Creating a Sunny Palm Tree Field With Unreal Engine & Emperia's Creator Tools

Introduction

My name is Anurag Tiwari, I’m a 30-year-old Virtual Production Technical Director from Lucknow, India. I studied Advanced Visual Effects at the Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), which gave me a strong grounding in industry-standard VFX and 3D tools. From there, I took on a wide range of roles, starting as a faculty trainer, then becoming a 3D modeling and texturing artist, before moving deeper into real-time 3D and finally Virtual Production.

Right now, I’m working at yFX Studios, the VFX arm of Yash Raj Films, where my focus is on bridging real-time and traditional pipelines, techviz, previz, postviz, and building better workflows for large teams. Over the years, I’ve contributed to feature films and ad projects like Vikrant Rona (2022), Bheemla Nayak (2022), Canucks Power Rising (2022), Netflix’s The Night Agent (2023), Tiger 3 (2023), Saiyaara (2025), and upcoming titles like War 2 and Alpha.

Becoming an Environment Artist

I got hooked on digital art through video games. I’ve always been fascinated by how entire worlds come alive on screen, and games like Tomb Raider made me pause and wonder, "How did they build this?" My first steps were all about experimentation. I started using Photoshop and After Effects to create random edits, images, and small videos. It was purely curiosity, I just loved seeing what I could make.

The biggest challenge in the beginning was not having a clear vision. I would jump straight into the software and start building something without a proper plan or reference, which led to lots of half-finished projects. That messy process taught me how important it is to study the real world and think ahead before you create.

MAAC’s training gave me a base in around 22 software packages, everything from 3ds Max, Houdini, and Nuke to Photoshop and After Effects. But my real growth came from self-learning. I’m the type who can’t stop picking apart new workflows, so I kept exploring Unreal Engine, Substance 3D Painter and Designer, World Machine, World Creator, and more.

Learning the full pipeline, even if only 20 percent of each step, gave me a huge advantage later. It helps me understand how assets flow through a production process, what breaks, what scales, and what needs optimization. For new artists, I always say, don’t just specialize too early, stay curious about every department.

Environment art is like silent storytelling, it shapes how you feel without saying a word. That’s what hooked me as a kid playing games. I remember freezing gameplay just to study the atmosphere, lighting, and tiny details. Tomb Raider is still one of my biggest inspirations for how to create believable worlds.

Today, I spend a lot of time studying how the real world works, how light scatters through leaves, how shadows change throughout the day, and how scale affects the mood of a scene. Nature is the best teacher.

Deep Dive Into the Palm Tree Project

This palm tree field project started after I saw Unreal Engine’s 5.2 update. They showcased a procedural forest that really caught my eye. I wanted to push the new Procedural Content Generation (PCG) tools and test how procedural assets hold up when you need true realism.

First, I spent days researching how light interacts with real vegetation. I used Maxtree Library assets as a base, then refined them in 3ds Max to create high-detail hero versions. My goal was to keep things as realistic as possible, even under Unreal’s Path Tracer, so I created custom shaders and tested performance constantly.

The PCG framework saved me countless hours. Instead of placing thousands of assets by hand, I could experiment with layouts, scatter rules, and density. The first versions were overkill though, one graph generated over 200,000 palm trees and crashed Unreal instantly. That forced me to optimize my workflow, simplify graphs, and find the sweet spot between realism and performance.

One thing I really appreciate about Emperia’s toolkit is how easy it made it to share the whole scene as an immersive experience. That’s a huge benefit when you’re working with production teams who need to review assets early and give clear approvals.

Over time, I’ve learned that great-looking environments don’t mean much if they aren’t optimized for real production. You can build a beautiful scene, but if it drops to 10 FPS or starts crashing the software, artists lose control and the entire shoot can come to a standstill.

That’s exactly what pushed me to create practical tools that tackle these pain points. One example is my Scene Limiter Volume, a simple blueprint that automatically turns off any geometry or lights outside a defined area. It keeps the scene light and responsive so you can work or shoot without worrying about lag or crashes. There’s no need for manual tagging or setting up complex layers, you just click and go, and your scene stays efficient and stable.

Experience with Emperia's Creator Tools

Working with Emperia's Creator Tools plug-in was a smooth and intuitive experience. What impressed me most was how easily I could take a large-scale Unreal Engine environment and turn it into an immersive, browser-based experience without needing to compromise visual quality. The support for path tracing and AI-enhanced rendering adds real production value, which is a rare find in such tools.

The interface is user-friendly, but I believe the core functionality still has room to grow. A more detailed documentation or onboarding guide would be extremely helpful, especially for new users navigating the many components for the first time.

Overall, the plug-in integrated well into my workflow and didn't feel like a bolt-on. I can see it becoming a valuable asset in pre-production pipelines, especially for teams working in architectural visualization or spatial design.

Advice For Beginners

I think the biggest concern is the temptation to skip the fundamentals. AI tools are powerful, they can do in minutes what we used to spend days on, but if you rely on them too early, you miss out on understanding scale, light, and color theory properly. When you do things the hard way, manually iterating, testing, and failing, you learn what really makes an asset production-ready. AI should help you experiment faster, but it should never replace your understanding of the craft.

Look at the real world more than your screen. Take your camera, study how nature works, break down why it feels believable. The real world is the best reference library. When it comes to learning, I highly recommend people like William Faucher and Bad Decisions Studio, they make Unreal Engine workflows practical and honest. And one big thing, be curious about the full production process, not just your specialty. The more you understand what happens before and after your part, the better your work will fit into real projects.

At the end of the day, I don’t just aim to create good-looking environments. I build them to hold up across the full production process. I’m driven to find new ways to make that process smoother, faster, and more accessible for everyone who shares this passion.

Anurag Tiwari, Virtual Production TD

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie