"Howl's Moving Castle" in Unreal Engine 5 - An explorative journey from gouache to 3D
The textures were painted by hand using gouache, the models were made in Blender - all made into magic in Unreal Engine 5!
In the age of AI-generators and art being treated like fast food a lot of the time, quickly consumed and forgotten within minutes of its creation, I wanted my master thesis to take a step back and refocus on the love of the craft.
As a game artist student with a history in both digital and traditional art, I felt myself sort of instantly gravitating towards an attempt to mix these two medias that I know and love. I wanted to explore if - and how - I could close the gap between traditional artistry and digital 3D environment creation.
If you're curious about the step-by-step process of this project, I have a blogpost about it here on Artstation!
The hat shop from Studio Ghibli's "Howl's Moving Castle".
View with audio!
Close-up to the decals I made for the window- and door decorations.
A glimpse at the vertex color and parallax occlusion effects.
A glimpse at the vertex color and parallax occlusion effects.
A couple of the materials I created for this.
Beams, windows, shutters, doors, lamps, bricks, wooden planks, stairs and flag.
Towers and roof parts.
Walls and gate.
I digitally painted on top of the normal maps in order to elevate the painterly-feel of the assets.
Normal- and height map + base color of my cobble stone material.
Breaking up the repetitiveness by using Vertex Colors in my materials.
Refence sheet.