Jacknife - Mirror's Edge Fan Art
Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games of all time. It has a timeless visual aesthetic because of a beautiful colour palette and detailed lighting. Considering the game was made in UE3, I thought I would be able to try recreating one of my favorite levels in UE5.
I started by going into the game and downloading a free camera mod, using this to get pictures for me to use as references and create a photogrammetry scan of the level. This allowed me to make sure the scene I was creating was faithful to the original in its scale and asset placement. I made a greyblock from there then started on making assets.
My intentions were to mimic the art style and aesthetic as much as I could while also adding more detail and more assets to the scene to make it seem more lively. The original level was fairly barren, so with modern hardware I wanted to push it a bit more. The scene heavily uses Lumen GI and reflections and is very reliant on it, mirroring how the original game was very similar in using the baked GI to achieve its look, but with the added benefit of doing in real time.
I used Nanite for certain assets where I felt high density poly counts improved the visual quality of the game. The fences, cranes and some rubble were the main assets I used Nanite for. I've made the mistake before of overusing Nanite but I think with this approach I've been able to use it in a efficient way.
It performs really well in the viewport, on my system I can run it at 1440p, 30fps with all the ray traced effects on and TSR enabled. This seems pretty fair for a modest mid range system like mine with a 3070 in it.
This took a little while as I wanted to ensure I could showcase all of my abilities with texturing and modelling a variety of assets and I think I've showcased that well.
I made nearly 90% of the assets myself with a few being assets I downloaded from Sketchfab, but I still retextured them and adjusted the topology to make it performant for the level.
Portrait Pic
Build Up GIF of Scene Outside being Made
Build Up GIF of Scene Inside being Made
Highlight reel of the scene
Real Time day and Night cycle using Sky Atmosphere
Detail Lighting, Unlit, wireframe and nanite mode views
Render 1 - Added puddles and more roughness variation around the scene. As he original level contained water in the center, I thought it would make sense for the area it self to be slightly damp. As well as, adding more variation to the scene.
Render 2 - I added some tarps around the scene to make it a bit more colourful and deviate a bit from the original level
Render 3 - added some sandbags and leaked sands in parts of the map as I thought it would be interesting additions to a construction site.
Render 4 - Sandbags were also added around the map.
Render 5
Render 6
Render 7
Render 8
Render 9
Render 10
Render 11
Render 12
Render 13
Render 14
Render 15
Render 16 - Night Lighting
Photogrammetry scan of original level. I used this as a base to create the greyblock and to use as reference for the scale.
Greyblock of the scene.
Assets that I made
Some leverage nanite for higher visual quality of the scene.
The flag used a World Position Offset material to fake wind, this was cheaper to run and looked good as well.
Showcase of the flag material
Flag material in editor
More assets that were made.
Mixture of assets made for Nanite and using LOD's.
Containers used 1 material, further showcase of it below
Container material. Using a mask i was able to change the colour of the material to whatever I wanted.
More assets that were made.
The Pigeons use SSS from a subsurface profile, this gives them much higher quality.
The vehicles all use a clear coat material and Lumen RT translucency and reflections for higher quality.