I tried to focus on composition in this shot, using the storm blasted stump in the foreground to bring darker values into the scene and frame the composition so your eye is guided towards the center. Thomas Cole's paintings heavily inspired this.

I'm a huge fan of all the Halo games so I tried to blend all of their art styles together in this piece. A lot of the surrounding environments was inspired by Halo 1-3 while the structure was modeled after buildings in Halo 5 on planet Meridian.

A close up of the top of the Gravity Lift.

There are no stairs leading from the ground to the top levels of the building so soldiers can use a latch accessible from the interior to climb atop the roof.

A goal of mine while building this structure was to design every part to look as if it has a real purpose or function. If this is supposed to be a mobile base, it needs to use its small space efficiently.

A close up of the bottom of the Gravity Lift.

Around 95% of the building is using the same trim sheet material. Further down I'll show my process putting that together and why I chose not to use it for some assets.

In multiplayer games of Halo, being able to quickly traverse the map to gain vantage points is key so I thought it would make sense to put a gravity lift on the far side to quickly take players to the highest level.

Some of the assets I modeled and textured using the trim sheet material. Rendered in Unreal.

Some of the assets I modeled and textured using the trim sheet material. Rendered in Unreal.

Some of the assets I modeled and textured using the trim sheet material. Rendered in Unreal.

I wanted to give my environment a clear foreground, midground, and background and use a full range of values. Here you can see my playing around with the lighting and composition to achieve that.

I feel a trademark of Halo is the lush green mountain environments surrounded by blue sky while sitting on the doorstep of the Halo ring. The juxtaposition of a familiar landscape next to a massive alien structure was something I wanted to emulate.

I got inspiration for composition from paintings by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Cole. I love the way they used light to illuminate the mountains and highlight their magisterial/heavenly quality. I wanted to emphasize this when lighting the Halo Ring.

Composition notes I made on the movement to the focal point of the piece.

As mentioned earlier almost the entirety of the building was textured using one trim sheet material. I used two trim sheets in one material so I could have many options for detailing. This is 1 out of those two that I modeled.

For the main material texture I actually exported all the masks it used from Painter and recreated it in UE4 so I could instance the material and change the colors quickly. Every asset using the trim sheet material had 4 UV sets including the light map.

My trim sheet blueprint. This also shows how i recreated the main texture in Unreal with parameters exposed.

All the foliage I made for this project.

Slideshow of my modeling progress.

Slideshow of my modeling progress.

I used these images as reference for texturing my assets. Something I struggled with initially was how worn I should make my models. I wanted them to look realistic, but not so destroyed that it made the composition too messy or not feel like Halo.

When I first decided I was going to use trim sheets to texture my assets I went into Halo 5 custom games and looked around at their environments. I was really trying to figure out when/where to use a trim sheet and when to texture an asset in painter.

I noticed the main shapes of the structures in halo were often very round/abstract shaped and they would reserve the more traditional geometric scifi forms for detail. These main shapes also were very thick and armored.

Some reference for modeling. Something I really liked about 343's style of hard surface is how industrial yet futuristic their structures look. Each building looks incredibly sturdy. I really tried to pay attention to shape language here.

Some images from real life I took of mechanical objects. I was focusing on use of color on industrial machinery here.

Some rough thumbnails I drew up when first planning the environment.