Designing a Stylized Pastry Bakery Using Substance 3D, Unreal Engine & ZBrush

Introduction

Hi everyone, I'm Mehdi Kaced, a 3D Environment Artist from France. I started learning 3D at university in 2020, and after five years of study, I have just completed my training at Artside Game School. It was there that I specialized in environment art and texturing.

As I often say, some things are hard to explain rationally. I have always been drawn to landscapes, objects, and nature. Regardless of the medium, from classical painting to video games, I've always loved taking the time to contemplate and analyze textures and forms. An artist must trust their eye and instinct. Naturally, my goal now is to create forests, villages, and organic environments for video games.

The Stylized Pastry Bakery

This project was initially created during a course at Artside, supervised by Lionel Cregut. The goal was to choose a 2D concept and adapt it into a stylized 3D environment. For the art direction, I chose a mix of influences: I aimed for Overwatch regarding modeling and shape language, while leaning towards Genshin Impact for the mood and texturing.

I chose the concept of an Oriental Bakery by Benoit Chenu. His concept immediately resonated with me. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut and work on concepts that truly inspire you.

My objective was to translate this superb concept into 3D with a painterly, dreamlike touch similar to Genshin Impact or Studio Ghibli movies, while keeping a "lived-in," worn, and slightly gritty feel that I admired in my references.

For any project of this scale, spending several hours gathering references is mandatory. You should never limit yourself to just the concept art and a few 3D projects. Personally, I draw inspiration from various media, including photography and traditional painting.

Inspiration can be found where you least expect it. For example, I loved the design of the lanterns in the anime Hunter x Hunter and the color palette of its drawings.

It is very relevant to inject designs and ideas that speak to you personally into a concept. We all have different sensibilities, and using them allows us to produce something fresh and unique.

Blockout & Composition

When I started the blockout, I struggled to detach myself from the concept art. I wanted to recreate it identically. My mentor, Lionel, helped me significantly by repeating that "Stylization is systemic simplification."

Applying this philosophy, I scaled elements up, reduced the number of tiles, and removed certain noisy patterns. This resulted in shapes that were more readable, punchy, and stylized. Shape language tips:

• Limit straight lines: Try to minimize long, perfectly straight lines; they tend to kill the visual rhythm and look unappealing.
• Silhouette: Focus on having clear, bold shapes to catch the viewer's eye.
• Variety: In architecture, we often end up with rectilinear and square forms. Injecting round shapes is a great way to make the image more interesting.

The concept worked extremely well in 2D, but copy-pasting it into 3D doesn't always work. You have to keep your target rendering style in mind. Here, simplifying and thickening the volumes ensured the image remained readable.

Most assets in the scene are actually very simple models using tiling materials, so even the UVs were very quick to produce. I believe using as many tileable textures as possible is a great way to save time on both texturing and modeling.

That said, I would like to come back to two specific workflows: non-destructive modeling and the sculpt-to-decimation pipeline.

For the roof tiles, I start with a simple cylinder, keeping only half the faces to create an arc. I apply a slight Bend, because we want to avoid lines that are too straight, as I mentioned earlier. Then, I give it thickness with a Shell, and add a Chamfer for a nice bevel (though this is not mandatory).

Crucially, I unwrap the UVs at this specific moment, this way, I only have to do it for a single tile. To generate the full roof, I use the Array modifier. It is incredibly powerful. I set it up with some randomization to get something organic and alive, and the job is almost done.

I finish the details with some slices to get the exact shape I want, then pack all the UVs at once. The huge advantage of this method is that I can change everything very easily. If I want an extra row, it's just one button. If I want to remove the bevel, same thing. And the UVs essentially take four clicks.

For props like the windows, I created a base mesh in 3ds Max, exported it to ZBrush for sculpting large cuts and damage, and then used Decimation Master to produce the low-poly.

While a manual retopology (Quad Draw) is cleaner, it is unnecessary for static meshes that will never be deformed or rigged. I simply brought the decimated mesh back into my modeling software, did the UVs, and it was ready for texturing.

Texturing Strategy

I believe that taking the time to create excellent Tileable Materials is vital. Once created, they can be reused everywhere. For example, I created a single wood graph in Substance 3D Designer and used it for every wooden prop in the scene.

• Base Color: I studied Jimmy Malachier's "Ghibli Substance 3D Designer material" and coupled it with basic Painter brushes to get a solid base.
• Normal Map: A trick I love is converting the Height Map to Ambient Occlusion and blurring it slightly. This gives a detailed result with very few nodes. I can also use this to enhance the details in my albedo and fake AO.
• Exposing Parameters: One of Substance's strengths is the bridge between Designer and Painter. I exposed crucial parameters (Color, Roughness, Normal intensity) in my graph.

In Substance 3D Painter, I simply imported my master material. Using masks, I highlighted my sculpting work and reinforced the AO. For the blue cabins, I just changed the wood color parameter to blue. This allowed me to create massive variations using a single material graph.

