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UE5 - Alpha Point - The Coalition Tech Demo

Alpha Point - At the start of 2021, I had the chance to try UE5 early and work on this Tech Demo with some team members at The Coalition, testing out the tech and seeing how we could develop pipelines around it. Originally this scene was just going to be an internal test, but it ended up being presented publicly at GDC earlier this year. A bunch of screenshots are old and were WIPs, also meaning a lot are lower res than they were if I properly captured everything, but figured it'd be cool to share some of it! Keswick did a lot of the initial visual direction, and him and the level art team did the majority of scene building, while Joey Kutzer did a good chunk of asset building together with them. My responsibilities are mainly on the material side of things, setting up aspects of the shaders, as well as some asset creation and workflow testing as shown in the screenshots.

Thanks to:
Colin Penty
https://www.artstation.com/kezo
https://www.artstation.com/joekoo
https://www.artstation.com/michaelmarraffa
https://www.artstation.com/andykoo
https://www.artstation.com/ryandowlingsoka
https://www.artstation.com/anmarr

Amongst others, (my lead Akio Kimoto, Art directors etc), full credits in the video!

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot, I worked on the gate in the back, the vases, and did some shader and material instance setup for some of the other assets.

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot, I worked on the gate in the back, the vases, and did some shader and material instance setup for some of the other assets.

Huge thanks to VFX (Yann Dory) for this one! I made the asset and did material test to get light to flow through it, then VFX took it and put some awesome looking particles on that, taking the look to the next level.

Simple, large scale asset. Thanks to Keswick for the pattern, and Joey for some of the tiling textures. Assets like these were great to test out large scale material workflows, as it stands ~10 meters tall.

Simple, large scale asset. Thanks to Keswick for the pattern, and Joey for some of the tiling textures. Assets like these were great to test out large scale material workflows, as it stands ~10 meters tall.

I set up a procedural stone damage graph in Designer (to share with the team to use in Painter as well), this was actually used for the asset above's height map to speed up high poly creation (pulling Keswick's pattern through it).

I set up a procedural stone damage graph in Designer (to share with the team to use in Painter as well), this was actually used for the asset above's height map to speed up high poly creation (pulling Keswick's pattern through it).

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot! Again, vases from me, as well as the cliffs above, and material/shader work on other assets.

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot! Again, vases from me, as well as the cliffs above, and material/shader work on other assets.

Vase Designs Test - With access to Nanite, I figured it'd be fun to try and see if "modeling" through Substance Designer would be a viable option now, and created a few vases through that workflow. Here's some tests, all made from displacing a cylinder.

Vase Designs Test - With access to Nanite, I figured it'd be fun to try and see if "modeling" through Substance Designer would be a viable option now, and created a few vases through that workflow. Here's some tests, all made from displacing a cylinder.

One of the vases after doing a texture pass on it (old WIP screenshot, low res unfortunately).

One of the vases after doing a texture pass on it (old WIP screenshot, low res unfortunately).

Another one of the vases with a quick texturing pass.

Another one of the vases with a quick texturing pass.

Simple shader/material setup I did for rocks for a consistent look in the scene, the ones on the right being original megascans, left with the material applied (using 1 mask and tiling textures)

Simple shader/material setup I did for rocks for a consistent look in the scene, the ones on the right being original megascans, left with the material applied (using 1 mask and tiling textures)

Tiling mesh test, placed next to each other, while it is possible to get it seamless as shown with this asset, it's not worth the extra effort in most cases. Also tested adding additional material features such as larger scale grunge on this asset.

Tiling mesh test, placed next to each other, while it is possible to get it seamless as shown with this asset, it's not worth the extra effort in most cases. Also tested adding additional material features such as larger scale grunge on this asset.

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot. Love the Lumen lighting from Andy here.

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot. Love the Lumen lighting from Andy here.

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot, Nanite goodness! Every asset in this scene was pushed to pretty extreme vert counts, making for a total of well over 100 million verts.

Thanks to Keswick Allen for the screenshot, Nanite goodness! Every asset in this scene was pushed to pretty extreme vert counts, making for a total of well over 100 million verts.

Video as displayed at GDC 2021.

Colin presenting a slide about our detail map setup, I did the initial setup, proofing out the roughness/color curve idea and collaborated with Ryan DowlingSoka on this one, he and Anthony did further setup for deeper integration and masking/arrays.

Colin presenting a slide about our detail map setup, I did the initial setup, proofing out the roughness/color curve idea and collaborated with Ryan DowlingSoka on this one, he and Anthony did further setup for deeper integration and masking/arrays.

Colin presenting a slide about materials to vertex painting with WPO and PDO on water/sand and blend with nanite assets. I did some initial prototypes and tests, then Anthony Marraffa really neatly packed all the ideas into a useable blueprint.

Colin presenting a slide about materials to vertex painting with WPO and PDO on water/sand and blend with nanite assets. I did some initial prototypes and tests, then Anthony Marraffa really neatly packed all the ideas into a useable blueprint.

Colin presenting a slide at GDC about texture generation, the screenshot used and workflows described was a part of the many tests I did in early on to establish our material pipelines.

Colin presenting a slide at GDC about texture generation, the screenshot used and workflows described was a part of the many tests I did in early on to establish our material pipelines.

Full demo presented by Colin Penty and Kate Rayner at GDC.

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