Dev Log 1 – Unreal Engine 5 Simulations

Researching Water

In our cinematic we are proposing to make for our tests in Unreal Engine 5, we will pan a camera across a beach shore and through a palm forest leading up to a volcano, ending with the camera diving below the lava and fading to blackness. While everyone has gotten their own roles, I have been places into the role of developing the water for the system. With Unreal Engine 5, there is a large amount of information online for this, such as YouTube videos, blogs, and tutorials from the creators. While looking at these videos, I have learned how to create water around the landscape, and grow, shrink, and broaden the waves. While not uploading any of them to the main branch, I have done my own tests in getting the water to work.

Attempting Implementation

After researching from various sources, online blogs, YouTube videos, and tutorials from Unreal Engine themselves, I took my own attempt at the process. As my part in the development of the cinematic is the water, I started to dabble with landscapes and how to make water look as realistic as possible. As I continue to try it out, I will want to learn if I can make the water change as it gets closer to land, in order to make the beaches look more realistic when the full cinematic is together. If possible, I would like to have the waves flow towards the direction of the island, and draw back into the ocean as they crash onto the shore. I am not sure yet if that is fully possible, and I will continue dabbling with the water system in this new game development app. It does very well at making water as compared to our usual software, Unity. In Unity, you had to either code water in, have a flat plane, or go to the asset store and pay for a package that had some sort of pre-made flowing water.