Breakdown: Setting Up a Detailed Windmill Environment in 3D

Introduction

My name is Adelyn Sultan. I actually started my career in a completely different field. I'm a former Civil Engineer and hold a master's degree in construction. But about four years ago, I decided to make a big change and focus on what I've always been truly passionate about: art and video games.

I've loved drawing since childhood, working with pencils, watercolor, oil, acrylics, and pastels. You can see some of my traditional artworks on my ArtStation. Eventually, I wanted to find a way to bring together my artistic side and my love for games.

In 2021, I took a one-year illustration course at Bang Bang Education, where I was first introduced to Blender. During that time, I created my very first 3D scene with a post-apocalyptic theme, and that's when I had this moment of realization: this is it, this is what I want to do, to build and design game worlds.

After completing the illustration course, I started looking for a school that focused specifically on 3D modeling. In 2022, I joined the Game Art program at Knower School, where I gained the foundational knowledge of creating 3D assets. The school also hosted various competitions, both individual and team-based, and I took part in one called "What Happened Here?"

The idea was to create a scene where something unusual had taken place, and the judges and audience had to guess what exactly it was. There were four of us on the team, and each member was responsible for creating props and textures.

I worked on props and architectural elements, and also took on the role of assembling the entire scene in Unreal Engine, setting up the lighting and visual effects. In a way, I acted as the lead environment artist. It was an incredibly fun and rewarding experience, and in the end, our team won first place! You can see the project here.

After finishing Knower School, I knew I wanted to keep growing and take my skills to a professional level, to learn directly from mentors who work in the game industry. That search eventually led me to Think Tank Training Centre, and I couldn't be happier about that decision.

During my studies there, I created four large projects that I'm absolutely in love with. Each time I chose a new project theme, I looked for a reference that would not only challenge me to learn something new but also let me apply my strengths and express my artistic vision.

Windmill After the Rain

In my second-to-last term, my advanced project was quite large and unique, so for the final project, the goal was to create something equally ambitious and visually engaging, a scene that would capture the viewer’s attention through its shapes and level of detail. That’s how I decided on "The Windmill." Unfortunately, I don't know who the author of this concept art is.

One of the main challenges was to create everything myself, from assets and materials to foliage. This meant I needed to learn a new tool, SpeedTree, and improve my skills in creating tileable materials in Substance 3D Designer.

For working with references, my mentor suggested using Miro, and it turned out to be an amazing and very convenient platform for organizing and collaborating on projects, especially when several people work together on the same scene.

The main reference only showed the front part of the windmill, but I wanted to create a fully realized, complete building that looked believable from every angle. The challenging part was figuring out the construction of the back section, so I researched a variety of additional references, scaffolding, beams, and wooden planks, to make sure everything looked logical and structurally sound.

At the beginning, I collected around 30-40 references, but as the project progressed, I gradually narrowed them down to just seven, keeping only the most essential ones that best matched the atmosphere and mood of my scene. In the past, I found it difficult to remove anything because everything seemed important and inspiring, but I've learned that having too many references can actually make the creative process harder.

Before starting the blockout, I carefully analyzed the main reference and broke it down into color zones. This helped me plan how each material would be created, whether through masks, vertex painting, props, or foliage. I also divided the entire scene into modules, which made it much easier to organize the workflow and maintain a clear structure throughout the project.

Dividing the Windmill

Since the scene was quite large, it was challenging to determine how many modular elements I actually needed, especially for the wooden structures at the back of the building that aren't visible in the main reference.

To manage this, I divided the entire windmill into four main parts: the central building, the right extension, the left extension, and the tower. Then I broke down the walls of each section separately into modular pieces.

This stage was especially important for me, as it allowed me to visualize the overall composition and technical approach before diving into modeling and detailing. It set a strong foundation for the rest of the work and helped ensure consistency across all parts of the scene.

For the tower, I assembled all the modular pieces into a Blueprint (BP). Each Blueprint had its pivot point placed at the center of the tower's circular base, which made positioning and alignment much easier during the assembly process.

The Foliage

When working on the foliage, I followed the natural logic of how grass grows in a field, varying its height, density, and color to create a more organic appearance. I created several different versions of grass to add visual diversity. For the shortest type, I made boxwood variations, one with a lighter, drier tone and another in a fresh green shade.

