Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
So here’s something a bit more adventurous – I’d always loved the environments in Dragon Age: Inquisition, so I thought I give it a go to create some cinematics from the concept art and level screenshots of the original game – this time with the full power of Unreal Engine 5. (As an aside: wouldn't it be great if Bioware was allowed to go back to Unreal for Dragon Age 4? I mean, c'mon! EA, cut them some slack!)
If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! ko-fi.com/liontowers3d
Please NOTE: I am not affiliated with Bioware in any way. This is a FANMADE cinematic tech DEMO inspired by Dragon Age Inquisition - it does not use any assets from the game itself, and as such, does not - and is not supposed to - match up one-to-one to the original.
In full fairness, Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014, so obviously the technology for video game real-time graphics has developed substantially since then – and not to mention that it used an entirely different game engine (Frostbite 3). With that said, obviously the lighting, models etc… aren’t going to match up 100%, and with Nanite and Lumen – the whole look of the original scene isn’t exactly the same – but it wasn’t supposed to be. The aim for this little project was just to re-imagine what DA:I could have looked like with today’s graphical capabilities – to capture the mood and the essence of Bioware’s environment level design.
This entire scene was a part of the narrow canyon section in the Exalted Plains (The Crow Fens) – on the way to fight the Gamordan Stormrider. I loved the dramatic mood of that marsh level - although fighting that dragon in particular was a PAIN. Lighting breathing dragon + water filled swamp? Yeesh.
I think I’ll work my way through some different levels as time allows – so hit that subscribe button and stay tuned!
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For the more technical side of things, almost all of this scene was kitbashed together using full quality Nanite Quixel Megascans assets – with the exception of the trees (done in Blender Sapling Gen), the animated water and the mountain in the background. Nanite is great – this level of complexity would never have been possible in UE4 – although as a caveat, at nearly 1GB per model – this scene is HUGE. If this any indication, future games done in UE5 are certainly going to be hard on the SSDs.
This scene was 100% dynamic – no light bakes. Just Lumen working its magic. The most difficult part of this whole thing was the reflections however – a planar reflection was used although it had to be constantly adjusted depending on the angle of the camera which was a bit of a pain. This is an area where I think ray-traced reflections are still king.
For more information about Nanite and Lumen, check out these great videos by Willam Facuher - who goes into more in-depth detail about how these features work - and what limitations they currently have.
Nanite: Everything You Should Know: youtu.be/P65cADzsP8Q
Things to Know About Lumen: youtu.be/CFKNoeUPQGQ
***
FOLLOW ME:
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#UnrealEngine5 #UE5 #Quixel #DragonAge
So here’s something a bit more adventurous – I’d always loved the environments in Dragon Age: Inquisition, so I thought I give it a go to create some cinematics from the concept art and level screenshots of the original game – this time with the full power of Unreal Engine 5. (As an aside: wouldn't it be great if Bioware was allowed to go back to Unreal for Dragon Age 4? I mean, c'mon! EA, cut them some slack!)
If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! ko-fi.com/liontowers3d
Please NOTE: I am not affiliated with Bioware in any way. This is a FANMADE cinematic tech DEMO inspired by Dragon Age Inquisition - it does not use any assets from the game itself, and as such, does not - and is not supposed to - match up one-to-one to the original.
In full fairness, Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014, so obviously the technology for video game real-time graphics has developed substantially since then – and not to mention that it used an entirely different game engine (Frostbite 3). With that said, obviously the lighting, models etc… aren’t going to match up 100%, and with Nanite and Lumen – the whole look of the original scene isn’t exactly the same – but it wasn’t supposed to be. The aim for this little project was just to re-imagine what DA:I could have looked like with today’s graphical capabilities – to capture the mood and the essence of Bioware’s environment level design.
This entire scene was a part of the narrow canyon section in the Exalted Plains (The Crow Fens) – on the way to fight the Gamordan Stormrider. I loved the dramatic mood of that marsh level - although fighting that dragon in particular was a PAIN. Lighting breathing dragon + water filled swamp? Yeesh.
I think I’ll work my way through some different levels as time allows – so hit that subscribe button and stay tuned!
***
For the more technical side of things, almost all of this scene was kitbashed together using full quality Nanite Quixel Megascans assets – with the exception of the trees (done in Blender Sapling Gen), the animated water and the mountain in the background. Nanite is great – this level of complexity would never have been possible in UE4 – although as a caveat, at nearly 1GB per model – this scene is HUGE. If this any indication, future games done in UE5 are certainly going to be hard on the SSDs.
This scene was 100% dynamic – no light bakes. Just Lumen working its magic. The most difficult part of this whole thing was the reflections however – a planar reflection was used although it had to be constantly adjusted depending on the angle of the camera which was a bit of a pain. This is an area where I think ray-traced reflections are still king.
For more information about Nanite and Lumen, check out these great videos by Willam Facuher - who goes into more in-depth detail about how these features work - and what limitations they currently have.
