Ultimate Old West Environment Course - In-Depth Tutorial (Early Access / v0.2)

The course is in early access. Please be aware that it is still under development. It is currently priced at $29.99 during the development phase and will increase to $99.99 in final version. It will be updated with one or more chapters every Thursday (except in exceptional cases). A discord server is available to share your feedbacks, suggestions and have a preview of the next chapters (link at the end of the description)

Overview video available for the finale release.

During this course I will show you, step by step, how to create a western environment from scratch.

From the creation of the vegetation with Speedtree 9.3 to the final composition on UE5.1. We will see the creation of textures with Quixel Mixer, terrain to dress the background of our scene with Gaea (optional) and we will create all the shaders needed to get the maximum quality. We will finish with the 4k renders with the Movie Render Queue. More details below.

Using textures allowed in partnership with ScansLibrary.

What I will learn?

In Speedtree 9.3:

• Create serval Next-gen leaffy trees with hybrid logic (structure with Nanite and foliage with common LODs/Imposter)
• Create 3d branches to use as textures.
• Create an atlas to combine several parts in a single texture.
• Create ground foliage models optimized for realtime rendering.

In UE5:

• Complex shaders for trunk, foliage, terrain, Megascans assets and water.
• Advanced terrain shader with distance blend texture, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, RVT, automatic logic and spawn foliage with mask.
• Complete composition (Procedural Placement, lighting, vfx...)
• Create renders with the Movie Render Queue

In Quixel Mixer:

• Create multiple advanced textures with and without animated puddles in UE5
• Export with the correct packed textures

In Gaea:

• Create some terrains used to dress the background of our scene
• Export masks to use them for texturing in UE5

In Photoshop:

• Replace colors of some textures
• Enhance the quality
• Combine masks

Which chapters are available?

• First Beech Tree (5h)
• Bark/Leaves Shaders (2h37)

What's next?

• Tree Variations & Saplings
• Ground Foliage
• Landscape Shader*
• Scene Creation (Possibly in several parts)
• River & Water Shader
• Distant Mountains
• Lighting
• Decals & Propsing
• Animate the train with the Sequencer
• VFX (Sparks, ambient dust, mist, insects)
• Rendering

Keep in mind that this list may change.

What I will get? (updated weekly)

• ~8 hours of step-by-step video tutorial
• Separate downloadable chapters (.zip)
• 1080/30fps resolution

Software Used:

• Speedtree 9.3.0 or above
• Unreal Engine 5.1
• Photo/Image Editing Software (Photoshop, Gimp...)
• Quixel Mixer 2022
• Gaea 1.3.2 (optionnal)

Level:
Anyone who wants to learn, improve or fix their skills in environment creation.

Prerequisite:

• Owning a computer with Windows 10 (64Bits) / Not tested on Windows 11
• Winrar or 7zip to decompress files
• The basics on Unreal Engine
• Even if it is not required, it is preferable to have followed the Ultimate Forest Environment Course

Join the server:
Discord server

Important note : 
This course was created in version 5.1 and it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to use THE SAME version! If you choose to use another version, be aware that you may encounter possible errors not covered in this course.

About copyrights:
All you can find in the resources of the course are for personal usage only. You cannot share or sell it.

Addition:

• New Vegetation Shader (2h37)

fIf you followed the Ultimate Forest course I encourage you to follow this chapter to get an improved vegetation shader.