
Learn to create a dark, moody winter scene for games through planning, blocking, and modular asset work, using Substance, ZBrush, Blender, and Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen and Niagara.
Create a rough block out of a gas station scene, adjust scale for the gas pump and roof, and set up a cinematic 16:9 camera to test composition.
Explore modular gas station scene creation by building reusable 1m grid kits in Blender and Unreal Engine, using pivot alignment, center transform, and a save-and-reimport workflow to iterate quickly.
Blockout lighting creates a dark, snowy night mood in Unreal Engine by using a post process volume, skylight, HDR textures, and volumetric fog to shape the environment.
Learn to unwrap and bake walkway assets for games by aligning pivots, exporting high and low poly versions, and building a shared texture atlas for Unreal using Blender and Painter.
Create a mud material height by blending clumpy mud, cracks, and stones with procedural noise and height, plus warp and blur tweaks.
Explore mud material color techniques by blending height maps, grunge textures, and gradient maps; refine stones, color, roughness, normals, and ambient occlusion for a cohesive game scene.
Create a master material for vertex blending in Unreal Engine using reroute nodes, material attributes, and material instances to control base color, roughness, ambient occlusion, and masks.
Explore advanced material creation: control brick tiling with texture coordinates, u/v tiling, and rotation, then blend a second plaster layer via height and vertex colors.
Apply overall dirt to game props by editing a master material, using masking, world-aligned texture projection, and tiling to create mossy, dirt-covered surfaces across instances.
Export the pipe kit, import into Unreal Engine 5, and build blueprints with grid-snapped prefabs, connectors, and runtime material variations via the construction script.
Design a chain link fence as a background boundary for a gas station, using frames, chain links, and simple textures, with optional Nanite geometry and modular duplication.
Create a retro, rusted gas pump as the scene's hero prop in Blender, focusing on boundaries, modular props, and detailed paneling to enrich the environment and storytelling.
Create water and moisture decals in Unreal Engine, adjusting opacity and roughness for realistic ground moisture, blending base color with the environment, and leveraging Lumen reflections.
Master edge decals and mesh decals by sculpting, beveling, and baking details from ZBrush to Unreal Engine, with uv packing and opacity masks.
Utilize the Niagara system to create wind-driven snow and clouds, layering and reusing templates to adjust wind direction and speed, curl noise, and particle size for realism.
Do you want to make a dark and moody scene using the new methods for games?
Then I welcome you to Nexttut education's Advanced Scene Creation for Games.
About Me:
My name is Arash Aref and I have been an Environment Art Instructor for a while. I have taught a lot of students how to make art for games; specially in the fields of environment art.
By the End Of This Course, You Will Be Able To:
Create a Dark and Moody environment for games using the new methods and workflows
Make an environment in a no-concept-art situation, by looking at references and mixing with your own ideas
Use Modularity, Vertex Blending, Decals for the most variety
Put a difference between hero props and secondary props, and learn where to sacrifice quality to save time and energy; and spending it on other places.
What You Will Learn:
How to plan for an Environment Art piece
Make a blockout to ensure that the ideas are working correctly
When to rush for a prop and where to put details
How to sculpt in Zbrush for environments
Making Master Materials for games
How to set to simple yet effective Niagara particles to add motion to the scene
Course Project Overview:
We will first start by taking a look at references, in this scenario we do not have an actual concept art. So we create a mood board by existing photos and then combine them in our mind to get a sense of the final product. Then to make sure that the idea is going to work, we will set up a blockout of the scene to get a feeling about the scale, composition and probability of the environment. Then we will start to generate art to replace the blcokout, and we do it in an iterative fashion, we do not make anything in one go; but rather we do it in multiple steps. We are going to create a lot of props and textures for this project, and we learn which props are more important and why? And of course where to sacrifice quality on some props to put that saved time and energy for another more important prop. We have a focus on material creation and how to reuse the same material and changing it in multiple scenarios for multiple use cases. We will learn about setting up a modular environment and how to clear the repetition by using vertex blending decals and set dressing props. And games are all about saving for performance, so we are going to learn some simple techniques to work more efficiently. Finally, there is going to be some content relative to the VFX and lighting.
Who is This Course For?
I have designed this course for intermediate 3d environment art students, who want to make beautiful looking environments, but they struggle to get it because they don't find a tutorial which is a step by step, no fast-forward, no skip.
The course is also for artists who want to speed up their workflow in Unreal Engine 5, Blender, Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3D Painter and Zbrush and improve their skill in creating an environment.
Who is Not The Ideal Student For This Course?
This course is not designed for absolute beginners.
What Are The Requirements Or Prerequisites For Taking This Course?
I expect you to have some sort of basic experience with these software packages.
You should have the software packages installed on your computer.
Join Me Now:
So if you want to make a realistic environment, then join me now, and take your skills to the next level. Don't forget that investing in yourself will pay for the rest of your life. Hope to see you in the course.