SMU Guildhall Graduate Catalog 2025 | Page 16

Schwerin Castle: Historical Recreation With Dynamic Materials in Sebastian Luca’ s Style

Yue“ Emily”

Yue“ Emily” YIN

Art Creation

Schwerin Castle: Historical Recreation With Dynamic Materials in Sebastian Luca’ s Style

For my thesis project, I created an environment in Unreal Engine 5 that recreated Schwerin Castle, a historic landmark in Germany known for its blend of architectural styles. The environment featured three custom dynamic materials: snow accumulation, a dissolving transition effect, and growing vines.
I chose this project because of my passion for environment art and my desire to understand the full pipeline of a largescale, real-time scene— from research and reference gathering to material creation and visual storytelling.
Over the course of a year, I developed this project with the goal of gaining professional-level experience in architectural recreation and deepening my skills as an environment artist. I began by
collecting extensive reference images of Schwerin Castle to study its size, layout, and design elements. This research phase informed my modeling process and helped to ensure historical accuracy.
Throughout project development, I strengthened my understanding of Unreal Engine’ s Material Editor and Blueprints. I transitioned from following tutorials to building my own custom shader logic, which significantly improved my technical art skills.
This project could be highly relevant to the video game industry, especially in titles that emphasize environmental storytelling or historical accuracy. It demonstrates my ability to blend artistic vision with technical execution in a realtime engine.
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