Hi there! I’m Lu (Hezhen).

I was part of the Art Team, and my main responsibility was designing and building the first-floor castle environments, including the entrance hall, hallway, kitchen, and dining room. My work includes coming up with ideas and visual concepts, asset placement, lighting, iteration, and final polish.

Phase 1: Early Concepts & Layout (Weeks 1–3): At the start of the project, I focused on planning the overall layout with the design team for the kitchen, main hall, and dining area. While building these spaces, I ran into a few problems—for example, the window designs didn’t fully match the castle style, and the interior and exterior walls felt visually disconnected. To fix this, I reworked the wall structure by layering an interior wallpaper wall with an exterior stone wall, adjusted the window style to better match the environment, and fixed uneven materials by reworking textures.

Phase 2: Full Build &  Team Collaboration (Weeks 4–7): During this phase, I worked with both the Design Team and other artists, merging updated levels. I completed the first full lighting pass for the first floor, also added VFX and light sources to enhance the atmosphere. Additional elements like staircases, ceilings, and environmental details were added during this phase to make the space feel complete and immersive.

Phase 3: Merging & Version Transitions (Weeks 8–10): As development continued, the project went through several major version updates (V4 → V6 → V8). I migrated my first-floor environments across these versions while coordinating with the Design Team. Includes fixing placement mismatches, resolving issues like Z-fighting between overlapping walls and floors, and making continuous adjustments to maintain consistency with the visual style of other floors and areas in the castle.

Phase 4: Final Polish & Reworking (Weeks 11–12): In the final weeks, I focused on polishing my environments based on playtest feedback. This included fixing texture issues, small gaps and overlaps, and reworking lighting multiple times due to design changes.

Challenges & Reflection

One of the main challenges I encountered was keeping materials and lighting consistent while the design continued to evolve. Communication between teams also occasionally caused extra iteration work, but that’s a very real part of team-based game development.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m really proud of what we created together. This project helped me better understand how environment art comes together in Unreal Engine, especially when working on a larger team.

Huge thanks to my teammates, getting to make a game alongside so many talented and creative people has been genuinely exciting. Thank you to Brain for the guidance throughout the semester. This was a great experience, and I’m excited to take what I learned here into future projects.