How to Build a Stylized and Painterly Scene Inspired by Impressionist Art

Introduction

Hello. My name is Boyoon Kim, and I am working as a 3D Environment Artist in South Korea. Since I was young, I have always been interested in creating spaces, which led me to major in landscape architecture in university. While in school, I attended a special lecture titled "Virtual Space Design," which introduced me to the role of a Game Environment Artist.

To enter the game industry after graduation, I learned game environment art at "CallCG," run by Ancall. I learned a great deal from teacher Ancall for a year and a half, and after getting a job at a company, I have been learning from teacher Babi for the past year. I would like to express my gratitude to both teacher Ancall and teacher Babi! Currently, I am busy adapting to a new company where I recently passed the interview.

The Green House

"The Green House" project actually started as an effort to rebuild a project that I had halted a year ago.

A year ago, my goal was simply to create a house environment scene. At the beginning of that project, instead of having a clear direction, my priority was just to build the house and place it. As a result, the artwork completely lacked a sense of what the scene was trying to show or express.

When I restarted and began modifying it, I established the direction first. I first thought about the overall mood the project should convey, the composition, and the skills I wanted to showcase in the scene. For the mood, I aimed for overall harmony and peacefulness. I have always loved the art styles and masterpieces of Impressionist painters, especially those depicting nature.

In this project, I wanted to express a peaceful and warm space where nature and architecture harmoniously coexist. In terms of technical skills, I wanted to learn Trim Sheets and leveling. My goal was to achieve the highest possible quality within a limited timeframe. My target duration was 2 weeks, and when brainstorming what I could build as quickly as possible within that timeframe, the answer was to actively utilize Trim Sheet props.

For references, I looked at almost every piece of artwork on ArtStation that featured a house and grass. I collected references focusing primarily on pieces that had the mood or composition I wanted to emulate. Additionally, I gathered real-world texture references through Pinterest and search engines.

Composition

The very first thing I focused on in this project was the overall composition. I wanted to make the house a clear focal point while simultaneously creating an environment that felt like a vast, living world. To achieve this, I structured the scene by dividing it into foreground, midground, and background.

The flow of the river, the walking paths, the silhouettes of the hills, and the shape of the lakeside were all intentionally designed to guide the viewer's eye naturally toward the house. In particular, I utilized Leading Lines to ensure that while the gaze circulates within the scene, it ultimately rests on the house. Additionally, I designed a strong silhouette with the house's high tower structure so that it could be easily recognized from afar.

During the blockout stage, I focused on capturing the overall proportions and camera angles rather than the details. Since this piece was for a portfolio and not a playable map, I determined the final camera view first and built the environment to match it. The building was inspired by fantasy-style stylized architecture. I tried to maintain a sense of believability — making it look charming yet functional enough for a real person to live in.

To increase work efficiency, I actively used a modular approach and reusable assets. I rearranged fences, wooden boxes, vegetation, and architectural ornaments in multiple places, which shortened production time while maintaining the scene's unity. For most assets, the workflow involved modeling in 3ds Max, sculpting in ZBrush, and then baking and texturing in Substance 3D Painter. However, during the asset creation process, I constantly placed them into the scene to check their scale and harmony with surrounding objects.

The house was built using a modular method. I planned out the tile textures and the wooden pillars to be used as modules, which sped up the workflow and maintained overall consistency. I created seven variations of the modular wooden pillars and four variations of the wooden planks for the deck underneath the house, adjusting the mesh by stretching or combining them as I worked.

Since this was a portfolio piece, I prioritized working on the areas actually visible to the camera. Because the final image's quality was what mattered most — rather than a game environment where players freely explore — I concentrated my efforts on the parts with the greatest visual impact.

For the grass, I referenced a specific tutorial video:

Utilizing the RVT (Runtime Virtual Texture) explained in the video, I wanted to implement diverse grass colors across the vast landscape so it wouldn't look monotonous. On top of that, I added a few nodes to the grass material to create a gradient, ensuring it didn't look completely flat. Aside from that, the vegetation was hand-painted based on references and expressed using only the Base Color.

Retopology and Texturing

Since most of the assets were modeled from the beginning with game-ready topology in mind, a separate, major retopology process was not heavily required afterward. In cases where high-poly details were necessary, I used ZBrush and then created optimized low-poly models in 3ds Max.

For UV unwrapping, I primarily utilized 3ds Max. I paid close attention to maintaining a consistent texel density across the entire environment while using the texture space efficiently. For base assets that were used repetitively, I actively utilized Trim Sheets and Tiling Textures. This allowed me to create cohesive assets in a short amount of time.

My texturing workflow was mainly carried out in Substance 3D Designer and Substance 3D Painter. I preferred to establish most of the details in ZBrush beforehand. For instance, the wood grain, chipped edges, or the dents on metal rivets and scratches from sharp objects were all expressed in ZBrush. Based on the high-poly meshes created in ZBrush, I generated the desired value maps in Substance 3D Painter to drive my work.

My texturing order goes: establishing the Base Color -> adding grunge -> adding Curvature, Highlights, and AO -> final touch-ups. For grunges, I mostly used the texture maps provided within Substance 3D Painter or Designer. I always try to cross-check my texturing work by importing the assets into the engine frequently throughout the process.

Assembling the Final Scene

When assembling the final scene, I always kept the final composition we'd established early on open on a second screen for reference. Every time I placed or modified a new asset, I viewed the entire scene as a single painting, adjusting the density and balance of each area.

