Create VECNA’s Upside Down world in Unreal Engine 5 (Stranger Things)
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stranger things, unreal engine, upside down

Upside Down in Unreal Engine
Stranger Things season 4 is really proving to be one of the most hyped series of this year. It shattered all Netflix records and hit 287 million hours view time in its first week. And we noticed it too! Last weeks video was about the bone cracking effect from Stranger Things. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from that video so we had to do another Stranger Things related episode.
And there is nothing more Stranger Things than the Upside Down. Exactly what we’ll be showing you how to recreate it. Completely in Unreal Engine with free assets so everybody can follow along.

Practical Upside down Set
On the set of Stranger Things they didn’t shoot on a greenscreen like we did. For these scenes they opted to go for a real set. Doing it that way gives them a ton of advantages. It’s easier for the talent to act since they actually have objects to look at. And for the post production they only have to do a set extension depending what the camera has in frame.

I would love to show more BTS about the actual set but currently there is no BTS footage to be found about this. You could ofcourse do this too depending on the set. It’s always better to have a physical set if possible.
Download Free Dynamic Fog Material
While Unreal Engine isn’t running drag this folder into your Contents folder and boot up Unreal Engine.
Inside Unreal Engine you will now see your folder. Inside the folder create a MATERIAL INSTANCE of the normal material and add the MATERIAL INSTANCE on a Basic Box and tweak the settings to your liking.

Is it just me or does this just make your box invisible? No idea what I’m doing wrong here?
For anybody else that had the same issue, here’s the fix.
Set your engine scalability shadows to high.
I had a lot going on in my map so set everything to medium just to build out the final bits and that was the issue……took hours to find out though! lol
good luck everybody and thank you Cinecom 🙂
I am buying the video creator bundle and i am so excited!!!
The fog material is not really working for me tbh (using the latest UE5 version) , also it seems that it doesn’t include a noise (mask) map, or is the idea to put one in yourself?
Anyway, I also tried that, but no success 🙁
Did I do something wrong?
Thanks guys for all the great and funny content.
Hey Michiel
I forgot to mention in the install Read Me file your starter content needs to be installed. We are using the perlin noise texture for that content in our blueprint to create our fog.
Now if you added the Dynamic fog to your project without the starter content. You can still add the content.
Just install the starter content and then you need to go inside the blueprint of the original material. Under the mask node you can then add the perlin noise texture. You can add it under the material expression texture base tab.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Yannick