Hey all,

I just wanted to share a couple of updates over here about things I have been working on in the educational side of things. As always, thanks for following along and reach out if you have any questions!

REBUILT WEBSITE

    A couple of updates have happened recently that I just wanted to share here. First off I have revived my website and overall rebuilt it. I elected to bring this back because I felt that I had a lot of stuff on different platforms and I wanted there to be an easy way to see all of it in one place. This website doesn't replace any of my existing platforms, but instead hopefully makes it where its easier to find everything if you were to use it!

Website: https://www.peytonvarney.com/

COURSE ADDED

    My older UE4 Environment Art for Games course was added to this website as well. It has 14 hours of content split up into a 10 week course. While some of the UI and techniques have slightly changed with UE5, I would say the majority of it is still relevant.

If you are a former student of mine that took this course, reach out to me for access!

Course: https://www.peytonvarney.com/environment-art-for-games

Hey all,

I did a quick re-lighting tutorial covering one of the Quixel environments that you can get for free on the fab marketplace. Goal of this tutorial was to show how to not over complicate lighting sometimes and that even with just some simple steps, we can transform a space drastically with the lighting and tools that we use. Hope you enjoy!

Hey everyone,

I recently did an interview with 80.lv where I talk a little bit about my journey to creating my YouTube channel, my recent series where I shared my opinion and some topics covering the environment art process, and additionally the overall goals of the channel and why I enjoy it so much!

I wanted to share the article here if anyone was interested in reading a little more about it.

Hope you find it helpful and let me know if you have any questions!

Interview article: https://80.lv/articles/bringing-halloween-inspiration-to-haunted-house-in-unreal-engine/

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PeytonVarney

Hi everyone,

I made this two part tutorial that goes over how you can setup a material showroom inside of Unreal Engine 5. You can make portfolio quality renders inside of the engine and get the displacement and all that you would want without having to use another program. You can show off both substance designer made textures, as well as the ones built inside of the engine. 

 I hope you enjoy this one and let me know on my down below or on my channel if you have any questions or suggestions for future videos!

Channel: Peyton Varney Youtube

Hi everyone,

    I wanted to share a couple of newer tutorials from the new year going over some more detail oriented focuses in Unreal Engine. The first one covers how to add movement to your environments, specifically in this example, I create a fan asset that works and can be edited per instance. The second one covers adding panning textures and can be perfect to add text or movement in a different way through shaders within your environments. With the last one we cover making glass in the shader network and being able to setup parameters for ease of editing and controllability when making multiple glass shaders.

I hope you find these useful and let me know down below if there is anything you have questions about or if there's anything you'd like to see in future videos!

Hi everyone,

Here are a couple of latest videos covering lighting and detail techniques in Unreal Engine 5. The first video covers how I took a 6 year old environment from Unreal Engine 4 and converted it over to UE5 with updated lighting. The lighting setup is heavily simplified, looks more accurate, natural, and actually is a lot more optimized even with using newer and more expensive techniques. 

The videos following that cover some quick shader techniques inside of UE5 on how to do things like simple color variation within the shader and also how to create decals. Let me know down below if you have any questions or also if you have any suggestions for future videos!

Hope you find these helpful!

-Peyton

Hey everyone,

Last night I had a talk with Gnomon going over some of my Gnomon Workshop environments, doing a little bit of a demo, and also talking about the future of game development inside Unreal Engine 5. If you missed it you can check it out below. Hope you find it helpful and fun to watch!

Hey everyone!

Here is an update to my environment that I have been working on for a while. I created an uncut flythrough of the entire space for a better understanding of how it is laid out. This time around I have replaced a couple of the models with their higher resolution models instead of them just being blockout. Additionally I have added a couple of new textures to the space and also have been working on improving the lighting and overall rendering inside of Unreal Engine 5. I have been surprised by the amount of new things that are in the new engine that I didn't know about and it has been a really great space for me to test out a lot of these features or new tools! Near the end of the video it goes outside and you will also notice that I added some grass to the ground space for the time being. I am not sure if this will be in the final version but its a nice lush yard that I kind of enjoy at the moment. 

