RACING TRACK | Giacomo Palmaro

ALPS - RACING TRACK

Made in about 20 H

U.E. 5

Speed Level Design

First Racing Project

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Improve my understanding of Racing Games

Deepening my Level Design knowledge

Improving with Unreal Engine Landscapes

Improving my Speed Level Design abilities

Producing a project for my portfolio

Completing a full low-poly blockout

PRE-PRODUCTION PHASE

I started doing a lot of research about Racing Games with a focus on Level Design, initially dividing between Rally tracks and Closed tracks, gathering a lot of references from both Arcade and Simulation or Semi-simulation racing games.

In this first phase, I was also planning to create a working prototype of a racing car to play the future level, but soon understood that would have take way more time I had and then switched to Unreal Engine default racing car project.

After analysing tracks from other games (es. Asphalt 8, Forza Horizon 5) and quickly making an L.D. Document, I started deciding what kind of track I wanted to realize for my project, its shape, metrics, and environment.

I went for an Arcade-style racing track inspired by real life Rally tracks, settled in the Italian Alps, with few alternative routes and a focus on the environment.

I selected some low-poly packs from my Epic Games library, for later use, and created a simple road segment model, as i planned to use Unreal splines to model my track within the landscape.

PRODUCTION PHASE

I began by working with splines to model the track, using research conducted during pre-production as a foundation.

Then, I built and modeled the landscape surrounding the track, also dividing the environment into sections to add more identity to the level. My focus was on creating a smooth transition between the track and the environment, while emphasizing moments of anticipation and visual impact.

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Once the landscape was ready, I assembled some simple Unreal Blueprints to use for dressing the environment, while integrating more complex elements, like foliage and rocks, using a couple of packs from the Unreal Marketplace.

I spent the remaining time fixing issues such as certain objects not touching the landscape's surface in some areas, and ensuring that metrics and dimensions were consistent with each other. The post-production phase mainly consisted of taking screenshots and creating this portfolio page

I'm sure this project taught me a lot, even though I would've really liked to turn it into a functioning level with custom drivable vehicles.