For every type of grass, I first created a high-poly model in Maya, then baked it onto a plane and textured it in Substance 3D Painter. This workflow allowed me to keep the foliage lightweight while maintaining a realistic and detailed look.

After finishing the textures, I moved on to SpeedTree, where I worked on creating the meshes for all types of vegetation. SpeedTree was a new tool for me, so I followed tutorials by the amazing vegetation artist Michael Gerard.

The workflow in this program proved to be quite straightforward, at times even intuitive, yet engaging and creative. To save some time and add even more variety to the scene, I also incorporated some of the grass assets from my previous advanced project, Oasis.

For the bushes, I used a sample directly from SpeedTree and slightly adjusted the parameters, replacing the textures with the ones I had created in Substance 3D Painter.

The tree, however, I built entirely from scratch. It features several intertwined branches, and I also created the branch and leaf atlas in SpeedTree. I paid special attention to the placement of the yellow leaves, positioning more of them on the upper branches, as these are the areas most exposed to sunlight. The tree bark texture was created following tutorials by Johnny.

For the moss, I decided to make it a combination of geometry and texture to give it a more realistic and interesting look. I created three types of moss meshes: dense (with less space between the blades), porous (with more space), and moss for small patches of ground to fill gaps between boards or stone blocks. The moss textures, like the bark textures, were also made following Johnny's tutorials.

Unwrapping

For the walls of the first floor and the tower, I used planes with Nanite enabled in Unreal Engine. Each wall has a single UV channel for the tileable texture. In Unreal's modeling mode, I added extra polygons to prepare for Displacement Maps and vertex painting, which gave the walls a more realistic and detailed appearance.

The main construction elements in my project are wooden boards and beams. I sculpted all the wooden elements in ZBrush, then used a decimated version as the low-poly model, which I baked in Substance 3D Painter.

I created four sets of boards and beams: for the front of the building (which have the most unique shapes and sizes), the first floor boards (the longest boards), the boards for the large staircase and rear platform, and the boards for the upper floors of the tower.

To save time and avoid creating every single wooden element individually, I focused on sculpting only the pieces I planned to reuse elsewhere in the scene. This allowed me to maintain consistency while working efficiently.

During sculpting, I focused on the overall shapes, adding chips, angular edges, and broken sections, to ensure these imperfections would remain visible even from a distance.

I created the UVs in Blender and performed the UV unwrap in Maya. Each board has two UV channels: one for Baked Detail Maps and another for tileable textures used with vertex painting.

Texturing

All the tileable textures in this project were created in Substance 3D Designer. The main ones I worked on were brick, wood, soil, and roof tiles. I started by collecting references for each type and picking out the key details I wanted to focus on, things like color, tone, and surface texture.

One of the main textures I worked on was brick. Substance 3D Designer can be tricky for me, so I followed tutorials by material artist Johnny to guide my process.

I usually begin with the Height and Normal Maps, defining the forms from large to medium to small. For the large forms, I focused on the brick sizes using various nodes, including Tile Generator.

Then I refined the edges of the bricks with nodes like Crystal → Vector Warp Grayscale → Slope Blur Grayscale, making them uneven, broken, and imperfect. I used the Flood Fill node as a mask to control where the damaged areas would appear, giving the bricks a more natural and realistic look.

This approach allowed me to create textures that feel detailed and believable, while still being versatile and tileable for the scene.

Next, I worked on the medium and small details. Using various noise nodes such as Cloud, Gaussian, Moisture, and Black and White, I blended different layers to create a surface that resembles natural stone. Once the Height Map was complete, I moved on to the base color.

As with the Height Map, I started with the general forms for the color. First, I determined a solid base color, using Photoshop to find the average pixel values from my references. I then blended this base with a Gradient Map to add variation across the bricks.

For the finer details, I applied additional noise in different shades and subtly adjusted the color diversity of individual bricks. For grout and dirt, I used several noises, including Moisture noise and Black and White spots, applied via a mask that I had created during the Height Map stage.

The Roughness Map was created similarly, from general to specific. I began with Cloud noise to establish the overall Roughness, then added finer details according to the final height, resulting in a more realistic and natural surface.

