Assets I used:
1.Dark fantasy greatsword pack：
2. Morbid Pack：
My process of building environment:
I tried for a long time to create volumetric lighting to achieve the Tyndall beam effect, but I wasn’t successful. So I had to make a fake light beam myself:
I added cube models, stretched them, then duplicated and rotated them six times to form the light beam model.
I used two texture assets from UE5’s built-in engine content pack to create a light beam.
The effect I get:
Create packed level actor
During the asset setup stage, I followed this tutorial and learned a really useful method called “Create Packed Level Actor.” It’s a great way to combine many different assets—it can regroup various assets into one big, rich new asset and pack it into the level, so it can be moved around freely.
The “Group” function in UE is really hard to use, because when rotating or moving, the pivot points of the parts need to be manually re-aligned. Otherwise, after rotation, their positions will shift and break the original composition.
I used this method to build almost all the complex assets in the game, such as staircases, the knight statue hall, some complex combined statues, tables, and the platform where the serpent is placed.
However, this method also has some downsides. When I try to place an actor inside a packed level actor, sometimes it stops working. Also, when complex actors are nested together, modifying them can cause some models to disappear. If I go into the original level where the model was made, all the parts are still there—but when I drag the actor into a new level, some of them are missing.
This cost me a lot of time when making the knight statue hall. I nested individual knight statues with a full row of statues and added blueprint components for the torches. The problem was, when I tried to modify the actor at the second level, going back to the first level wouldn’t save my changes—so I ended up losing the parts I just modified.
Also, in this setup, the blueprint components for the torches couldn’t display correctly. So what I did was place the torches separately instead.
When building the stairs, I also used the “Create Packed Level Actor” function. I created a stair module, so I can combine them to form multiple staircases.
When I first started building, I honestly didn’t know where to begin. The assets were like thin sheets of paper, so I had to manually align and connect the stair sections. Since there were gaps between the bottom of the assets and the stairs, I had to use single-sided walls to close those openings.
However, because these assets are quite modular and open-ended, there are many possibilities when it comes to rebuilding and reshaping the staircases.