This project is a focused exploration of visual tools and their interactivity for a 3D level in Unreal 5.1. My goal was to learn how each tool contributes to atmosphere and player readability. Throughout this process, I experimented with post‑processing, particle systems, and procedural spawning to see how they could be triggered and combined to create an engaging space. This small study helped me strengthen my technical foundation for building immersive game worlds.
Unreal Exploration
Introduction
Project Name: Unreal Exploration
Description: 3D Digital Game Level
Client: Independent Project Role: Creator Year: 2026Skills: Blueprints, Niagara System, Post Processing
Tools: Unreal Engine 5.1
Overview
Post Processing
I designed and implemented two custom post‑process materials. One material implements a gradual Fog of War effect that progressively darkens the scene with distance from the player to limit visibility and shape atmosphere. The other is a red‑shifted Chromatic Aberration effect, authored as a base material with a separate material instance so strength can be tuned without modifying the core shader. Both materials were attached to the player character blueprint and applied to the player camera, remaining active at runtime to maintain a consistent mood across the level.
In Ranina Bay, you play as a knight, a prized fighter who has returned home to save his village from an onslaught of monsters.
The Fog of War material blueprint is built by Lerping the post process input, the fog color, and the fade distance setting for a simple customizable fog.
The Chromatic Aberration material is created through two post process masks, one which handles green and blue, and one that grabs the screen size and pixel position to shift the red by a set amount.
Particles
I created an orange explosion VFX using Niagara that triggers on player death to deliver dramatic feedback and a clear gameplay moment. The Niagara system emits a burst of orange particles with a fast velocity and a short lifetime to sell impact. The effect is driven by the character blueprint overlap event on a kill volume that hides the player character, spawns the explosion system at the player location, moves the camera for cinematic emphasis, and then un-hides the character at the respawn point.
When the player character walks into the wall, it activates the death particles before resetting the player.
This blueprint shows how on overlap, the character is hidden and the particles are spawned before resetting the player to their original spawn position.
Spawner
I also built a reusable spawner that instantiates a new white ball each time the player walks into a green ball. The green ball acts as a trigger actor with an overlap event that spawns a white ball actor with inherit simple physics. After each spawn, the script resets the collision which allows the player to repeatedly spawn white balls.
Each time the player character walks into the green ball, the collision spawns a new white ball with physics that the player can then interact with.
This blueprint is attached to the green ball, where the overlap event casts to the white ball actor to spawn one per overlap and then reset.
