LEARNING PATH

Environment Art for Film

Environment Art for Film, both natural and architectural, requires a working knowledge of diverse tools and techniques to execute the level of detail and realism needed by today’s visual effects and animation industry. While organic/hard-surface modeling and texturing are the foundation, environment artists must also learn various procedural tools to create highly complex forms such as plants, trees, and terrains. In the Environment Art for Film Path, 12 accomplished environment artists share their knowledge and workflows featuring tools including Gaea, SpeedTree, Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Substance, V-Ray, and Arnold.

Beginner to Advanced 70h 21min 12 Workshops

By 11 Instructors

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Gaea Essentials: Create Realistic Procedural Environments

Dax Pandhi, creator of Gaea, provides a thorough look at all the essentials you need to know to create realistic, high-definition terrains using a procedural methodology. Learn to use real-world satellite data, techniques for 'bulking up' and eroding terrains, and utilizing various nodes to achieve specific looks...

by Dax Pandhi

Beginner

4h 47m

8 Lessons

Environment Art Environment Design Look Development Texturing & Shading

Gaea

Building Natural Environments using Gaea & Houdini

Rasha Shalaby takes environment artists and matte painters on a journey from concept to final shot using Gaea, Houdini, V-Ray, and Photoshop as she recreates the ancient deserts of Sinia, Egypt, and the Red Sea Mountains. Walks through the complete creation process of a natural environment based on a real location...

by Rasha Shalaby

Intermediate

4h 15m

8 Lessons

Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Texturing & Shading

Gaea

Houdini

V-Ray

Creating Procedural Environments in Gaea & Houdini

Rasha Shalaby uncovers how to create complex terrain assets such as icy cliffs and rocky terrains using Gaea, and incorporates them into a Houdini workflow. She demonstrates creating geometry using erosion and warp techniques, exporting textures for Arnold rendering, and establishing the final look, lighting, and cameras...

by Rasha Shalaby

Advanced

3h 27m

11 Lessons

Environment Art Environment Design HDR Images Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading

Gaea

Houdini

Photoshop

Creating High-Resolution Custom Trees Using SpeedTree

Discover how to generate complex-looking trees using SpeedTree and Houdini, with this intermediate-level tutorial by Jean-Michel Bihorel. He teaches every step needed to generate a hero tree asset — perfect for use in a cinematic. Includes advice for exporting assets between different software packages like Maya...

by Jean-Michel Bihorel

Intermediate

3h 32m

16 Lessons

Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Look Development Modeling Texturing & Shading

Speed Tree

Redshift

Houdini

Maya

Introduction to the Houdini Ocean Toolset

This 3.5-hour introductory workshop by Danny Barnhart provides an overview of the Ocean Toolset in Houdini and reveals how to bring your own ocean environments to life. Covers spectrums, layering patterns, custom masks, instanced waves, simulating foam, and incorporating a FLIP fluid simulation for close-up shots...

by Danny Barnhart

Beginner

3h 25m

7 Lessons

Effects Animation Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Visual Effects

Houdini

Creating a Large-Scale Aerial Shot

Frederick Vallee demonstrates how to create a 3D environment in Houdini using OpenStreetMap data to generate a procedural city surrounded by a meadow environment. The environment is then used to demonstrate how to create a birds-eye view and how to take it to an artistic level using Nuke for compositing...

by Frederick Vallee

Advanced

7h 27m

9 Lessons

Compositing Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Look Development Modeling Texturing & Shading Visual Effects

Nuke

Arnold

Houdini

Nuke Projection Workflows for Feature Films

Generalist Nacho Thomas shares non-destructive techniques to help artists level up their renders by creating comp-friendly projections using AOV sequences in Nuke. This 7-hour workshop demonstrates production-ready projection workflows for environments, starting with the 3D process in Maya/Arnold and moving to Nuke and Photoshop...

by Nacho Thomas

Intermediate

7h 23m

11 Lessons

Compositing Digital Sets Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Nuke

Arnold

Maya

Photoshop

Creating Environment Art for Digital Production

Lead Environment Artist Ciro Cardoso explores professional environment art workflows, from modeling hero assets in Maya and creating vegetation using SpeedTree to creating your own look-dev tools in Houdini. This 6-hour workshop guides you through the entire process of creating a realistic, optimized environment, including scene assembly and Arnold rendering...