When placing assets, I believed it was important not to simply fill empty spaces, but to create a movement without disrupting the focal point. I constantly adjusted the direction the assets were facing, the flow of silhouettes, and the density of each area to ensure the viewer's eye naturally moved toward the house.

Furthermore, to prevent the wide green terrain from looking monotonous, I placed the vegetation and flowers in clusters. Rather than scattering them evenly across the entire area, clustering them in specific zones created a sense of rhythm and provided visual interest for the viewer. After locking down the camera composition, I opened a new viewport window next to it and placed grass even in the extreme foreground.

Ultimately, what mattered most was how my intention was reflected and how the composition felt in the final image. To prevent the image from being completely uniform in green, I placed flowers of various colors in the extreme foreground. For the sake of the composition, I didn't restrict the vegetation to just growing flat on the ground. I believe a stylized atmosphere comes from the lighting and the shapes of the assets.

For the lighting, rather than a realistic depiction, I used a sky light with a bluish tint to emphasize the bright and crisp atmosphere of a clear day. I increased the sky light intensity to 2 or 3 times its default brightness to prevent shadows from becoming overly heavy or dark, creating a bright and casual feel overall.

Additionally, during the asset creation stage, instead of realistically replicating forms, I used deformed silhouettes. The trees, architecture, and terrain were all crafted with slightly simplified and exaggerated shapes compared to reality, and I believe this unified shape language played a major role in creating the stylized atmosphere of the entire scene.

Consequently, in this project, I focused most of my efforts on making the entire environment read like a single illustration rather than focusing on individual asset details.

Lighting

Lighting was one of the most important elements in this project. Not only did it determine the overall atmosphere, but it also played the role of guiding the viewer's eye to the focal point. I started the lighting work based on a sky blueprint purchased from the marketplace. Rather than building the entire lighting system from scratch, I approached it by customizing an already well-constructed base to fit the mood of my project.

First, I adjusted the direction of the Directional Light to simulate bright, midday natural sunlight. I tested various angles to find the direction that best revealed the form and three-dimensionality of the house, ultimately choosing the angle where the house — the focal point of the environment — looked most appealing.

Additionally, I placed accent lights around the house. By using highlights that were slightly exaggerated compared to actual natural light, I created the impression that the sunlight was hitting that area more intensely, thereby naturally drawing the eye to the house.

I also increased the intensity of the Sky Light so that the shadows would not appear too dark. Instead, I allowed the sky color to naturally reflect into the shadows, creating shadows with a bluish tint, which helped produce a brighter and more approachable stylized atmosphere.

Atmospheric expression was another area I considered crucial. The fog included in the default blueprint differed slightly from the feel I wanted, so I chose not to use it and instead set up Unreal Engine's built-in Exponential Height Fog myself. This allowed the foreground, midground, and background to separate naturally, granting a deeper sense of space to the entire scene.

The fog was configured in two main parts. First was the background; the fog placed in the distance covered the edges of the assets and reduced contrast, softening the details so the viewer's eye wouldn't wander out of the frame. Next, I placed fog in the midground to reinforce the distance separation from the foreground. The midground fog was also used for the purpose of softening value contrast.

Furthermore, I created intentional shadows. Utilizing the tree meshes and textures I had, I made it look as though natural tree shadows were cast over the area, using the shadows to press down on regions with high value contrast near the foreground. This prevented the entire scene from looking flat as one piece and added a real sense of depth.

Post-processing was done in a relatively restrained manner. I aimed to complete most of the overall mood and coloration during the lighting stage, utilizing the Post Process Volume only to finely tune the contrast and atmosphere. I focused on organizing the balance of the scene rather than applying excessive color grading.

Conclusion

This project took about 7 weeks in total to complete. My goal was to finish a piece I had previously held due to personal circumstances. The most difficult part of the production process was maintaining the overall balance within a relatively wide environment. Rather than simply creating individual assets, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to divide the foreground, midground, and background, and deciding what level of detail density to allocate to each area.

Designing the flow of the viewer's gaze across the entire environment was also a major challenge. I constantly revised and adjusted the layout so that elements like the river, terrain, vegetation, and architecture would naturally guide the eye to the house, which was the focal point.

Maintaining consistency among the assets was not easy either. Since this project involved a variety of props, vegetation, and architectural elements, I prioritized how they looked within the entire environment rather than judging assets individually. Therefore, throughout the workflow, I constantly imported assets into Unreal Engine to check and adjust whether the scale, density, color, and mood blended naturally.

Through this project, I learned once again that environment art is not simply about crafting individual assets, but about weaving multiple elements together into a single cohesive world. I realized that no matter how well-made an asset is, it is difficult to achieve a good result if it does not harmonize with the entire environment.

My advice to beginning artists is to just start making things. Many people find it hard to even begin because of the pressure to create a perfect piece. However, while working on this project, instead of chasing perfection, I focused on what I could do right then and there. As a result, I was able to complete the project within a shorter-than-expected period of 7 weeks.

Above all, I believe it is most important to consistently cross the finish line on personal projects. While it is necessary to spend time deliberating to make a single perfect piece, you can learn so much just from the process of bringing a project to completion. Looking back, I think I was able to finish well because I approached it with the mindset of "let's just do the best I can within a short, fixed deadline" rather than chasing perfection.

Lastly, I feel that the path to becoming a 3D Environment Artist is becoming increasingly challenging these days. As a fellow junior, this rough path can be scary at times, but let's all cheer up and fight through it together! Thank you for reading my words. I hope to see you again next time with even better artwork!

Boyoon Kim, 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine