Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Textures, displacements and volumes for the sun done procedurally in Blender 3.0 and rendered out using Cycles X. Gotta say, super impressed with how much faster Cycles X was compared to 2.93 - this scene took just under one minute per frame to render out - in 2.93 vanilla Cycles, it was over thirty minutes per frame!
This was a tricky one – not going to lie. A lot of trial and error to get that iconic close up sun look – and even then, I still think it could use some more work… Stars in general are quite tricky to get right...
The surface texture of the sun was a combination of a noise and vornoi texture, mixed in with an emission shader and keyframed for movement.
I tried out different ways to do the solar flares – first with an emitter particle system + forcefields and a ton of motion blur – but that ended up looking too grainy and didn’t give those clean arcs. Next, I tried literally using a hair particle system and grooming the strands to arc down – but it was fiddly and hard to art direct (looked really good though, might have to spend more time playing with that method). Finally, I settled on using a hair particle system and a series of volumetric spheres, masked out with an emission gradient volumetric texture. This way also made it easier to animate using a noise texture.
Doing this all procedurally allowed for rapid iteration to get to the kind of look that I wanted – and gave me a lot of flexibility to tweak and change elements of the scene as I went without worrying too much about breaking the model.
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#b3d #Blender #Space
Textures, displacements and volumes for the sun done procedurally in Blender 3.0 and rendered out using Cycles X. Gotta say, super impressed with how much faster Cycles X was compared to 2.93 - this scene took just under one minute per frame to render out - in 2.93 vanilla Cycles, it was over thirty minutes per frame!
This was a tricky one – not going to lie. A lot of trial and error to get that iconic close up sun look – and even then, I still think it could use some more work… Stars in general are quite tricky to get right...
The surface texture of the sun was a combination of a noise and vornoi texture, mixed in with an emission shader and keyframed for movement.
I tried out different ways to do the solar flares – first with an emitter particle system + forcefields and a ton of motion blur – but that ended up looking too grainy and didn’t give those clean arcs. Next, I tried literally using a hair particle system and grooming the strands to arc down – but it was fiddly and hard to art direct (looked really good though, might have to spend more time playing with that method). Finally, I settled on using a hair particle system and a series of volumetric spheres, masked out with an emission gradient volumetric texture. This way also made it easier to animate using a noise texture.
Doing this all procedurally allowed for rapid iteration to get to the kind of look that I wanted – and gave me a lot of flexibility to tweak and change elements of the scene as I went without worrying too much about breaking the model.
***
FOLLOW ME:
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Artstation: artstation.com/l_torres
Behance: behance.net/l_torres
#b3d #Blender #Space
![A Walking Tour of (Lore-Accurate) Skyrim | PART 1 | UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RKQw7LZMGHI/mqdefault.jpg "A Walking Tour of (Lore-Accurate) Skyrim | PART 1 | UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]
By popular demand, here’s a longer cut of some of the walkthroughs from my lore-accurate Skyrim videos – in third person – feat. Windwalker Echo. This covers Dawnstar, Winterhold, Falkreath, Morthal and Solitude.
Dawnstar: https://youtu.be/HluDBDHIDq8
Winterhold: https://youtu.be/gpekak8QQpM
Falkreath: https://youtu.be/HK5fXnuZ194
Morthal: https://youtu.be/c4Roy_Ep2rA
Solitude: https://youtu.be/QPyZhSKdLRQ
These shots were all captured from past projects at 4K 60fps using Unreal’s built-in take recorder with DOF turned off and at the Cinematic quality preset. NVIDIA DLAA was used for anti-aliasing, Lumen for all lighting and reflections.
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 an RTX 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled and textured in Blender.
Please NOTE: This is a FANMADE cinematic lore visualisation for the Elder Scrolls. It is NOT a mod!
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
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#UE5 #Skyrim #elderscrolls
0:00 – Dawnstar
1:36 – Winterhold
4:11 – Falkreath
9:17 – Morthal
11:05 – Solitude")
![The Lore-Accurate Scale of Cyrodiil | Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RakQAS8_PZ4/mqdefault.jpg "The Lore-Accurate Scale of Cyrodiil | Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]
The complete cinematics from my lore-accurate Cyrodiil video series, compiled together for easy viewing! (Timestamps below)
Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore-accurate size to Tamriels cities, removed from gameplay and technical restrictions. So heres Cyrodiil from Oblivion, now with sixteen times the detail!
