I made a realistic Cemetery Environment using Unreal Engine 5 for my Short Horror Film based on my novel North Port 1999. Let’s break down the process.

90% percent of the assets I used for this project are free and available through the Quixel Bridge. The other 10% are paid, but you can easily find free alternatives to substitute.

  • Zombie Monster standing in a misty cemetery with tombstones and mausoleums made by Bodhi Werner

Tutorial

LANDSCAPE:

I sculpted a basic landscape with a two-layer landscape material. The top layer is grass, the bottom layer is forest trail.

NOTE: I recommend using a landscape material with displacement turned on. For this, you will need Unreal Engine version 5.3, and you’ll need to enable Nanite. Tessellation, or Displacement, adds more dimension to the textures and makes landscapes much more realistic because the displacement creates shadows and reacts with the lighting.

To achieve a high level of detail on the landscape, I used static meshes of various sizes. Blending the meshes into the landscape breaks up the smooth surfaces. 

I used a spline mesh path from the Quixel Medieval Village Project. 

SKYBOX AND LIGHTING

I added a handful of directional lights to complement the moon sphere, motivated by the moon to create directional shadows with the tombstones. I set the lights to high intensity and the attenuation radius to high.

Set the directional light to the horizon for sunset lighting and added exponential height fog.

Put a GIANT SPHERE INT HE SKY and applied this MOON texture from ITHRIS CEMETARY (Quick note: ITHRIS CEMETARY was free last month, it is not currently free, so some of the assets I used were free for the month’s assets from Unreal Engine Marketplace, but there are only a few of them, and I can show you alternatives to these assets. On the topic of free monthly assets, I review the new free for-the-month assets every month, so make sure to subscribe if you want to stay abreast of all the coolest new free stuff. I always recommend getting any free assets you can get your hands on because you can learn new things by reverse engineering them, and get new ideas for your projects.)

For the cloud cards and the moon, I adjusted the albedo tint of the materials to a less saturated slight blue.

STRUCTURES / Static Meshes

Dotting the hillside are mausoleum-looking buildings and tombstones from Ithris Cemetery project, I resized and reshaped them so that I could use the same mesh repeatedly while maintaining visual variety I also angled them so they would appear to be slanted by the passage of time. 

Note: The Ithris Cemetary is no longer free on the Unreal Engine Market Place but it was for the month of January. See my review here. I review the free monthly assets every month.

TREES and FOLIAGE

Quixel Trees Black Alder with wind turned on 

Skeletal trees 

Shrubs and grasses are all painted with the foliage painter

Then finally, I painted bark, branches, and other scatter.

Note: I don’t have the wind turned on for the smaller plants, only the trees, I would recommend turning on the wind for every plant which makes it much more realistic.

NIAGARA PARTICLES

For some last touches that bring extra life and movement to the environment, I added Niagara particles that I migrated from the Medieval Village

I used one called “Wind” which has small particles like dust, then there is “Falling Leaves”, then finally, by the lights on the map, I used “Flies,” which I think looks just like moths hovering around a light.

POST PROCESS VOLUME

These are the final touches.

I chose to add Chromatic Aberration, Film Grain texture (also from Medieval Village), Color Grading to desaturate and bring out the reds and yellows, Vignetting to darken the edges, Sharpening for heightened realism, Bloom, Lens Flairs, and Motion blur.

Play around with these to your liking, and I would recommend being subtle with all of them.

If you have any questions, please let me know in the YouTube comments or feel free to reach out via email: BodhiTheMovieMaker @ Gmail . Com 

If you found this useful, please drop a like and let me know if this helped you in the YouTube comments. 

Bodhi Werner

⚫️ Award-Winning Indie FILMMAKER

⚫️ National Endowment For The Arts Grant-Winning AUTHOR 

⚫️ CONTENT CREATOR 

⚫️ ARTIST


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