🏆Trophy System — Stage 01🏆UE 5.3

Concept & Trophy Generation Foundation🌿 

This stage began with a simple task that later became the foundation of the entire system.

The initial requirement was to create a modular trophy setup:
five base trophies, each divided into four parts, so they could be recombined into variations.
No detailed design, style, or visual direction was provided — only a general note:
make it simple, clear, and visually understandable.

Because of that, I had full freedom in defining the concept, style, and visual language.

Concept & Design Approach🌿 

Instead of relying on templates, I built everything from scratch.
I had references, but I deliberately didn’t copy them — I worked mostly from intuition.

At that moment, I didn’t feel strong external inspiration, so I made a decision to rely on internal vision instead.
This led to creating original trophy designs that didn’t follow typical patterns.

As a result:

• all five trophies were designed from zero

• each was split into four interchangeable parts

• all elements were built to visually match and combine naturally

The entire set was completed in about one week.

Part of the designs was approved immediately, while some required further iteration.
But overall, the direction proved to be stronger and more original than expected.

Material & Technical Exploration🌿 

The trophies were intended to be gold, which introduced a key challenge —
not modeling, but material behavior.

Initially, I experimented with advanced gold materials in Blender:

• strong reflections

• detailed highlights

• physically rich surface response

These versions looked high-end and expressive, but were not approved.
The requirement shifted toward a simpler material.

At this point, I made a technical decision:

Instead of finalizing materials in Blender, moved material development into Unreal Engine,
since the final environment and lighting would exist there.

This significantly improved control and consistency.

Working with Gold — Reflection Problem🌿 

The most complex part of this stage was achieving believable gold.

Gold behaves almost like a mirror:

• it cannot be too matte (looks cheap)

• it cannot be too flat (loses depth)

• it depends heavily on environment reflections

Because of this, I had to:

• study how Unreal handles reflections and lighting

• experiment with different setups

• balance roughness, metallic values, and light interaction

After multiple iterations, I achieved a result where:

• the trophies look clean and solid when static

• but come alive when rotated — catching light and reflecting dynamically

This moment was important — it showed how much the final visual depends not only on the model, but on environment and rendering system.

Form & Light Interaction🌿 

Another key design decision was avoiding flat geometry.

For example, the laurel crown elements (inspired by classical Roman trophies):

• were not placed in a single plane

• each element had slight variation in angle

• forms were rotated and offset intentionally

This allowed:

• better light catching

• richer reflections

• more dynamic visual behavior

The same principle applied to the trophies themselves —
they were designed not just as shapes, but as objects interacting with light.

Result of Stage 01🌿 

At the end of this stage:

• 5 original trophies were created

• each divided into 4 modular parts

• visual style defined from scratch

• gold material system established inside Unreal

• foundation for procedural generation prepared

What started as a simple modeling task turned into a deeper exploration of:

• form

• material

• light

• and system thinking

This became the first building block of the full Trophy System.

The next step expanded this into a complete interactive level.

Observation

While working through this manually, I started thinking beyond the task itself.

If even 58 entries take time to maintain, what happens in large-scale productions?

Games like:

• World of Warcraft

• Hogwarts Legacy..

operate with thousands of entries — constantly updated, refined, and iterated.

At that point, it became clear: manual input is not the real workflow.

Research & Approach

I started exploring DataTable workflows more deeply, using:

• Unreal Engine documentation

• external resources

• AI tools (ChatGPT)

The key discovery was understanding that DataTable is not just a storage — it is part of a data pipeline.

Core Workflow Discovery

The most important realization: Data Tables can be exported and imported between Unreal Engine and external tools.

Unreal → External (Excel / CSV)

• extract structured data

• organize it more efficiently

• edit at scale

External → Unreal

• reimport updated data

• instantly update the system

This transforms the workflow from manual editing → into controlled data management.

Critical Limitation

During testing, an important constraint became clear: Partial updates are not supported.

When reimporting:

• the entire table must be updated

• missing fields will reset

• incomplete data will overwrite existing structure

This means:

• the dataset must always remain complete

• consistency is critical