Mangrove Forest Reef In UE5

Wanted to create a Mangrove and Tropical Reef biome after getting caught up in Shark Week. Also was inspired by some of the stunning shots in the GTA 6 trailers. Loved going back into some animation polish passes on my old tropical fish and sharks as well as adding some new species.

Animating the Sting Rays was a particular head scratcher for me at first. Luckily the Wave deformer in Blender provided the perfect solution for the movement, I then just added a vertex group to just isolate the sides and then offset the wave deformer and selected the frames in the timeline where the wave height values line up in sync. I then used this same technique just flipped on it’s side for the Eel. :D