How To Create A Detailed Large-Scale Scene With Rich Props & Assets In Unreal Engine

Introduction

Hey everyone! I’m Jessica Canales, a 3D Environment Artist originally from Mexico and now based in Canada. I started my journey in 3D art as a Character Artist in 2021 with the Characters for Games program at Think Tank Online (TTO). After freelancing in indie games for a couple of years, I decided to dive into Environment Art and further specialize in it at TTO.

Right now, I’m in my final term, working with Ben Kelly as my mentor, and I’m aiming to graduate in June 2025.

In my previous project, Birds in the Cave, I focused on organic workflows, working with natural elements and foliage. For my most recent project, The Mabuse Lab, I wanted to push myself with hard-surface workflows, pushing my technical skills in a new direction. I’ve been enjoying combining my background in character art with environment art; I believe this helps me tell a deeper story through what I create. I’m really excited to share a breakdown of my latest work with you!

Goal

For this project, I wanted to explore hard-surface modeling workflows, which led me to dive into the mid-poly workflow used in games like Star Citizen and Alien: Isolation. I was looking for a concept that would challenge me both technically and artistically, and Satchit Basu’s concept art was the perfect fit. The project presented several challenges I was eager to tackle:

• Completing a large-scale scene within TTO’s 16-week deadline.
• Diving deep into hard-surface modeling.
• Creating complex shaders for elements like water tanks, flickering warning lights, and console screens.
• Strengthening my skills with modularity and trimsheets.
• Incorporating organic assets to provide contrast to the predominantly hard-surface environment.

The Mabuse Lab concept by Satchit Basu:

References

For The Mabuse Lab, I began by breaking down the concept into categories and creating a detailed asset list. This gave me a clear overview of what needed to be done. With the list in hand, I then set up a rough week-by-week schedule, outlining deadlines and goals.

Next, I gathered an initial round of references for each asset just to get started, knowing I would expand them as I progressed. Along the way, I made notes on areas that needed further research, especially for specific workflows or shaders. As the project moved forward, my reference board grew to include real-life images, inspiration from sci-fi and industrial environments, and visual benchmarks from games.

Understanding the Challenges And Limitations

One of the biggest challenges I faced with this project was managing a scene with 66 props, 28 modular pieces, two creatures, and numerous decals, switches, shaders, and lighting, all within a 16-week timeframe. Looking back, I probably should have chosen a smaller scene, especially since I was working with a completely new workflow. However, that constraint pushed me to refine my process, ultimately leading me to combine several workflows that worked well for me.

Since most of the scene was made up of hard-surface props, I focused most of my research and work there. Initially, I used a simpler mid-poly workflow with a basic tileable shader and some dust and wear effects. But by the end of the project, I was combining mid-poly modeling with RGB masking, material layering, and mesh decals using a trimsheet for extra detailing. This approach became my go-to.

Resources

Some of the resources that helped me the most throughout the process were: 

• 80 Level Article — Creating Assets within the Mid-Poly Workflow by Malte Resenberger-Loosmann
• Casper Wermuth’s AAA Rocks for Games — RGB Masked Workflow Tutorial
• MLS SDC Talk — Material Layering Systems by Chris Pollitt

Blockout

For the blockout, I laid out the scene directly in Unreal, using simple shapes to match the concept’s composition. Once the general layout was in place, I merged the shapes and exported them to Maya, where I replaced them with first-pass models and refined them further.

Working on Creatures in an Environment-Focused Project

Since this project is part of my environment art studies, my main focus was on mastering new techniques for hard-surface assets. This was where I faced my biggest challenges and saw the most growth. However, the creatures are the central elements in the composition, and removing them didn’t feel right.

With just one week out of the 16-week project dedicated to working on the creatures, I had to be resourceful. I knew these creatures needed to be treated as hero props, so I used the high-to-low poly workflow for both the fish and the eye creature.

To streamline the sculpting process, I sculpted both creatures directly in their final poses. For the fish-like creature, this was tricky since I broke symmetry early on, but I kept my focus on the visible parts to maintain efficiency. The sculpting itself was quick and light; I concentrated on capturing the overall shapes so that the creatures would read well from a distance and stay true to the concept.

