Setting Up an Eerie 3D Environment With Portal 2 Vibes

Introduction

Hello, my name is Loénan Carbon, I'm 22 years old. I'm a Junior Environment Artist looking for a job. I studied at the BRASSART school in Caen, in the Normandy region of France. I was first attracted to video games as a gamer, especially in competitive online games during my high school studies. This part of my life probably guided me towards a career behind a computer. 

After graduating from the Brassart school, I did 2 6-month internship. The first was at a very small independent studio called Spicy Loop. It was my first experience in the professional world as an Environment Artist. It was a remote internship, which isn't easy because there's no work atmosphere around you. You have to hold on to reasonable working hours and stay focused throughout the day. I'm deeply grateful to Alexis Bacot, owner of Spicy Loop, who put his trust in me and taught me about priorities in production.

My second internship was at Cyanide, a company that has produced such well-known licenses as Styx, Bloodbowl, and Tour de France. The game I worked on, which was recently announced, was "Styx Blades of Greed". These 6 months have been crucial in my learning process, whether it be working in a team with different departments or working to tight deadlines. Thanks to Hakim Tekki, Lead Environment Artist, and the whole Cyanide team for welcoming me to your studio for 6 months.

Becoming an Environment Artist

When I did my preparatory year at Brassart at the end of 2020, I wanted to become a Concept Artist. I thought it was incredible to design objects, create atmospheres, and tell stories with a single image. Just after my preparatory year, the 3D/Animation/VFX course arrived at the Brassart school and I said to myself, “Why not give it a try?”. Without having any knowledge of the field, I didn't know what job I wanted to do.

When I started training, I quickly became interested in video game creation, which involves optimizing the various stages of creation so that the game can run on a PC or console. As my training progressed, I specialized as an Environment Artist. I'd particularly like to thank Cédric Renaud, Game Art instructor, who shared his passion with us perfectly during the 3 years of training.

When it comes to 3D software, there's no magic formula for getting comfortable with it, you just have to practice. What's frustrating at first is to be very slow on things that seem simple, but it's important to have these basics before moving on to more complex operations. You have to practice in your spare time so as not to lose too much time during class time. During my training and internships, I learned to work on Maya, Blender, Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer, ZBrush, SpeedTree, Marmoset Toolbag, and Unreal Engine.

Here are some great tutorials that might help you out:

I also recommend taking a look at the GDC breakdowns, which give an insight into current industry workflows.

During my training, I was able to try out a lot of different jobs in the "Game Art" category. But quite naturally, my desire to create worlds, tell stories, and create atmospheres drew me to the environment side. I think my greatest source of inspiration is The Lord of the Rings, like many fans of medieval fantasy worlds. And recently, the Arcane series was a massive visual punch.

Participating in the Art-To-Experience Contest

Initially, I was working on ALT 255, a group project I started in January 2025 with Ailvin Carbon (Dev), Killian Gellet (Tech), Paul Salaun (Sound and Art), and Brice Retailleau (Game/Level Designer). The goal is to create a 30-minute game demo that we'd like to finish by the end of 2025.

ALT 255 is an FPS horror experience set in a post-apocalyptic, brutalist universe, inspired by the manga BLAME! We were contacted by 80 Level on June 22 to take part in this contest. This gave us 1 week to create an environment and integrate it into the Emperia site. So we decided to create a visual for our production already in progress. Thanks to this, we were able to deliver the visuals on time.

To find our references, we used Midjourney and the various resources on the Internet to come up with a convincing moodboard. The idea was to have gigantic outdoor spaces and much smaller, oppressive indoor spaces. We took the time to select images that suited the whole team, and to listen to feedback and opinions.

It's important on a group project to have a strict file hierarchy, as misplaced items can waste a lot of time in the long run. We used a drive to store all our data sources, and a Git to share our Unreal project.

We wanted a workflow for our assets that would allow us to iterate quickly. For example, for our walls, we first made a Height Map in Substance 3D Designer, which enabled us to have displacement in Blender afterwards. All we had to do was decimate the model, and it was ready to be integrated into Unreal. With the large spaces of our environments, we had no choice but to make modular kits for the main architecture. The priority on our meshes is not to have a nice topology, but to have a nice shape. The fact that we don't have to worry too much about topology means we can iterate faster. Theo Leroux helped me with the assets.

To facilitate the process, we've created an export tool in Blender, which takes into account dimension, map, name, collisions, state, and variation. For example, in my files, this cube will be called SM_Pit_Cube_1x1x1_Clean_A. If no path is defined, it will export to the Blender save location.

The aim of our shader was to have localized information, while using tileable textures and triplanar projection, while using the layers system. The simple solution would have been to apply an RGB mask to the UV of each asset. But this would have been too time-consuming, given the quantity of objects in our library. So we decided to bake this information into the vertex colors using the modeling tool Unreal. Ambient Occlusion on the red channel, and Curvature on the green channel. 

This shader can also be used for masks in triplanar projection, Z-projection, and gradients in relation to the world or the object. The only problem is that you need a fairly high polygon density on the models to be able to bake vertex colors properly. Most of the textures used in our project come from Megascans, we then reworked them in the layers' parameters.

I was able to use some of the level art tools made by my teammate Killian Gellet for the ALT 255 project. These are simple tools designed to make it easier to place certain elements in the environment, such as walls of different sizes (Planar), pillars or beams that are more or less damaged (Pillar), pipes (Linear and Deform), or various elements to be scattered over a surface (Scatter). They can also be used to add procedural variations to avoid too much visual repetition.

For lighting, we used Lumen in Unreal. The idea was to create a mysterious, oppressive atmosphere with very strong lighting. Finally, the biggest challenge we encountered was the small amount of time we had. And some small issues where we struggled a bit to get the same result between Unreal and the rendered version on the site.

Conclusion

I'd advise beginners to work as regularly as possible so as not to lose their touch. It's better to work for 1 hour every evening, rather than pulling an all-nighter every week. it's important in our job as artists is to tell stories. We must never forget this detail if we are to create impactful images. When building an environment, you have to try to deconstruct the process as much as possible, always starting with the big elements that define the foundations, adding form with medium-sized elements, then finishing with the small details. It's also important to take the time needed to polish the most visible elements of the scene.

Finally, all teamwork requires good communication, which is essential if a project is to be finished on time. And even if there may be disagreements, it's important to be patient, and to keep on working, expressing your opinion and avoiding creating more conflict than necessary.

Loénan Carbon, Junior 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie