Evergrowth

Senior Thesis Project

An overview of the procedurally generated forest in
Sleepy Sun Studio’s short animated film, Evergrowth.

My team, Sleepy Sun Studio, produced this short animated film at Drexel University, Westphal College of Media Arts & Design
as our senior thesis project.

As Lead Environment Artist, I was tasked with creating a large, stylized environment that could transform from a desolate, dark woodland into a hopeful, brighter forest throughout the story.

I prioritized using procedural generation throughout the project
given the time and resources I had.

Using Houdini, I was able to create tree models using program’s intuitive node system.
This was an efficient method to create a large diversity of models
just from changing a few variables.

Houdini 3D model of procedural tree, node graph

I made UV and cleanup adjustments in Maya before painting them in Substance Painter, using textures I had procedurally generated in Substance Designer as a base.

dead tree 3d models in unreal engine 5

healthy tree 3d models in unreal engine 5

The models and textures were imported into Unreal Engine 5 and the assets were laid out using Procedural Foliage Spawners to populate most of the scenes.

Below is the dark, dreary forest next to its vibrant, lively counterpart.

dead, spooky forest 3d environment unreal engine 5

healthy forest 3d environment unreal engine 5

The effect of leaf movement was achieved using Unreal Engine’s animated textures, moving the leaf texture on the cards .

Blood Moon Fly-Through