Cistern Wagon – Victor Hernandez
Low-Poly Cars – Troublesome.
low-poly Cars – MaX3Dd
Streets of Montmartre prop preview – Bryan van der Linden
gumball vending machine – meditat
Drinking Fountain / Kaiser Brunnen – Urban Photogrammetry
Sounds from Freesound:
Stadt - Berlin, Märkisches Ufer, Herbsttag, Sirenen – BockelSound
car drives over cobblestones – Garuda1982
small truck passes by – AdrianoAnjos
Freight train on the Sava river bank [binaural recording] – Tomlija
FXSaSc Berlin Train Passing Close Bridge Rattle 5 – Profispiesser
tire rolling 1 – mhad
BMW 640D Gran Coupe engine reverse mono – Soundholder
Stadt - Berlin, Märkisches Ufer, Herbsttag, Sirenen – BockelSound
car drives over cobblestones – Garuda1982
small truck passes by – AdrianoAnjos
Freight train on the Sava river bank [binaural recording] – Tomlija
FXSaSc Berlin Train Passing Close Bridge Rattle 5 – Profispiesser
tire rolling 1 – mhad
BMW 640D Gran Coupe engine reverse mono – Soundholder
Music:
Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin – Marlene Dietrich
Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin – Marlene Dietrich
Fonts:
Apollo ASM – Peter Wiegel
CAT Reporter – Peter Wiegel
Fundamental Brigade – Peter Wiegel
Apollo ASM – Peter Wiegel
CAT Reporter – Peter Wiegel
Fundamental Brigade – Peter Wiegel
