What Would a Lore-Accurate Imperial City Look Like? | A Portrait of Tamriel in UNREAL ENGINE 5

Long requested and awaited… the Imperial City! Part of an ongoing project to visualise a more realistic and lore accurate scale to Tamriel’s cities – here we have the Imperial City, capital of the Tamrielic Empire – now with sixteen times the detail! Pretty much the biggest Elder Scrolls project I’ve done so far in terms of scale. The purpose of this was to get a large-scale concept of what a city of this size would really be like in real life, removed from gameplay and technical limitations. References included Ancient Rome and Tenochtitlan, and of course, the original depiction from Oblivion and its concept art. From a playability standpoint, I’m not sure that you’d actually want something this big – it’s a lot of work for the artists and you run the risks of making a big, empty world with not much to do. But for lore visualisations like this – not really an issue! Rendered out in Unreal Engine 5.4 on a 3090. Using a mix of third-party models and custom assets modelled in Blender, textured in Mixer. Nanite was used for all models and foliage; Lumen for global illumination and reflections. Please NOTE: This is a FANMADE cinematic lore visualisation for the Elder Scrolls. It is NOT a mod! Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Soundtrack: ‘Our Planet’ – by Jo Wandrini.