Nanite: Everything You Should Know: youtu.be/P65cADzsP8Q
Things to Know About Lumen: youtu.be/CFKNoeUPQGQ
***
FOLLOW ME:
Instagram: instagram.com/lion_towers3d
Artstation: artstation.com/l_torres
Behance: behance.net/l_torres
#UnrealEngine5 #UE5 #Quixel #DragonAge
![The True Scale of the Forgotten Vale | Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kgsqbK3Ngq0/mqdefault.jpg "The True Scale of the Forgotten Vale | Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]
Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore-accurate size to Tamriels cities, removed from gameplay and technical restrictions. So here’s the snowy, glacial Forgotten Vale, from the Dawnguard DLC – now with sixteen times the detail!
This is me going back through the drafts and finishing some videos that I started ages ago, but eventually abandoned because they were either too small or too obscure and didn’t make sense to do a video on each – but some were kinda interesting and (surprisingly) I did get a few specific requests to do some of these, so here you go!
Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5.7.2 on an RTX 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled and textured in Blender. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections. TSR was used for anti-aliasing.
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If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/liontowers3d
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
Soundtrack: ‘Lost Empire’ – David Celeste.
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Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/l_torres
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#skyrim #gaming #ue5")
![The True Size of Windhelm: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lStegIkn0PY/mqdefault.jpg "The True Size of Windhelm: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]
And so we get to the City of Kings: Windhelm – the oldest city in Skyrim! Also it’s been about two years since I first started this project – and I just want to thank everyone who’s watched these videos, upvoted, commented and subscribed – it means a lot to me!
Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore-accurate scale to Tamriel’s cities – so here’s Windhelm – now with sixteen times the detail! The purpose of this project was to get a large-scale concept of what a city of this size would really be like in real life, removed from gameplay, story and technical limitations.
If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/liontowers3d
Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5.4 on a 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled in Blender, textured in Mixer. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections.
Please NOTE: This is a FANMADE cinematic lore visualisation for the Elder Scrolls. It is NOT a mod!
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
Soundtrack: ‘Oh the Sky’ - Helmut Schenker.
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#UE5 #Skyrim #elderscrolls")
![I Built Photorealistic Terrariums in UNREAL ENGINE 5! | Forest in a Bottle [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/liehUTu0HEE/mqdefault.jpg "I Built Photorealistic Terrariums in UNREAL ENGINE 5! | Forest in a Bottle [4K]
Mossy rain gardens and smooth jazz. Running real-time in Unreal Engine 5.
This compiles all the videos from the Forest in a Bottle series so far – this was a type of (literal) test-bench scene I was doing back in the Early Access and early release phases of Unreal Engine 5 a few years ago – mostly with the aim of testing out the different new features that UE5 had to offer and then later on, figuring out what had changed or which bugs had been fixed which each new version of the engine. Also it was just fun!
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If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/liontowers3d
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Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5 Early Access – 5.4 on a GTX 1060, RTX 3060/3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled and textured in Blender. Fluid simulations were done in Blender and imported into UE via alembics. Nanite was used for models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections. Translucency is a mix of old-school raster, RTX translucency and the new Lumen translucency. Anti Aliasing done with DLAA and TSR.
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. (For the individual tracks, please see the original videos.)
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Behance: https://www.behance.net/l_torres
#UE5 #nature #terrarium")
![Utopia on the Ocean | UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/maAeJ-qaEf8/mqdefault.jpg "Utopia on the Ocean | UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]
Trying out a little serene, sci-fi ocean-scape, with a cheeky planet in the background… Also feat. your friendly neighbourhood Kaiju turtle.
Rendered in Unreal Engine 5.1.1. Lumen used for GI, RTX for reflections. Custom sky-dome and planet shaders. Rendered using a 3060ti.
Big thanks to @KitBash3D for letting me play with their ‘Oasis’ Kit a little early – had a blast!
_Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound._
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#UE5 #UnrealEngine5")
![The (Lore-Accurate) Towns of Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/my0c7crBvqs/mqdefault.jpg "The (Lore-Accurate) Towns of Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]
These were scrapped ideas for some the smaller and lesser known Skyrim towns/villages that I sketched out and started ages ago, but eventually abandoned because they were either too small, or too obscure and didn’t make sense to do a whole video on each – but some were kinda interesting and (surprisingly) I did get a few requests to do some of these, so here you go!
Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore-accurate size to Tamriels cities, removed from gameplay and technical restrictions. So here’s Ivarstead, Karthwasten and Dragon Bridge (now with sixteen times the detail!)
Also tbh, this was also mostly an excuse to try out the new baked Niagara water simulations for the rivers and rapids… It’s an experimental plugin feature in 5.7, developed from the Witcher 4 demo and rolling out into the main release!
Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5.7.1 on an RTX 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled and textured in Blender. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections. TSR was used for anti-aliasing.
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If you enjoy my content and want to help support the channel, you can buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/liontowers3d
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
Soundtrack: ‘Blending Spaces’, ‘Different Clouds’, ‘Drift’ – Helmut Schenker. ‘Gambit’ – Christoffer Moe Ditlevesen.
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FOLLOW ME:
Instagram: @lion_towers3d
Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/l_torres
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0:00 - Ivarstead
3:14 - Karthwasten
5:40 - Dragon Bridge
#UE5 #skyrim #elderscrolls")