Creatures Traditional High-to-Low Workflow

For the high-poly models, I decimated the mesh, and for the low-poly versions, I used ZRemesher. To avoid visible seams, I manually unwrapped the UVs in Maya. I decided to create just one eye, with its own texture set, and share it between both creatures, saving time while ensuring consistency. Afterward, I baked the maps in Marmoset and textured them in Substance 3D Painter. Each creature has its own 4K texture set to ensure it is held up in the scene. Once everything was ready, I brought it all into Unreal.

Creatures Shader

I kept things straightforward with a basic PBR setup but added color adjustment features to easily tweak the eye colors through material instances. This gave me the flexibility to adjust the look of the eye without needing to redo the textures.

To add more life to the eye creature and the background tank creatures, I incorporated a subtle floating effect using World Position Offset (WPO) to make them gently float in the water. I also created a looping animation for the eye and limbs to introduce some movement and better integrate them into the environment. To achieve this, I took the eye creature to Maya, created a simple rig and basic animation, baked it, and then implemented it in Unreal.

Texturing

Hard-Surface Assets with Mid-Poly Modeling

I researched and practiced the mid-poly workflow with face-weighted normals. This allowed me to save the high-poly to low-poly step.

For detailing, I planned and created a trimsheet for the machinery elements, such as panel lines, buttons, bolts, switches, gauges, etc. Then, I used that trimsheet texture on top of my models in the form of mesh decals.

When searching for resources to learn the workflow, I found that most face-weighted normal tutorials out there rely heavily on Blender, but since I didn’t have the time to learn new software, I turned to GenTools, a plugin for Maya. It significantly improved my speed during the process and allowed me to maintain my workflow within a familiar environment.

Now that I had the models, I prepared them for the RGB masking step. For this, I needed to unwrap them using two UV sets.

• UV0: Used for RGB masking across the entire UV tile.
• UV1: Dedicated to tileable materials.

Texturing Using RGB Masking and Material Layers System

What I did for texturing was mix the RGB Mask as a blend to drive Unreal’s Material Layering System. It allowed me to blend multiple materials in a modular way, with a lot of control over wear and tear effects.

With this system, I could just stack the materials I needed for each asset.

As an example, for the switchboards and control panels, I used a base metal as the background layer, then added a painted metal layer on top, using the RGB mask green channel to control the wear locations on the mesh. Then, I adjusted it further by using the exposed parameters in the material layer blend asset. Finally, I stacked a rust layer and blended it using the B channel on my mask.

Assembling the Final Scene

Storytelling with Decals

I scattered notebook pages and research papers across the floor. These small details aimed to make the scene feel lived-in. I also created post-it notes to keep building the scene and make it feel real. The paper sheet for the post-it is just a quad, while the text is a decal, letting me swap different notes around easily. I also used water leaks and stain decals from GameTextures.com to add some wear and tear and applied them on floors and walls.

Real-Time VFX and Animated Shaders

To sell the idea that something was going down in this lab, I wanted to add dynamism wherever I could, so I worked on adding movement to the water on the water tanks and bubbles. I worked on a very customizable screen shader and, the most noticeable of all, the flickering warning lights in the background.

Lighting with Lumen

I wanted that moody, cinematic vibe for the lighting. I had to work a lot with the lighting to achieve this look. This was my final setup: 

I used volumetric fog and directional light to create light shafts. The rest was mainly adding spotlights and rectangular lights to areas where it made sense, for example, on the hanging lamps.

Final Touches with Post-Process Volume

I tweaked the color grading in the post-process volume to give everything a cyan tint. I added a slight vignette and AO to add depth and focus. It’s a very subtle adjustment, but I wanted to push the colors towards the blues.

Self-Reflection

This project was one of the biggest technical challenges I’ve taken on. It pushed me to troubleshoot fast, fail faster, and lean on feedback to keep things moving. It took me about 16 weeks to complete, plus an extra week for the polish. Looking back, I should have probably managed the scope a bit differently; this was a pretty ambitious undertaking for the timeframe! But in the end, it was a blast to work on, and I came out of it with a solid grasp of new techniques that I can confidently use for future hard-surface projects.

A massive shoutout to Ben Kelly for his invaluable guidance throughout this project!

Thanks for reading. I hope you found some useful insights or maybe even got inspired to try out some of these techniques yourself. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or ArtStation. Until next time!

Jessica Canales, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine