Thumbnails!
Now that I have an idea and a ton of reference and images to work with, its time for me to start designing some possible thumbnails for me to work with when it comes to blocking out my environment. In total I have created 5 Thumbnails ranging from panoramas above the canyon and utopia, to up close and perspective views of different features.
For now, none of this looks abandonded, because the way I want to create this and my process specifically, is to create everything in a working state, then start to decimate and break stuff down to a reasonable level, as I find it hard personally to imagine damage and destruction without being able to put a hand on it myself in a model, especially with a large scale project such as this one.
With all the planning complete, it is time for me to start blocking out the basics of my environment, and also look at terraining in unreal, considering that this will be the engine of which we will be rendering out our projects in at the end!