Wellington City Council & CS Originals
Art Direction | Concept Art | Real Time Unreal Development
Unreal scene preview from the development phase. This offline-rendered sequence was created for key art exploration and does not represent the final real-time experience.
Whenever we begin a new project, especially when taking on art direction or design, our first step is to immerse ourselves in key visuals and relevant narratives. From there, we aim to understand where our clients are in their creative journey, where they want to go, and how we can best support them at that moment. Mood boards, grounded in strong and reliable references, remain a crucial first step in shaping that vision.
They help spark ideas across all the key elements of a scene and allow clients to project themselves into it.
We started our research by looking at early 1800s European artworks (Samuel Charles, John Webber, Augustus Earle, etc.) that documented the first visual interpretations of New Zealand’s landscapes. At the same time, we kept in mind more contemporary takes on Māori settlements by digital artists such as Vaughan Flanagan, exploring similar periods through a modern lens.
Since the goal was to create a live connection between this digital environment and real-world weather and time of day, it was important to strike a careful balance between historical authenticity and a more contemporary feel, avoiding something overly pictural.
Our inspiration also extended beyond imagery. A particular diary entry proved especially influential, capturing the essence of the area in remarkable detail and offering a more granular, grounded perspective on the location we were bringing to life.
“My earliest recollection of Wellington is that it greatly resembled a fishing village, the early quays followed the curve of the seashore. Right down into town was dense forest – matai – rimu – kahikatea – miro – totara –maire – kowhai – hinau – pukatea – tawa with an endless variety of small trees and shrubs, creepers, ferns and mosses. The valley stretching from Karori to Khandallah, practically in its primeval state, was wonderful, entrancingly beautiful, forest-clad country.
There were five small clearings in the valley – the first at Karori, then Wilton’s clearing, next central Wadestown which was separated by high bush without a road or track from Wilton’s, a small clearing at Crofton and finally Khandallah.
Game was plentiful and provided main supplies for the larder. There was no protection for native birds – pigeon, kaka, tui, weka, ducks – or turkey and wild fowl belonging to homes abandoned after an earthquake in 1848.
Parakeets were plentiful, bellbird and infrequently huia, always seen in pairs. A catapult was an effective weapon before a young boy was old enough to carry a gun. Wild cattle and wild pigs – a great hunting field – to me the bush was and always has been the land of enchantment.
My love of the bush and of plants and trees has continued throughout life and though I know well that for settlement purposes it was necessary for the bush to give way, I cannot help feeling a very great regret. This feeling is poignant when I visit places such as Wellington and see hills, bare and in places barren, which I remember clothed with entrancingly beautiful forest. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is steep, rough, poor lands have been ruthlessly, I would even say criminally, deprived of the natural protecting forest and so have become almost wholly valueless, a source of danger and damage; an eyesore instead of a source of delight”.
Ebenezer Maxwell 1862-1937 –https://natlib.govt.nz/records/20519032
Our goal was to create a hybrid look, strongly influenced by natural lighting from our key references, while introducing specific stylized elements such as reduced color palettes and outlines. The scene being in constant motion meant we had to balance the right illustrative choices while still meeting the technical requirements of a real-time Unreal environment. Under these technical constraints, it was essential to establish a clear art direction page to guide production and maintain consistency throughout the project.
Early 1800s artworks, including engravings, was interesting in how it simplifies landscapes in depth, using lines of varying thickness to define larger shapes rather than focusing on texture detail. We also looked at the Hudson River School as a second key influence. These paintings inspired a softer, more atmospheric approach to color and light. The broader brush strokes allow for interpretation, focusing on atmospheric hues shifts with cooler blues in the shadows at dawn and vibrant warmer purples at dusk.
As we moved into sketching, we began blending these two influences,
supporting the historical timeframe of the scene while maintaining a level of artistic interpretation.
The Wellington City Council team provided us with a City Digital Twin of the Wellington area as our starting point. Collaborating with them was a great experience, allowing us to ground our approach in reliable, existing data from the very beginning. The City Double gave us a solid foundation and removed much of the uncertainty that often comes with designing environments based on real-world locations.
After refining this digital model, we focused on the library area, identifying key environmental strengths to shape the composition. From a technical perspective, working in Unreal from the concept phase onward was a real advantage. It allowed us to quickly understand the constraints of the live weather system and its connection to time of day, while leveraging the existing data early on and maintaining continuous feedback throughout the process.
This approach significantly smoothed the transition from concept to production.
We conducted additional research with the support of Wellington City Council botanist Joakim Liman, studying the remaining natural environment along the Wellington coastline. This helped us identify important landscape features not present in the scan, but that could still inform and guide our creative decisions. This approach allowed us to represent the area as accurately as possible, while also creating meaningful opportunities for environmental storytelling.
Our workflow involved using Gaea to reconstruct the heightmap from the existing data and generate supporting maps, such as flow maps and beach sections. It also allowed us to remove all human infrastructure and increase the visual fidelity of the terrain, while stripping out the geological uplift caused by the 1855 earthquake — a powerful 8.2 event linked to the movement of the Wairarapa Fault that significantly reshaped the Wellington region.
