The Mist of Towada | Unreal Engine 5
The Mist of Towada project in UE5 is inspired by the real Towada Shrine in Aomori, Japan. I took inspiration from the shrine but changed the roof design in my project. If you Google "Towada Shrine," you'll see that the roof is red and looks different from mine. Apart from that, I tried to match the overall aesthetic and style as closely as possible.
I created modular assets in Blender, and some organic props like rocks and stone-based elements in ZBrush. I used SpeedTree for complex procedural trees, while small plants and ferns were made in Blender. Overall, I created most of the assets in the scene myself, except for a few things like the cedar tree texture, which I sourced from Textures.com, and the fallen leaf texture used in my VFX.
I followed Vince Petrelli’s Dynamic Sky course and implemented the dynamic sky system I learned there. Additionally, I modified the blueprint by adding a wind system, allowing me to control different wind styles used throughout the scene.
I would also like to thank Marek Zarański and Mateusz Pach for their detailed feedback on this project.
01 Rainy: Close up of Ivy
01 Night: Close up of Ivy
Video will show heavy wind early morning and night setting of Towada
01 Morning: Close up of Ivy
Work in progress: Gif
02 Komainu: I started with a 3D scan and re-sculpted it in ZBrush to create this final design. I adjusted the form and details to better fit the aesthetic of my scene.
03 Morning: Whole Shot
Played with Wind setting
03 Night: Whole Shot
I also wanna show little glimps of detail light, roughness, SSS, unlit, world normal and Material ao of my scene
I used a mask based on world position to create uneven albedo variation on the mesh.
04 Night: 2nd Shot
04 Rainy: 2nd Shot
These six tileable materials were made in SD and used across the scene. I rendered them in UE5 along with the environment. The bark is for distant trees—cedar tree textures are from Textures.com. The rest were made in Substance Painter.
04 Morning: 2nd Shot
Shrine Temple Modules – I created all of them in Blender, including the cloth flag simulation. At the bottom, there’s a screenshot showing the roof module, which I baked and textured in SP.
All of my organic mesh and in bottom screenshot you can see speed tree screenshot.
leaf falling vfx parameter
All of my zbrush sculpt
screenshot of SP with module roof things which later I build to make roof and most of trees I work in Speedtree