Project Orbit UE5 (2025)
My Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo
- Project: Project Orbit UE5 (2024-2025)
- Role: UI Technical Artist (team of 1)
- Engine: Unreal Engine 5.4
- Studio: Sokay
- Platform: PC
I created this project as a demonstration of my abilities in Unreal Engine - a playground to demonstrate various things I've learned in my creative and technical journeys, as well as my typical interactive/UI type of work. I'm using this demo to implement some of what I've learned about procedural art generation pipelines - using Houdini and PCG.
Latest Capture in UE5
Currently the app looks something like the above.
After selecting a location, the Location "Detail View" displays.
My Designs
Here are the UI designs that I mocked up some comps of screens to determine the look of all of the elements.
The above comps were designed in Affinity Photo.
Programming Proficiency
With all the talk about Blueprints, I decided to create a demo entirely with C++. The main component of the demo is the WorldExplorer, which is an actor. It has 2 ActorComponents that receive input events for scrolling and dragging functionality. The WorldBodyActor represents the planet and has data attached to it, describing it as well as the locations available on the planet. Each WorldBodyActor has HotspotEvents which receive selection events and relay that message to the WorldMenu's WorldView, which updates the WorldDetailView with data about the location (available missions).
CameraRig
One of the key elements is the CameraRig which allows the user to freely spin camera in each direction and zoom in and out.
Materials
The key asset for this project is a model of the earth. I wanted to leverage NASA's imagery by stylizing they're earth imagery into something that might feel at place in a "sci-fi, futuristic" game's level select screen.
In Affinity Photo, I made 2 different stylized versions of the earth map. One "sci-fi," another "paper map" themed as a test to see what a texture could look like. I imagined this application as something that could be re-skinned in different styles & presentations with a different set of textures.
Skybox
I created the skybox procedurally in Houdini using a combination of volumetric noise and masks, generating millions of points that represent stars and nebulae. This was rendered as an 8192 x 4096 HDR map.
Modeling
I created a procedural text mesh with Houdini (modeling and UV), and textured it with Substance Painter, and imported and animated it in Unreal Engine.
Animation Sequence
For the intro sequence, I created a sequence and animated the camera, logo as well as Niagara FX timed to the sequence.
With the FX, one of my next steps is to add particle FX for objects floating around each planet in orbit to give a greater sense of depth when rotating the view.
3D UI
Since my days of prototyping VR at Oculus, I've looked at UI as something that's fully dimensional objects - not something that's glued to one position on the screen. While I got the first pass of a 2D UI functional, my true ambition is to take this fully 3D UI so that the UI feels at place inside of the 3D world.
I made some test renders for what this might look like, testing an idea for a scanline effect. This was rendered in Houdini.