Little Paris

This is my first experience with a game engine. I took some of the old buildings in Bucharest and created an idealized scene of what it might look like today. It was a great learning experience that taught me the hard way what it means to create a complete environment.

"Little Paris" was the nickname given to Bucharest in its heyday, during the interwar period, due both to its strong ties to Paris and the strong ties it maintained with France. Then communism came and pretty much ruined everything. This environment is more of a collage of parts from that period, brought into an idealized present day. As such, the buildings are not new, but aren't dilapidated either, as they are now in real life.

I decided to use Cryengine 2 for this project, since I liked its lighting system a lot more than UDK's. Even though it doesn’t support Lightmapping and so, no Global Illumination, I felt it had a much more natural feel to it than UDK. It’s also better suited to open environments.