Stylized Environment Creation for Games

Creating Stylized Assets for Unreal Engine with Rodrigo Brea

In this beginner-to-intermediate-level workshop, Rodrigo Brea shares various professional techniques and approaches for building stylized environments. This 5-hour guide covers topics including how to analyze a concept and create a breakdown; how to set up a basic scene in Unreal 5; different ways to create a variety of assets, from grass/foliage/trees to a hero piece; as well as how to texture and create a reusable Substance Smart Material.

Rodrigo utilizes a few key software choices, including Unreal Engine 5, Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, TreeIt, and Autodesk FBX Converter. Using these tools, he offers an industry-insider’s perspective to tackling and approaching the creation of stylized assets for professional games.

You’ll see how the final scene is set up, and learn Rodrigo’s approach for lighting, as well as a few simple methods he uses to render out beauty shots and a video for presentation. The techniques taught will be not only helpful for creating a scene from a concept, but will also be applicable to any stylized environment you may want to create.

By completing this workshop, you’ll have a better understanding of the workflow professional game artists use for creating stylized environments, and you will know a variety of ways to problem solve and approach different results.

Accompanying this workshop are two downloadable folders; one includes Rodrigo’s completed Unreal 5 Project including all its assets; a second folder offers Rodrigo’s working files from the various software packages utilized in this workshop.