Uplift old assets

I was assigned to enhance the visuals of an older existing project while preserving the original textures and model assets. Here are the results with my take with updated materials in UE5.

screen capture of existing visuals

Updated lighting, Hair, Skin, Eye, and Clothing shader

The new version is still using the same base textures as the old one, but with the materials completely reworked.

New skin material

  • The new skin shader makes use of Unreal’s Subsurface Profile material type

  • Tiling skin pore texture material logic to create believable specular and roughness response

New cothing material

  • Makes use of Unreal’s Cloth material type

  • Light fuzz effect which is commonly seen on fabrics

  • Tiling fabric normal for extra detail

New hair material

  • Uses Unreal’s Hair material type

  • Female hair uses Groom + Hair strand data

  • Male hair uses legacy hair cards and existing textures but in a more modern way in the material

  • Anisotropic effect is faked and outputted thorough the emissive channel

New Eye shader

  • Uses MetaHuman’s eyeball material

Tower of Aether

Solo-Developing a cosy dungeon crawler RPG with relaxing Lo-fi music.