Northwood - Part 1

Nov 17

(Above) Work-in-progress version of the rework making the city more 2023 ghost town edition. Gutting the original layout and destroying bits and pieces of the original architecture.
(Below) Northwood (Old West) from Epic Games free content original in Unreal Engine 5.2.

(Below) Northwood (Old West) work-in-progress remake.

I wanted to dive into a city already constructed in Unreal Engine to get a better understanding of layout in the engine. I didn’t just start lighting and working with it right away. I noticed the town was build to represent 1885 like someone was living in the Old West. I wanted to modernize the town and make it have a more worn down and ghostly look. Overcast/Smoggy day in a present day ghost town. So I have been of remodeling bits and pieces to chip away at making the town age. I started exporting bits and pieces in Houdini, so I can break things up a bit more. I changed most of the textures to be dirty and older looking. Considering I didn’t build the sets there is a good amount of cleanup in this town. Looking forward to posting more about this project it’s been taking a bit of time to get it started.

(Above) These are some of the props that are abundant in this original project which I ended up taking out because it didn’t fit the reworked version.

(Above) The town from ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ modern day photo of the town. Cleanly not as eastery as the colors in the original scene. I used this as the starting point for a most ominous version of the town. (Below) is the town when I first opened the project sample file. Not much of a lighting direction the buildings colors don’t really seem to be correct. So I looked up reference from Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western films and got a better sense of the feel I wanted to pursue. The interiors were all illuminated by incandescent lights and I immediately needed to trash that since the chances of those working in 2023 from 1885 are slim. This is very much a work-in-progress so after setting up the rest of the cameras and the interiors I will be moving onto Niagara in Unreal.