Building a Stylized Environment, Volume 3

The Gnomon Workshop is pleased to announce the release of "Building a Stylized Environment, Volume 3", Ideation to Creation: Assembling the Scene in Unreal Engine with Martin Teichmann.

In this series, Martin Teichmann, Environment Modeler at Naughty Dog, takes you through his complete production workflow to build a stylized game ready environment; a process that requires not only technical and artistic knowledge, but also insight into the mechanics of game play in order to deliver the best experience for the player. In this final volume of a three-part series, Martin guides you through the process of assembling the scene in Unreal Engine 4. He starts by setting up the Unreal project and dresses the scene by placing all the main elements that were created in Volume Two. From there, he covers the first lighting pass by importing an HDR image to be used as a material for the Sky Sphere in Unreal. Martin then places the mid-elements and castle details, followed by the first bake. Additional assets are added, and the rock and stone materials are set up and painted to the 3D mesh using vertex painting. Scene lighting now gets updated along with a final material polish pass while taking care of the gameplay adjustments and optimizations needed for a smooth game experience. For those looking to develop their environment art workflow, this title concludes the series with techniques derived from Martin’s in-depth industry experience, providing the student with the necessary knowledge to create a game ready environment with Unreal.