Swamp Village: Making a Feudal Japan-Inspired 3D Scene With Unreal

Introduction

My name is Mattia Vezzoli, I am a 3D Senior Environment Artist and currently working at Milestone, where I contribute to the creation of several games. My passion for the world of 3D was born many years ago, and it pushed me to follow a specialized training path. I attended two master's in 3D and animation, at Mickey Studios and IMasterArt, both based in Milan, which provided me with solid technical and artistic bases.

I've been working in game development for over eight and a half years. During this time, I had the opportunity to contribute to the creation of many published titles, such as Hot Wheels Unleashed and Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged, MotoGP 25, Supercross 6, and many more. Working on real projects has allowed me to refine my skills in key areas such as high/low poly modeling, creation of procedural textures, and implementation in engines like Unreal Engine.

Over the years, I have developed a particular focus on environmental storytelling: I believe that a good environment should not only be visually beautiful, but also tell a story, suggest emotions, and guide the player's experience. This is what I try to convey in every scene I work on.

I am constantly updated on the latest technologies and the evolution of production pipelines, because I believe professional growth also passes through curiosity, experimentation, and the desire to get out of the comfort zone.

The Artistic Journey

Since I was young, I have always had a great passion for cartoons, so much so that my father jokingly called me 'the cartoons professor' when I was a child. This passion grew with me, especially watching 3D movies by Pixar and DreamWorks and playing video games, until after high school, I realized that I could also create these worlds. So, I decided to dedicate myself to the study of 3D and animation for cinema, deepening these topics for about two years.

Once I finished my studies, I started my career as an Environment Artist in my first video game company, creating the project 'All Star Fruit Racing'. From then on, I was totally fascinated by the world of real-time 3D. One of the biggest challenges faced was adapting to the video game production pipeline, which is very different from the movie one.

I am curious and passionate, and I like to spend my free time on personal projects. These ones push me to continuously explore new techniques and workflows, allowing me to learn and deepen the use of different software. Thanks to that ,I'm becoming more versatile and improving my technical skills. I currently use Unreal Engine, Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3D Painter, Quixel Mixer, Photoshop, SpeedTree, Adobe Premiere, and Marmoset Toolbag. To keep up with the latest news in the game industry, I constantly follow online tutorials, articles, and content from other professionals, with the aim to learn new software, pipelines, and continuously improving myself.

I love every aspect of 3D related to the world of video games, but I chose to specialize as an Environment Artist because my greatest passion is the creation of environments and 3D props. Through them, I can tell a story, transferring atmospheres, cultures, and contexts, without the need for texts or dialogues.

One example is my project Swamp Village, the story of a small Japanese merchant village nestled in a swamp at the foot of the mountains. Each visual element is designed to communicate the life, challenges and identity of that place, allowing the user to experience storytelling by simply observing.

Joining Emperia's Art-To-Experience Contest

The project submitted to the Emperia contest is a personal project realized 1 year ago. The goal was to create a fully navigable scene, conceived as a standalone level playable in first person, compatible with VR. I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity not only to collaborate with 80 Level, but also to offer an immersive experience that enhances every aspect of the environment design.

From a conceptual point of view, I was inspired by the aesthetics of Feudal Japan, which I find particularly suggestive. I wanted to recreate a mysterious atmosphere, setting the scene in a swampy area at the foot of the mountains, the choice emerged after numerous iterations and visual reference studies.

The modular assets have been designed in a modular way to ensure flexibility in composition and re-usability within the scene. For the positioning of the main elements (prop and structure), I opted for a manual approach in order to maintain full artistic control over the composition, the silhouette of the structures, and the visual readability of the spaces.

The project was also a testing ground to explore the potential of Unreal Engine 5.4. I used Lumen for global lighting in real time, getting dynamic results in terms of reflections and indirect light, without baking. I have implemented Nanite on almost all high-density polygonal assets to reduce the cost of draw calls and optimize scene management, especially in VR.

For the procedural generation of foliage (woods and random foliage over wooden walkways), I experimented with the new system PCG (Procedural Content Generation), which allowed me to distribute vegetation and environmental details in a controlled but random way.

The main challenge was performance optimization for the real-time and VR navigable experience: I had to balance visual density, asset quality, and computational costs to ensure stable frame rates and hardware compatibility across a wide range of devices.

The experience with Emperia's Creator Tools plug-in was effortless and intuitive. Right from the start, I tried to exploit its potential to offer an immersive and engaging experience to anyone who came to explore my project.

Due to timing issues, I couldn't cover the entire environment, but if I had more time, I would have expanded it further, including the whole Swamp Village. I would have also liked to add interactive elements in 3D and video content (what the plugin allows you to do), to make the experience even more unique and memorable.

Having the opportunity to allow users to freely explore an environment that I have worked on with so much care and dedication is a source of great pride for me. Knowing that anyone can now experience it up close, even virtually, is a huge satisfaction that pays off all the effort put into its realization

Thoughts on the Digital Art Industry

In recent years, one of the central topics in the video game industry has been the introduction of artificial intelligence into production processes. Although AI is starting to be adopted by several companies to automate some steps of the workflow, I believe that it cannot yet be compared to human creativity and intuition. It remains a support tool, useful to speed up some repetitive operations, but it does not replace the artistic vision and sensitivity of the individual artist.

Conclusion

For those who have just entered the wonderful world of 3D, my most important advice is: never stop! Keep studying, exploring, and pushing yourself. The industry is constantly evolving, so keeping up with new software, technologies, and workflows is essential to grow professionally and remain competitive.

I also advise choosing a clear specialization – environment art, props, character design, lighting, or other – and aim to become really solid in that area. At the same time, it is important to have a cross-disciplinary knowledge of other subjects: understanding the functioning of complete pipelines will allow better communication with teams and work more efficiently within a production environment.

Do not be afraid to make mistakes or redo a project several times: it is through errors that you learn the most. And above all, share your work, accept feedback, and analyse the other works. Growing as an artist also means being able to compare.

Mattia Vezzoli, Senior 3D Props/Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie