Fairy Pond

I wanted to improve my ability to recreate concept art, and I was impressed by Maria Sadre's The Little Wizard and the Temple of the Water Nymph. So I wanted to recreate it in a real-time environment, seeing the water and the firefly move.

My workflow began with an asset breakdown, identifying modular pieces, material variations, and production priorities. After establishing the scene scale through a blockout pass, I used it to refine composition, camera placement, and lighting.

Most assets were modeled as low-poly meshes and detailed through high-poly sculpts in ZBrush. To maintain a cohesive visual style, I developed test materials early in the process and created a reusable stone material in Substance Designer with exposed parameters for asset-specific customization in Substance Painter. I made a smart material that uses the AO and Curvature map to add brush stroke and color in the highlight and shadow areas.

The final scene was assembled in Unreal Engine 5, where I also created a custom water shader and FairyGlow VFX to better match the original concept.

Check out Maria Sadre's The Little Wizard and the Temple of the Water Nymph! It's an awesome drawing.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/V2ePvb