Once the environment was refined and optimized, this data was imported into Unreal to drive shaders and landscape materials.
The next step was to lock in the camera point of view and consider how it would shape the audience’s experience as they enter the space. Camera position, height, angle, and focal length all play a crucial role in defining the frame and guiding the viewer’s attention.
From the first iteration, we also introduced the screen shape as a matte. Its unique form quickly became a key compositional element, influencing the balance and flow of the scene. Exploring several options and iterations allowed us to refine the main story beats. As the installation was being built on site, we carried out a series of tests to evaluate the audience experience and ultimately lock in the final camera position.
Each option includes a human figure as a scale reference. Establishing scale is essential, especially in early stages when the scene lacks enough elements to clearly convey distance and proportion. Repeating the same figure across different areas of the frame helps ground perception and reduce subjective interpretation. We pay close attention to avoiding scale inconsistencies early on, as they can introduce issues later during the detailing phase.
Due to real-time constraints on water simulation, we chose to keep the river flow in the midground instead of being too close. The river acted like a guide, leading our eyes toward the frame. By offsetting the camera from the riverbed, we distribute key points of interest across the frame, highlighting the foreshore and the waka, while balancing the composition with denser vegetation on the opposite bank.
As this experience focused on accurate landscape representation, we had to stay true to the place where Waikoukou Stream meets the sea before any artistic driven decision. This place is at the exact location of today’s central library. To celebrate the uniqueness of the coastline, we choose to prioritise props and man-made elements such as houses, storehouses, and waka, over animated characters.
It was essential, however, to collaborate with mana whenua (The Māori group that has customary authority and responsibility for the land) to better understand how this area connects to their stories. Thanks to Arihia McClutchie from the Wellington City Council team, we had the opportunity to meet with Richard Te One, Te Karanga, and Matiu from the Tekau Trust in Hīkoikoi Reserve.
Through our discussions, we learned that this specific area did not hold particular significance for their people. Our approach, suggesting a scattered, lived-in community in the distance, was confirmed as appropriate. It was also valuable to understand the locations of key pā (village) in the region, reinforcing that our role was to evoke a broader sense of community presence, rather than depict specific settlements. This guidance informed both our framing and the placement of man-made elements as the concept evolved. We also learned that flax farming was widespread in the area at the time, which led us to revisit and refine the foliage dressing to incorporate this important historical detail.
Building on the groundwork (camera POV, vegetation species, and environmental storytelling) we moved to solidify the vision through keyframe concept art. We started with a neutral midday lighting setup, focusing on reshaping the landscape, the shoreline-to-vegetation transition, and the overall balance of the scene.
Introducing more accurate 3D foliage quickly allowed us to refine depth and negative space within the images. Feedback was fast and efficient internally, moving from our 3D base into 2D paintovers, a great way to iterate, simplify detail, and emphasise key elements using all available 3D passes (Lights passes, Cryptomattes IDs, etc).
Each successful 2D concept was then quickly integrated back into the Unreal scene for further paintover and exploration. This approach kept the creative flow grounded within Unreal’s real-time constraints, while making the most of Lumen capabilities.
We then developed variations of the scene across key times of day and weather conditions. Working with a static 3D camera enabled us to emphasis on the evolution of the color palette and cloud coverage throughout the day, creating a wide range of emotional variations from a single point of view.
Drawing from the Hudson River School movement, we emphasized strong shifts in lighting and color to reshape the scene throughout the day. Each mood was designed to feel distinct, with materials reacting differently under changing light conditions.
For instance, the sand subtly shifts in tone across scenarios, allowing for stronger local contrast or softer, more diffuse reflections, all while maintaining overall visual consistency. An additional layer of line work was also applied to distant elements to help unify the scene.
At 37Degrees Studio, it’s part of our DNA to combine R&D with visual development, something we refer to as Creative Development. This approach sets us up for success when building immersive worlds tailored to a specific context.
This project was no exception. While addressing design and artistic challenges, we were simultaneously developing the scene in Unreal. Most of the work was created directly within the engine, grounded in the Epic Unreal ecosystem, allowing us to move seamlessly from pre-production into production while continuously refining the look through to final.
This approach also allowed us to integrate closely with the Wellington City Council team, contributing to specific technical aspects of the project while maintaining creative control over the overall look and feel.
Throughout the process, we identified the need for additional assets to enhance the richness and diversity of the scene. We then built and optimised new assets from scratch, including stylised versions of nikau and pōhutukawa.
At the end, the final look in Unreal combined model and texture stylization, post-process materials, and careful adjustments to the dynamic sky controlling lighting scattering and sky influence. Working across the various levels of full 3D built enabled us to shift the scene away from a purely digital aesthetic toward a our stylized goal.
This is a preview of the final realtime scene as seen on location at Wellington Central Library – Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui. This preview includes the unique shape of the screen from the location and is a timelapse version of all the various times of day from the Realtime setup.
This is a timelapse on location at Wellington Central Library – Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui.
