Lunareth
Lunareth (2025) is a stylized Unreal Engine environment focused on rendering techniques, atmosphere, and lighting, enhanced with Houdini-assisted asset creation.
Environmental Assets
All island assets, including succulents, cactus, trees, houses, rocks, and bridges, were procedurally generated in Houdini to speed up production and bring more diversity to the environment.
Foliage Generation
After blocking out the island structure, I brought the meshes back into Houdini to scatter foliage points and generate the layout. The scattered instances were then returned to Unreal, where I created a custom grass shader to simulate wind blow. This allowed the foliage to remain fully dynamic, highly optimized, and visually cohesive with the scene's stylized look.
Post Processing
Outline
Fog
To improve the scene’s stylized look, I added two key post-processing effects.
The outline pass introduces a toon contour, helping shapes read more clearly against the background. The fog layer adds atmospheric depth and softens the transitions between floating islands.
Environmental Build
The surrounding islands were also created procedurally in Houdini. Using heightfields for the base foundation and scattering. This workflow enabled rapid iteration and environmental variation around the main island.
Bridge Generation
After generating the surrounding islands, I used the same bridge tool to draw curves directly over the terrain. By adjusting the midpoints along the curve, I could create bridges with different sag levels and silhouettes, ensuring they naturally integrated with the floating islands.