Each time, it is the same wood texture. I just change the seed, the color, or the grain to get all my props. For environment art, I have always considered that textures matter more than modeling. All these props have elementary modeling, but with a good tint and a strong normal map, we quickly manage to make them look interesting.

For the staircase, I once again use a single graph to generate a texture that will cover the entire mesh. For all materials that are composed of several elements (such as wood flooring, tiles, etc.), I like to start by shaping each element individually before sampling them.

Edge Highlights Tip: Another great way to make your shapes pop is to frame them with stronger values, essentially creating a highlight. My method in Designer is to first create a mask by simply increasing the contrast, for instance, with a Histogram Scan.

Then, I blur this result and blend it using its own opacity. This creates a gradient that extends slightly beyond the original shape, giving a nice stylized edge highlight. Once I have this mask, I modify it to break up the monotony and avoid having the same highlight everywhere.

Vegetation Workflow

Vegetation, especially the palm trees, was the most challenging part of the project. I couldn't find game references that fit my vision, so I relied on real-life photos and paintings.

I started in Substance 3D Designer. Everything unlocked when I used a Tile Sampler parameterized with RidgedBell shapes and an offset. This immediately gave me the stylized trunk scale pattern I wanted. Following my "simplification" philosophy, I kept the main shapes simple and added a painted touch to the texture.

After the trunk, I moved on to the leaves. To start, I modeled their general shape in 3ds Max. I then performed a very quick bake in Painter to use it as a base, which saved me time later in Designer.

Finally, all that remained was to create the meshes for my leaves by modeling them from a plane. Once all this was done, the only step left was to assemble everything in SpeedTree to obtain my finalized palm tree.

Integrating assets into Unreal Engine is straightforward, but static environments can often feel lifeless. I used two methods to bring "soul" to the scene:

• Animation: You have to use your imagination to bring movement. A simple WindGrass node in the shader prevents the scene from looking frozen. I added clothes hanging from the window and paper posters fluttering in the wind. For the lanterns, I hand-animated them using keyframes directly in Unreal. Tip: I created a mask in Painter to control the wind intensity (e.g., preventing the top of the hanging ropes from detaching from the window).

• "Lived-in" Details: A perfectly clean place feels sterile. I added footprints in the sand, crumbling mortar, and loose tiles lying on the ground. These small adjustments offer storytelling and credibility, replacing the need for characters to make the scene feel alive.

A very effective technique is to use vertex paint, which allows you to add detail and break up the repetition of your textures. You just need to create a variation of your material in Designer. This workflow allows you to work exclusively with tiling textures, which therefore remains very efficient.

Lighting & Rendering

My lighting setup is extremely simple:

• A Directional Light.
• An HDRI Backdrop plugin (generating the Skylight).
• RectLights are placed on windows to fake interior lighting (simulating light spilling out).

Post-Process: I kept it simple here, too. A bit of Sharpening and increased contrast in the shadows. However, I enabled Raytraced Reflections. Even if subtle, having accurate reflections in the glass windows adds a layer of credibility that helps ground the assets.

Conclusion

I realized this project in two stages: the first was during school. It was one of my first projects at Artside, and I didn't have the same skills as I did at the end of the project, especially regarding composition. For school, I worked for 10 weeks, and here is the result at that precise moment:

Then, seeing my professor's enthusiasm for the project, I decided to pick it back up when I had more time at the end of my curriculum. After 10 additional weeks and an almost complete overhaul of the project, I reached the end of what I had imagined months earlier.

That is why I think you should never abandon a scene because it seems "lost". By taking the time to improve your skills, refining your eye and your workflow, you can save scenes that might seem ruined at first glance.

This project taught me a lot. From now on, I no longer treat my environments solely as technical products, but above all as an image. Being a 3D Artist is a visual profession. We work with images, so it is important to understand the fundamentals of an image.

How do I use framing, contrast, and color to serve my purpose or deliver an emotion? Before thinking about your texture planning or retopology, you need to know how the image will be attractive and why it will catch the eye.

Another thing I learned is to trust your eye and your instinct, and try as much as possible to inject your personality into your images. In this project, I put references to works I adore, like Hunter x Hunter, or memories of Algerian cities from my childhood, my country of origin.

We all have a unique background, references of our own, and it is a true gold mine that must be used to create personal works that no one else but us can create. To do this, we must remain curious and perpetually nourish ourselves with new images, new styles, and new cultures so as not to remain imprisoned in a universe that is too restricted.

Finally, the most useful advice I dare say: often, between people who do and people who don't, it is just that they don't ask themselves the question of legitimacy. I often stopped projects, especially at the beginning, when the image didn't look like much, because I didn't feel legitimate or good enough to make art.

That's probably why I never learned to draw, because at the first failed stroke, I prefer to erase it. Sometimes you just have to do, without asking the question of our talent or capacity, it is only once the project has emerged that we bother to make it beautiful. "Make it first, then make it good." This way of doing things changed my approach to work, and for the better.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. A big thank you to 80 Level and Emma Collins for offering me the opportunity to express myself about my project. And finally, a huge thank you to Benoit Chenu and Lionel Cregut, without whom this project would not exist.

Mehdi Kaced, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins