How to Create Grasslands, Trees and Mountains for a Nature Environment

Introduction

My name is Jia Junjie, a 3D Environment Artist based in China. I currently work at a major game company and previously served at Ubisoft Chengdu Studio. I have been passionate about 3D since high school and have enjoyed creating models with 3ds Max. Back then, self-learning was extremely challenging, as online tutorials were nowhere near as accessible as they are today. It was during that time that I began to delve deeply into 3D modeling and environment art, driven by the goal of becoming a professional 3D Environment Artist.

In the years after graduating, I relied largely on self-study. Later, I was fortunate to join Virtuos as an intern, where I gained substantial professional knowledge and built a solid foundation for my career. I then joined Ubisoft and had the honor of contributing to the development of titles including For Honor and Immortals Fenyx Rising. I have always aspired to create serene, atmospheric, and epic environments.

Since childhood, I have been deeply influenced by Hayao Miyazaki's animated films. Their peaceful, timeless landscapes evoke a powerful sense of immersion, and that longing to inhabit such tranquil worlds inspired me to begin this personal project. Before starting production, I gathered extensive reference materials to define the visual direction of my scene.

I drew inspiration from the Twin Peaks in The Legend of Zelda. Centering my theme around mountains, I collected countless relevant references on Pinterest and ArtStation. Many outstanding artworks greatly inspired me, particularly pieces by Lorenzo Lanfranconi and Seonghyun Hong.

Crack Valley – The Vanished Village

Here are some of the references I used:

Grassland

For the grassland, I modeled solid grass assets in Maya. Although this method demands higher performance compared to traditional billboard grass, it effectively eliminates the flat card look and delivers better animated results. I adopted two types of grass meshes: taller grass and shorter grass.

The taller grass is applied to enrich silhouette variation and enhance color transition across the meadow. The shorter grass is used for large-area coverage and natural blending along grassland edges.

The grass material is especially important. I used RVT to achieve seamless blending between the grass and terrain.

Color-wise, I use RVT sampling and wind noise as the color input. Since all normals are aligned toward the Z-axis in Maya, only the B channel of the two-sided node is needed. For wind movement, I use standard material animation techniques.

Trees

The canopy billboard setup is as follows:

After creating individual billboard leaf cards, I quickly assembled them to form the overall canopy silhouette and baked the normals into spherical normals. Each leaf piece uses an independent mask.

Canopy Material in UE4

Unlike the grass material, tree foliage does not rely on RVT blending. I use independent hue adjustment to control leaf color. To strengthen the stylized visual, subtle emission is applied to enhance the flat, graphic aesthetic. The normal setup and wind animation logic follow the same workflow as the grass assets.

The visual difference between disabled shadows and enabled shadows:

Composition

Composition mainly consists of two key elements: shot framing and the rule of thirds. In terms of shot framing, I laid large-scale shadows across the foreground to set the scene and establish a foundational atmosphere.

For the mid-ground, I used Light Functions to visually separate it from the background. Here is how I applied the Light Functions: While darkening the mid-ground, I also added shadows to certain areas of the mountains to simulate cloud shadow projection.

When composing the scene, I placed key focal points to guide the viewer's attention, such as the mountains, ruins, and broken bridge. To highlight the core subject, I enlarged its screen coverage and controlled its visual weight through color grading.

Lighting and Rendering

Here is the breakdown of my layered lighting setup: The main light defines the overall volume of the mountains and the entire scene, while establishing the time of day and emotional tone. Sky light lifts the shadow areas from pure black, and its color palette also shapes the overall mood of the frame. I chose an atmospheric tone for the sky light.

For fog, I use height fog as the base layer, combined with plane fog cards to create layered cloud and mist effects. Finally, I added stylized cloud billboard assets, which work extremely well for this art style.

Lastly, I added post-process materials in the Post Process Volume to sharpen the image and enhance overall visual clarity and detail.

Conclusion

This is my creation workflow:

This project took me a long time to complete. Due to my heavy workload, I had little time to refine and release it, so it was only finished and published half a year later. During the creation process, I believe the most important thing is to gather high-quality artworks as references and constantly compare the differences between them.

This project made me realize how many outstanding artists there are on ArtStation. I will keep learning from them. Whenever I compare my work with theirs, I can see my progress getting closer step by step. I constantly reflect on my shortcomings through comparison. When lacking inspiration, I look for more references and leave the rest to consistent hard work.

Yning, Level Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins