This is a personal project I've been working on the past two months in UE4.
I got inspired by a forest near the sea , a pine forest probably rotting due to a disease on the wood.
Most of the trees were fallen and dead - all the strange shapes and detail of broken wood was inspiring, and I loved the mood.
I also wanted to challenge myself into making broken and dead trees that are actually game/console ready - with balanced amount of polygons and detail , slight wind and good shaders.
Evrything in the scene was made by me :
Models are all matching actual reference I took in the forest.
All Texture were made in substance from scratch.
I used my shaders that I further refines for landscape/vegetation(opauqe/masked)/water and everything else.
I added on top a burned effect , that is present in all shaders and is controlled by painting the terrain - where burned is painted as a non weighted layer , then used in rest of the shaders to burn them . Transition is also possible with less burned and totally burned .
Clouds where made using the UE 4.26 Volumetric Cloud system , that is magical.
I also baked out a custom HDRI in engine, to get a cheap cloud that works in 4.25
Some basic volumetric fog and smoke for finalizing.
Everything has proper and quite aggressive lod's .