by Ciro Cardoso

Advanced

6h 07m

14 Lessons

Digital Sculpting Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Look Development Modeling Texturing & Shading

Speed Tree

Arnold

Houdini

Maya

Substance Painter

ZBrush

Exterior Scene Development

Adrien Vallecilla demonstrates professional techniques for creating an exterior scene, including custom texturing in Mari using decals and masks, lighting and look development in Maya, material layering in Arnold, and compositing in Nuke. The tutorial also covers vegetation scattering with Maya MASH and scene optimization techniques...

by Adrien Vallecilla

Intermediate

6h 10m

13 Lessons

Compositing Environment Art Environment Design HDR images Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading Visual Effects

Nuke

Mari

Arnold

Maya

Creating a High-Fidelity Hero Building

Dmitry Kremiansky shares his techniques to create an optimized, precise, versatile 3D building model and texture it with smart materials in Substance Painter. This 7-hour workshop focuses on robust modeling, UV, and texturing workflows using Maya, Substance, and V-Ray, and is intended to help artists boost the quality of their detailed hero assets in a studio pipeline...

by Dmitry Kremiansky

Advanced

6h 58m

10 Lessons

Environment Art Lighting & Rendering Modeling Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Substance Designer

Maya

Substance Painter

V-Ray

Environment 3D Matte Painting Techniques

Koke Nunez demonstrates how to master the art of crafting breathtaking environments using advanced 3D matte painting techniques. This 8h 50m workshop covers integrating 2D and 3D elements, creating realistic landscapes with World Creator, 3D modeling, and achieving photorealistic results through lighting and compositing with Blender, Nuke, and Photoshop...

by Koke Nunez

Intermediate

8h 50m

17 Lessons

Compositing Environment Art Environment Design HDR Images Lighting & Rendering Matte Painting Texturing & Shading

Nuke

Blender

World Creator

Photoshop

Creating Procedural Environments in Houdini

Wojtek Piwowarczyk teaches how to create a 3D environment entirely using Houdini, showcasing the complete process of procedural environment creation and the advantages of a non-destructive workflow. The 8-hour workshop covers project structuring, professional terrain generation, vegetation scattering, procedural architecture modeling, advanced shading, and workflow optimization using VEX...

by Wojtek Piwowarczyk

Advanced

8h 09m

10 Lessons

Effects Animation Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Modeling Texturing & Shading Visual Effects

Houdini

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about the Learning Path.

Learning Paths have been organized to help both aspiring and professional artists, who are looking for training based on the fundamental categories of creative work in the visual effects, animation and games industries. Each Learning Path has been curated to contain a collection of workshops that guide artists through a series of topics relevant to that path, but they are not necessarily sequential. When appropriate, however, we have organized the workshops in a path to be in a logical order. All workshops are tagged with their level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) so that you can browse the path and choose a title that matches both the subject matter and level that you are looking for.

All Gnomon Workshop instructors are professional artists from the entertainment industry, who have worked with us to structure their time, experience and knowledge into practical and inspiring training. We believe that it is important to learn from masters of the craft, who have honed those skills via years of experience working in production, collaboratively with their peers. Through time and experience, artists develop not just their creative and technical ability, but also their communication skills. These become critical aspects to being an effective lead artist, supervisor or, in our case, instructor.

Whether you choose an Annual or a Monthly Subscription, your plan will give you unlimited access to all 26 Learning Paths, allowing you to learn at your own pace. Your subscription also gives you access to the entire catalog of 350+ workshops, with new comprehensive workshops added every month.

While many workshops include Project Files, these are at the instructors’ discretion. You will find details of any project files provided on each workshop page, along with the software/tools required to tackle the workshop. If you have any questions, you can contact us via our Live Chat or email the team at support@thegnomonworkshop.com.

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Environment Art for Film

Gaea Essentials: Create Realistic Procedural Environments

Building Natural Environments using Gaea & Houdini

Creating Procedural Environments in Gaea & Houdini

Creating High-Resolution Custom Trees Using SpeedTree

Introduction to the Houdini Ocean Toolset

Creating a Large-Scale Aerial Shot

Nuke Projection Workflows for Feature Films

Creating Environment Art for Digital Production

Exterior Scene Development

Creating a High-Fidelity Hero Building

Environment 3D Matte Painting Techniques

Creating Procedural Environments in Houdini

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