
Explore how to create stylized environments for films and games. Build modular, reusable kits from a blockout, apply stylized materials, and craft cartoonish lighting and foliage variations.
Explore the final project files for stylized environments, including free blender add ons, references, stylized sky texture, and Zbrush brushes, plus a downloadable project to plan and open your scene.
Plan a stylized medieval village by examining references, emphasize modularity with reusable wall and roof pieces, and use blackout blocking to test composition and scale in Unreal Engine before detailing.
Compare stylised and realistic workflows in environment creation, emphasizing big shapes, limited small details, and stylised silhouettes to speed up production.
Export from blender to unreal engine with baytex to streamline pivot-centered exports; use blockout references and human-scale, then set up a cinematic 16:9 camera.
Set a grounded, stylized lighting blockout by crafting a sky sphere with a stylized texture in Blender and Unreal, then adjust exposure and post-process effects.
Begin the blockout by importing modular meshes, disabling sky collision, and building a human-scale, grid-snapped layout in Blender and Unreal Engine for walls, floors, doors, balconies, and attic.
Create a modular, stylised environment by finishing the blockout of interlocking buildings in Blender, duplicating and replacing meshes, adjusting spacing, and aligning windows and doors for a coherent UE5 scene.
Learn to tile textures across modular Blender and UE5 environments by creating tiling materials, managing UV coordinates, and ensuring consistent texel density to avoid seams.
Fix tiling issues in modular UVs for stylized environments by unwrapping, flipping, rotating, and offsetting UVs and texel density across Blender and UE5 workflows.
Create a stylized plaster material in Substance 3D Designer, exploring tiling, hand-painted textures, and vertex blending with dirt and grime for a believable game environment.
Create a hand-painted plaster material by layering base colors with watercolor-inspired opacity maps, then add heightmap-driven details, ambient occlusion, and channel-packed textures for Unreal Engine.
Create the first master material in unreal engine 5, using base color, desaturation, hue, lightness, contrast, and vertex blending with material attributes and instances for modular pieces.
Create stylised cobblestones by building tiling geometry in Blender, sculpting variations in Zbrush, and blending with plaster for seamless, shadow-friendly environment textures.
Start with a first sculpting pass using trim dynamic to shape angles, then refine with orb flatten and dynamesh at 1024 resolution, focusing planar changes for tiling.
Explore stylized environment sculpting from the first pass to detailed enhancements using alphas and backface masking. Then decimate high-poly models and export low-poly fbx for Blender tiling and cobblestone geometry.
Create a tiling stone wall in blender by duplicating and rotating bricks around individual origins, using arrays to build a 3x3 layout, and filling gaps before exporting to substance designer.
Bake cobblestone textures from high-poly to a baking plane in Blender, then use Substance 3D Designer to generate normal, color, height, and opacity maps for stylized environments in UE5.
Develop stylised cobblestone environments using heightmaps, flood fill variations, and gradient sculpting. Achieve painterly base colors, tiled textures, and masked detail in Blender and UE5.
Finish cobblestone textures by applying color variation with gradient maps, height and normal maps, and curvature masks, then test in Unreal Engine for vertex blended materials.
Develop a stylised moss material by blending Blender with Substance 3D Designer, bake on a plane, and tile into moss patches for UE5 environments.
Create and blend master materials in Unreal Engine to combine cobblestone and plaster using vertex color painting, height-based blending, and material attributes, with controlled tiling and grunge variations.
Bake high-poly cobblestones onto a tiling low-poly mesh to preserve texture resolution. Unwrap, texture in Substance Painter and Blender, pack UVs, and prep for kitbashing in UE5.
Create stylized cobblestone textures using curvature maps, fill layers, and variation masks in Painter; refine with triplanar tiling, then export Unreal Engine packed textures for OpenGL/DirectX.
Apply cobblestone textures in blender, kitbash low-poly bricks into a 3x3 canvas, randomize rotation and scales for variation, and export to Unreal Engine with nanite and Lumen considerations.
Create modular wood kits in Blender using kitbash to assemble buildings, with strong beams, planks and rounds, while preparing low-poly silhouettes for Unreal Engine and sculpting in ZBrush.
Master second pass wood sculpting by using trim dynamic brushes, square alphas, and high-resolution dynamesh, adding varied, directional grain and back-face masking for efficient Unreal Engine environments.
Unwrap the wood kit in Blender, decimate to HP and LP, export as FBX, unwrap UV maps with checker textures, and bake textures in Substance 3D Painter for Unreal Engine.
Learn to texture a stylized wood kit from UV packing and baking to Painter layers, color variation, edge details, and AO, then export textures for Unreal Engine and kitbash pivots.
Learn to kitbash stylised wood environments in Blender and Unreal Engine by renaming, exporting, and applying a master material with optional color variation for windows.
Kitbash varied window and door modules, reuse and rotate parts, export as static meshes, and test in Unreal Engine to refine bend, pivots, and vertex blending.
Block out a stylised attic by blending cobblestone and vegetation textures, set up albedo and normal maps, and build a modular Blender attic kit for Unreal Engine testing.
Learn to build stylised attic shingles in Blender and UE5 by modeling kit-based shingles, unwrap UVs, sculpt in ZBrush with Dynamesh, and bake details in Painter for reusable low-poly assets.
