Eclipse Over the Ramparts - Castlevania Inspired

A castle burns under a blood eclipse. Smoke drags low along the battlements as the last light bends around the moon, and whatever's driven the birds into the sky hasn't reached the walls yet — but it's close.
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This piece grew out of wanting to chase a specific mood: the kind of gothic dread Castlevania's key art trades in, built entirely in-engine and pushed through a full cinematic pipeline rather than treated as a single beauty render. The goal wasn't to replicate any one image, but to land in that same register — backlit silhouette, a sky doing most of the emotional work, and just enough fire and rim light to keep the architecture readable without breaking the darkness.
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Process
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Camera staged using the Pro Filmbacks & Crops plugin by Akintayo Adewole, for accurate filmback framing on the CineCameraActor.
General lighting workflow, calibration, and VFX built around Easy Toolbag by William Faucher — the lighting reference spheres were essential for keeping reflections and exposure honest while balancing the red atmosphere, and EasyAtmos/EasyFog (part of the same Easy suite) drove the volumetric layers.
Akintayo Adewole: https://www.artstation.com/darkerpixels
Pro Filmbacks & Crops: https://www.fab.com/listings/bbca2efa-3479-45d3-8d48-11d416d84bca

William Faucher: https://www.artstation.com/will_faucher
Easy Toolbag: https://www.fab.com/listings/b6d9b879-1b66-4b47-b8f3-572a3b038e7f
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Skybox material built on Chaotic Skies by Velarion as a foundation.
Environment assets from the Modular Medieval Environment pack by FreshCan.
The eclipse's red atmosphere took the most iteration of anything in the shot — getting rim light and shadow density to hold the castle's silhouette without either flattening it or drowning the scene in red.
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Final pass: color work in Unreal, grade in DaVinci Resolve, polish in Photoshop.
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Music: Bensound
License code: SYQL9C011JPEFIC9
Artist: : Benjamin Tissot
"New Dawn"