Moonlit Offering

For my final year honours project at Abertay University, I've been researching the applications of traditional artistic techniques and semiotics to create an environment that carries the narrative of the scene through visuals alone. This scene, titled 'Moonlit Offering', presents these findings in an interactive open-world game environment that allows the player to explore and interpret the narrative of the location through environmental storytelling, impactful lighting, and ambient VFX.

As part of the Abertay Digital Graduate Show 2026, this project was nominated for the Electric Square award for 3D Art! I was the only environment artist shortlisted for this prize, and I'm incredibly proud of my achievements :)

For this project, I wanted to develop my skills in writing documentation and understanding the game art pipeline. I've picked up an interest in technical art (specifically the tool development, shader creation, and optimisation side of things!), which led me to also create my own piece of art pipeline documentation alongside this project. The pipeline document gives a summary of the recommended workflow through all of the main DDC programs, naming conventions, export settings, and optimisation shortcuts to make production as efficient as possible.

I found it really fun to experiment with things like bevel trim sheets for lower priority assets, masked and modelled foliage, and vertex painting within UE5. As someone who's keen to break into the industry as an environment artist, I found it really valuable to learn these new approaches to production, and I'll definitely be using them again in the future!

Thank you to my supervisor, Finlay, for giving me really supportive feedback and a unique perspective on my project throughout the semester, and pushing me to develop my skills to become confident in my work. And thank you to all of the other staff on the ART410 module for their feedback and support, too !

The .zip file contains the scene, which is a fully packaged Unreal Engine file, as well as a .pdf copy of my technical documentation and a short README file!

My Artstation breakdown of this project can be found here!