The Lighthouse

The Story

This project is part of the same creative challenge run by my streamer and illustrator friend. The theme of this one: river and sea.

I arrived at the lighthouse for its symbolism. I loved the idea of an isolated point, alone in the vastness. This scene represents the path I was trying to walk at that moment in game development: trying to find my landmark in the middle of the ocean. It's really not simple, but it's a beautiful thing to live through.

The scene comes to life through a somewhat raging sea all around, with sizeable waves, and at its center, this still refuge.

Under the Hood

I built the scene on Unreal Engine, still with hand-modelled low poly assets. But the real technical challenge here was clearly the sea.

A piece of context: in the meantime, Unreal Engine had moved from version 4 to version 5, which meant relearning certain things on the technical side. A renewal of my bearings, much like the lighthouse searching for its own.

Unreal Engine 5 · Blender · Low poly modelling · Fluid work (water physics)

The Wall

The biggest obstacle was this ocean surrounding the lighthouse: achieving that wild sea while keeping performance reasonable. I had to work the lighting so the scene stayed uniform and pleasant, and compose this island lost in the middle of nowhere without the tech collapsing.

Holding all of it together, the water, the light, the atmosphere, on a single small isolated island, was a real challenge.

What I'm Proud Of

The final result, without hesitation. The scene gives off a very particular atmosphere: when you're on the island, you truly feel the wild sea around you. There's that constant sound of water, that sense of being lost in the middle of nowhere.

And yet, it's a deeply peaceful place. You can simply sit and watch the landscape. That tension between the restless sea and the calm of the refuge is exactly what I wanted to capture.

What I Learned

The Lighthouse pushed me forward technically, and particularly on fluid work: water physics, simulating dynamic elements within a scene. A domain I hadn't explored yet.

It's also the project where I had to deal with the shift from Unreal Engine 4 to 5, and therefore relearn. A good lesson in adaptation: tools evolve, and you have to know how to evolve with them.

Today

Like the other challenge scenes, it was a prototype bounded by the frame of the exercise. It exists for the atmosphere and the emotion it conveys.

But it holds a special place: this isolated lighthouse was me at that time, searching for my light in the middle of the ocean of development. A scene-metaphor as much as a technical exercise.