Design and texture stylized attic shingles in Blender and UE5 by baking normal maps, creating smart materials, layering color and dirt, and using arrays for varied, efficient shingles.
Finish modularity by kitbashing a four-meter balcony from a reusable wood kit, creating varied planks and deformation for stylized realism, with performance in mind, then export to Unreal for integration.
Build a base barrel kit in Blender, kitbash variations, unwrap UVs, and prep the low-poly props for sculpting in ZBrush.
Learn to sculpt rough wood and hammered iron for a barrel kit, preserve silhouette, and bake a strong normal map using trim dynamic and hammered iron alpha.
Sculpt the final barrel pieces with clay buildup, add an outer ring, and keep details within low-poly limits for a stylized medieval normal-map bake ready for Blender and Painter.
Texture a barrel kit by baking normal maps from high and low poly using uv islands, shrinkwrap, and cage adjustments in blender, then texture wood and metal with masks.
Learn to kitbash wooden barrels in Blender, forming curved assemblies with arrays and bends, unwrap and texture, export to Unreal Engine, and simulate physics for realistic stacking.
Finish a stylised environment by applying vertex blending to a barrels kit, tinting plaster materials, painting variations, and adding moss using Blender and UE5.
Practice building stylised fruit props with a Blender to ZBrush pipeline, creating base meshes, blockouts, and variations for orange, apple, carrot, pumpkin, watermelon, and banana to enrich composition.
Sculpt stylized fruits in ZBrush with Dynamesh and polish for smooth surfaces. Export as FBX to Blender, unwrap, and bake normal maps for kitbash in Unreal Engine.
Texture the fruit kit by optimizing geometry, unwrapping uv maps, baking normal maps in painter, and applying color masks and hand-painted details in Blender and UE5.
Create stylised environments by kitbashing a fruit basket with Blender and UE5, using fruit kit assets, rigid body simulations, collision meshes, and texture work to assemble varied fruit scenarios.
Explore cloth simulation in Blender by creating cloth for a fruit basket scene, using the cloth modifier with pin groups, sculpting wrinkles, and exporting to Unreal Engine.
Unwrap and texture three cloth pieces in Blender, bake high and low poly details, and export as FBX for testing in Unreal Engine, using opacity masks and two-sided PBR materials.
Block out foliage kits in Blender, creating grass, flowers, and ivy, then bake the high-poly details to planes for efficient Unreal Engine foliage placement.
Sculpt a stylised foliage kit in ZBrush using Dynamesh and back-face masking to create grass fibers, then kitbash high-poly in Blender and bake normals to a low-poly plane for UE5.
Place and bake foliage in Blender using a baking plane, kitbash grasses, ivy, and flowers, apply randomization and pivots, then bake normal and opacity maps in Painter for UE5 textures.
Texture the foliage kit by laying down blocks, then apply an opacity layer. Use ID masks to separate grass, stems, and flowers with gradients.
Create game-ready low-poly flowers by kitbashing modular Blender pieces, optimize with bevels and alpha removal, bend with simple deform, and export to unreal engine for foliage.
Learn to create game-ready grass and ivy in Blender, paint dense patches, export as static meshes to Unreal Engine, and apply a two-sided foliage material with subsurface scattering.
Fix issues and improvements for a cartoony environment by optimizing a simple mesh, tiling, and merging; place foliage, adjust camera, and refine lighting and post-process for a playful look.
Explore stylized lighting and rendering in Blender and UE5 by exaggerating direct and indirect illumination, refining skylight, sun direction, bloom, color grading, and post-process effects to achieve a cartoony look.
Finish a stylized environment in Blender and UE5 using kits and vertex blending to achieve a hand-painted look through lighting and post-processing.
Do you want to learn how to make stylised environments for films and games?
Then I welcome you to my "Learn to Make Stylised Environments in Blender & UE5" course.
About Me:
My name is Arash Aref. I am a 3d artist and educator, interested in games and educating games, especially environment art and lighting. I have had a lot of happy students. So if you want to be one of them, join me in this journey.
By the End Of This Course, You Will Be Able To:
You will be able to plan and execute a fully stylised environment from beginning to the end.
You will be able to use different softwares, like blender, Zbrush, Substance 3d Designer, Substance 3D Painter, and Unreal Engine 5.
How to turn a semi-realistic environment to a stylised one, by doing a lighting pass in UE5.
What You Will Learn:
Create a stylised result by learning how to exaggerate.
Rendering Stylised Environments.
Creating Stylised Materials.
How to reuse stuff, to save time in production
Creating kits for a lot of purposes
Creating stylised foliage
Course Project Overview:
We will start by talking about stylisation and how to distinguish a stylised art from a realistic one and learn some simple rules to create stylised art. Then we go over references and plan a road map for the project and brainstorm ideas. We take those ideas and convert them to a blockout, to see that the ideas are going to be fine and working. Then we convert those blockout to modular kits, to be more efficient and faster at creating content. We learn how to make stylised materials, meshes, foliage and how to render the scene to look stylised.
Who is This Course For?
I have designed this course for students and beginner level artists, who want to model environments art for 3d cartoon films.
Who is Not The Ideal Student For This Course?
This course is not designed for absolute Blender beginners.
What Are The Requirements Or Prerequisites For Taking This Course?
I expect you to have some sort of basic environment art experience.
You should have the softwares mentioned installed on your computer.
Join Me Now:
So if you want to make stylised environments for films and games, 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.