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 - 5.6.1 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. DLAA/TSR was used for anti-aliasing.
Please NOTE: This is a FANMADE cinematic lore visualisation for the Elder Scrolls. It is NOT a mod!
Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. (See original videos for soundtrack titles!)
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#elderscrolls #ue5 #gaming #oblivion
0:00 – Anvil
1:44 – Leyawiin
4:29 – Kvatch
6:43 – Cheydinhal
8:08 – Chorrol
10:38 – Bruma
12:31 – Bravil
14:26 – Skingrad
17:53 – Imperial City")
![Virtual Rain Garden (Moss Terrarium) | UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SCRsIS10ras/mqdefault.jpg "Virtual Rain Garden (Moss Terrarium) | UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]
Back with these little forest in a bottle terrarium scenes! If you’ve been watching this channel for a while, and this realtime 3D art series in particular, you might have noticed something with the previous rain garden videos – they have no glass – something that, really a lot of terrariums tend to have.
And it’s not that Unreal Engine 5 didn’t have the capability for ray-traced translucency or reflections – its more that they didn’t work well with Nanite-enabled meshes. Ray tracing ends up tracing against the nanite proxy mesh, as opposed to the actual high-poly mesh, so you’d end up with this odd blotchy shadowing. And you can use the basic rasterised translucency, but it can struggle with complex refraction like in this scene.
But then 5.1 dropped this little gem:
“r.RayTracing.Nanite.Mode 1”
This console variable is the answer. It lets you use the full suite of ray tracing features with full resolution Nanite meshes – granted at a slight performance penalty (and with some caveats, like WPO offset not quite working right...).
I don’t know that you’ll be seeing this in next gen games – at least not for a generation or two of graphics cards, but the capability is certainly there!
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Rendered out of Unreal Engine 5.1.1. Using Lumen for global illumination and reflections, RTX ray tracing for translucency and RTX shadows for all the rect lights. Nanite for the meshes and foliage. Simulations were done in Blender using dynamic paint and Mantaflow, then bought into UE5 using Alembic geometry cache.
Some further observations with testing out this scene – Lumen GI doesn’t seem to work when viewed through RTX translucency (through the glass for example) – so for the shots where the camera is outside the tank, I’ve supplemented the GI with old-school point/rect lights to art direct approximate GI.
Hardware: RTX 3060ti and a Ryzen 5800x.
_Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound._
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#terrarium #UE5 #UnrealEngine5")
![Springtime Sakura: UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SGqH_hizmhM/mqdefault.jpg "Springtime Sakura: UNREAL ENGINE 5 [4K]
A peaceful, Ghibli-esqe train ride through the cherry blossoms, running in Unreal Engine 5.2. Lumen for global illumination and reflections; nanite for the meshes. Also trying out the new procedural tools in 5.2!
Couldn’t figure out which lighting setup I liked best so here, have all three instead! I was going for that Ghibli-style colour palette along with that quiet, peaceful vibe… As for the setting, it’s not supposed to be anywhere realistically specific, but let’s just call it ‘Tokyo-ish’.
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.
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0:00 – Dawn
0:59 – Late Morning
1:59 – Evening
#UE5 #Ghibli #CherryBlossoms")
![Rain on a Virtual Bamboo Grove | Rain Ambience for Sleep, Study and Relaxation | UE5 [4K]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ST8x_wWt9ws/mqdefault.jpg "Rain on a Virtual Bamboo Grove | Rain Ambience for Sleep, Study and Relaxation | UE5 [4K]
A moody little bamboo grove in the rain, running real-time in Unreal Engine 5. This is the long-requested ambient version of this scene: https://youtu.be/AShGmWyFamY This 3-hour immersive background ambience is designed for deep sleep, meditation, ASMR, focused study, or pure relaxation.
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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 5.8 on an RTX 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled in Blender. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections, Megalights for lighting. Quixel Megaplants used for some of the bamboo.
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Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/l_torres")