Hopefully by the next update I will have almost all of the furniture replaced including the couch blockout and have their final versions in. Let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas regarding the space and thanks for checking it out!

As 2021 came to a close I wanted to do a post reflecting on the past year while also looking ahead! Overall the year was less busy art wise than in 2020. I did a couple of projects but really only worked on stuff if I wanted to and I had a lot of fun with the environments that I did create. Not having any strong due dates or schedules for it of course allowed for things to move a lot slower but I also found that I enjoyed the process a lot more along the way! 

A couple of the fun weekend projects like the rock study and fall asset pack were opportunities to have a break from a different project that I was working on and do something a little different to change things up.

My most recent project which was my new tutorial with The Gnomon Workshop (Creating Complex Vegetation & Foliage for Games), offered me to try out a totally different biome and environment than I had ever done before. 

Lastly the Industrial Apartment environment that I continue to post on here is still being worked on of course. It was a bit on the back burner throughout the Fall but I added a couple of shots below of what it is currently looking like. Mostly updates to the outside and just getting a better idea of the space with a patio and small pond. I will be kicking up the pace with this one in 2022 and hope to share some more updates soon!

Looking ahead to this new year, I want to continue creating more personal projects that I enjoy working on. Learning and growing along the way while also keeping a solid work/life balance that makes sure that I do not get burnt out from creating things! I also plan to post a lot more videos and smaller free tutorials or tips and tricks on my YouTube channel just because I really like the format of YouTube viewing as well so feel free to check that out below!

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfBQGGI2laXWC2FKk8oEwQQ

Thanks for stopping by and for everyone in this community for continuing to inspire me with their work and posts every day!

Update to Industrial Apartment environment:

Hey everyone,

Wanting to post on the blog a little more often. Mainly just to focus on showing occasional updates and things I am working on! 

It has been a while and 2020 was certainly a year that was very busy in every way possible. A lot of good and bad things made up the year but I want to shortly reflect on some of the more rewarding outcomes to have came out of 2020. 

Firstly, I was able to contribute a good amount to a game that I had no idea I would have ever had a significant role on. I was a sophomore in college when the first trailer came out for The Last of Us: Part 2 and the level of fidelity and detail blew me away. If you would have told me that 3 years later I would have joined the studio, and 5 years later the game would ship with environments I worked on in it, I would for sure not have believed you. I still don't believe its true even still! Its a project that will forever leave an impact on my career and I am so happy I was able to be a part of it. I want to thank everyone for the kind words that have played it and gone through the experience and enjoyed all of the hard work that the team put into it.

In July, I also started my first semester of the course that I created for CG Master Academy. Before that I had been substituting for about a year for the Intro to Environment Art class that was created by my lead at Naughty Dog, Andres Rodriguez. The opportunity to structure a new class and continue teaching with them was really special because I have always wanted to somehow make an impact with my art. I guess I always focused that thought on how I could do it through games and media but the ability to help others follow their passions and dreams with art is something even more rewarding. Seeing the progress of everyone in even just a single semester is so exciting and helping current and potentially the future of the industry follow their passions has just been a really special thing to be a part of!

Following on that aspect, in November I released a tutorial with The Gnomon Workshop. As someone that watched The Gnomon Workshop tutorials through college and would go to the library and check the DVD's out, this was also a pretty impactful moment for me. Being able to give back to the same platforms that helped me with my growth and share some of the knowledge and techniques that I have learned is really cool! 

I also released a personal piece or two in 2020 but with everything else going on it was kind of limited. Flashing forward to now, I am excited to spend a little more time this year on my own projects. I plan to generally just make some personal art and may share some personal tutorials as well at some point. Below is a new environment that I recently started. Its mainly a nice test ground for a lot of different things within unreal. I can continue to practice and improve my texturing skills, I can improve my interior design knowledge and understanding, as well as really start to learn more about lighting and try out raytracing and all of the magic behind it! I don't really have a schedule or timeline for this one, but really just want to have fun and grow as an artist all the while. Right now it is in more or less a blockout phase still with models and textures and I will try to keep updated here as I go along!

So just wanted to say again, thank you for all of the kind words over the years and following along in my journey, as well as continuing to inspire me with all of the artwork and talent that I see online every day! 

-Peyton