Substance 3D Designer is such a powerful and versatile tool that, for example, you can create a set of brick textures and, by changing just a single parameter or node, generate a completely different material without starting from scratch. Using this approach, I created three types of brick textures:

1. Standard brick
2. The same brick with added color variation
3. Brick with more grout

You can see more of my textures here.

Assembling the Final Scene

Once all the modular assets and props were ready, I exported them into Unreal Engine, replacing the placeholder white blocks. To save time and enrich the scene, I reused some assets from my previous project, Arabic Desert House, and also created new props specifically for this scene.

I carefully arranged the objects to fill empty spaces while maintaining a visually engaging composition, making sure each frame would encourage the viewer to explore the scene in detail.

For the oven, I modeled additional individual bricks and walls as planes and applied a displacement map to enhance depth and realism. The cart and door were built using pre-made wooden boards, while the metal elements were modeled in Maya and textured in Substance 3D Painter.

This approach allowed me to combine previously created assets with newly designed props seamlessly, creating a detailed, believable environment while optimizing workflow and maintaining consistency across the scene.

Since the building is quite large and elongated in shape, it was challenging to find a good camera angle that would capture everything nicely. To solve this, I decided to place several cameras both near and far from the house.

For one of the main shots, where the entire structure is visible, I positioned the camera slightly lower, looking upward, to emphasize the massiveness of the building. I also wanted to showcase the surrounding area with the trees, so I placed another camera to capture the full environment.

The composition in that shot turned out to be very close to my main reference. In addition, I created several extra shots from different angles and closer perspectives to highlight the details and storytelling elements of the scene.

To draw attention to the house, I used spotlights as the main light source while keeping the directional light intensity relatively low. For the sky, I used a Skybox mesh and texture from the Matte Painting Skybox Pack V.

To make the lighting and sky look more harmonious and natural, I added a touch of warm color to the Skylight light color. Later, I wanted to experiment and create a different mood and lighting setup.

This time, the directional light became the primary source. Instead of a Skybox mesh, I used an HDRI downloaded from polyhaven.com. To make the renders more vibrant and visually appealing, I adjusted the Contrast, Saturation, Gain, Gamma, and Offset in the camera settings.

I also darkened the grass in the foreground. To achieve this, I added a cube that casts a shadow but remains invisible in the frame. I created a very simple material for this cube, a common technique often used to add extra shadows and enhance visual contrast.

To add more depth to the shot, I adjusted the Exponential Fog, changing the Start Distance parameter to reduce the haze in the foreground, as I wanted that area to appear sharper and brighter.

Additionally, I created a local fog using a plane with a transparent material, which gave the scene an even more atmospheric and visually interesting look. I also created a night version of the scene, focusing on the moonlight falling from above onto the roof of the windmill. 

The main light source in this setup was a series of spotlights. I also added rim lights to certain elements to emphasize their silhouettes. To avoid overexposing the objects with multiple light sources, I adjusted the lighting channels for both the spotlights and the corresponding meshes.

I wanted to add a bit of light to the front part of the main building as well, so it wouldn't remain in complete shadow. This way, the viewer's attention is drawn not only to the roof but also to the small shop in front, which I consider one of the most interesting parts of the structure.

After finishing the night scene, I decided to create a more mysterious, eerie atmosphere. I found a suitable reference and tried to recreate a similar mood.

For this version, I changed the HDRI to "Misty Morning" to give the scene a denser, foggier look. The directional light became the only light source, set to very low intensity.

Then, I worked on the post-process settings to achieve the desired color balance and mood. I adjusted the Gain (Midtones) and color temperature to match the tones and shadows of my reference.

Both the video and still renders were done using Movie Render Queue to ensure the highest image quality. I exported the frames as PNG sequences and later edited the final video in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Conclusion

This project took me around seven months to complete. During this time, I significantly improved my material creation skills in Substance 3D Designer and learned a lot about lighting, composition, and storytelling. One of the biggest challenges for me was building the wooden structures, it was quite tricky to get the shapes, proportions, and construction logic right. But through research, iteration, and feedback, I managed to solve all the issues and achieve the result I wanted.

If I could share one piece of advice with beginners, it would be this: don't rush the process and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Every project, even the one that feels endless, teaches you something valuable. Sometimes things don't work out right away, and that's completely fine. Take your time, experiment, and learn from each step. And most importantly, enjoy what you're doing. When you truly love the process, progress always follows.

Adelyn Sultan, Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins