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Environment Art for Games

Explore the industry-standard tools and workflows for creating immersive real-time Environment Art for Games. Ten artists from studios such as Infinity Ward, Respawn, Blizzard Entertainment, and Naughty Dog explore world-building, architecture, natural biomes, foliage, cinematics, proceduralism, and optimization across various tools. While Unreal Engine is the core real-time application in this series, artists will learn how various other tools perform in essential parts of the pipeline, such as Maya, Houdini, Reality Capture, Substance, and SpeedTree.

Intermediate to Advanced 53h 25min 12 Workshops
Joshua Haun Giovani Magana Kosuke Iwasaki Ted Mebratu headshot Jianfeng Li Allan headshot Colin Valek headshot Dominique Buttiens headshot Toni Bratincevic headshot
By 11 Instructors
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Architectural Design for Games using Blender & UE5 thumbnail
01

Architectural Design for Games using Blender & UE5

Joshua Haun shares a professional workflow for crafting a Victorian-style architectural game environment design using Blender and Unreal Engine 5. This 6-hour workshop covers architectural design theory, modeling, texturing with trim sheets and UV-ing in Blender, and shader creation, foliage, lighting, and final shading in UE5, all geared towards real-time game production...

Joshua Haun headshot by Joshua Haun
Intermediate
6h 02m
17 Lessons
Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Modeling Texturing & Shading UV Layout
Unreal icon Unreal Blender icon Blender DaVinci Resolve icon DaVinci Resolve Substance Painter icon Substance Painter
Procedural Workflows for Games using Houdini thumbnail
02

Procedural Workflows for Games using Houdini

Giovani Magana guides mid-level artists through developing procedural workflows using Houdini to create high-quality, game-ready assets. This 4h 18m workshop covers architectural element blockout, building a Digital Asset Library, procedural rock and crystal generation, creating a complex Unreal Engine Master Material, and using UE features like PCG and Fracture, all for a stylized fantasy environment...

Giovani Magana headshot by Giovani Magana
Intermediate
4h 18m
13 Lessons
Digital Sculpting Digital Sets Effects Animation Environment Art Environment Design Game engines Texturing & Shading
Unreal icon Unreal Houdini icon Houdini ZBrush icon ZBrush
Creating Assets & Architecture for Game Environments thumbnail
03

Creating Assets & Architecture for Game Environments

Giovani Magana shares his professional workflow for building a game environment in Unreal Engine 5 using assets created in Maya and ZBrush. This 4h 10m workshop focuses on the modular approach to creating asset kits, including tiles, trim sheets, and tileable meshes, as well as sculpting props and rocks in ZBrush, before assembling and finishing the environment in Unreal Engine...

Giovani Magana headshot by Giovani Magana
Intermediate
4h 10m
14 Lessons
Digital Sculpting Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Look Development Modeling
Unreal icon Unreal Maya icon Maya Substance Painter icon Substance Painter ZBrush icon ZBrush
Cinematic Lighting in Unreal Engine 5 thumbnail
04

Cinematic Lighting in Unreal Engine 5

Naughty Dog Lighting Artist Ted Mebratu shares his advanced 2h 12m workflow for achieving cinematic results in Unreal Engine 5, focusing on interior lighting. The workshop teaches both the traditional static/baked Lightmaps (GPU Lightmass) workflow for precise artistic control and the powerful real-time Lumen GI system...

Ted Mebratu headshot by Ted Mebratu
Advanced
2h 12m
10 Lessons
Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development
Unreal icon Unreal
Creating Cinematics in Unreal Engine 5 thumbnail
05

Creating Cinematics in Unreal Engine 5

3D Generalist Kosuke Iwasaki guides artists and filmmakers through creating a cinematic shot in Unreal Engine 5. This 6-hour workshop covers art theory, UE5 fundamentals, scene blocking, kitbashing, material basics, character workflow, Niagara effects, Sequencer, lighting, and post-processing, focusing on the production-ready best practices used by professionals...

Kosuke Iwasaki headshot by Kosuke Iwasaki
Intermediate
6h 04m
12 Lessons
Character Animation Cinematography Cloth Digital Sets Effects Animation Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Texturing & Shading Visual Effects
Unreal icon Unreal
Creating a Monolithic City in Unreal Engine 5 thumbnail
06

Creating a Monolithic City in Unreal Engine 5

Senior Environment Generalist Jianfeng Li (Allan) shares his complete workflow for creating a cinematic environment and Monolithic City in Unreal Engine 5. This in-depth 9h 24m tutorial covers everything from concept creation, asset making (Maya, Houdini, Gaea, SpeedTree, ZBrush), look development and texturing (Substance Painter), to scene assembly (UE5's PCG), animated characters, matte painting, and final compositing in Nuke...

Jianfeng Li Allan headshot by Jianfeng Li (Allan)
Intermediate
9h 24m
19 Lessons
Compositing Digital Painting Digital Sculpting Digital Sets Effects Animation Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development Modeling Texturing & Shading Visual Effects
Maya icon Maya Houdini icon Houdini Gaea icon Gaea Nuke icon Nuke Unreal icon Unreal Speed Tree icon Speed Tree Substance Painter icon Substance Painter ZBrush icon ZBrush Photoshop icon Photoshop
Creating Foliage for Videogames thumbnail
07

Creating Foliage for Videogames

Senior Environment Artist Colin Valek shares his workflow for creating game-ready trees and groundcover vegetation. This 3h 29m workshop covers high-poly leaf sculpting (ZBrush/Maya), baking to texture atlases (Substance Designer), assembling the assets in SpeedTree, and final integration and population within Unreal Engine 5, focusing on art direction and technical best practices...

Colin Valek headshot by Colin Valek
Intermediate
3h 29m
12 Lessons
Digital Sculpting Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading
Unreal icon Unreal Speed Tree icon Speed Tree Substance Designer icon Substance Designer Maya icon Maya ZBrush icon ZBrush
Creating a Sci-Fi Hallway in Unreal Engine 5 thumbnail
08

Creating a Sci-Fi Hallway in Unreal Engine 5

Principal Environment Artist Dominique Buttiens teaches modern texturing techniques and a shader pipeline using UE5, Blender, and Substance Painter. This 3h 27m workshop details the creation of a sci-fi hallway from concept and modeling to lighting, look-dev, and rendering, with a focus on efficient, high-quality texturing workflows for game environments...

Dominique Buttiens headshot by Dominique Buttiens
Intermediate
3h 27m
9 Lessons
Environment Art Environment Design Game engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development Modeling UV Layout
Unreal icon Unreal Blender icon Blender Photoshop icon Photoshop Substance Painter icon Substance Painter
Environment Art Lookdev Using Unreal & Photogrammetry thumbnail
09

Environment Art Lookdev Using Unreal & Photogrammetry

Environment Artist Brian Recktenwald shares a complete workflow for creating a photorealistic, stylized look-dev environment in Unreal using photogrammetry. This 2h 19m workshop covers planning, capturing (models/textures), asset creation/cleanup (Reality Capture, ZBrush, 3ds Max, Marmoset Toolbag), texturing (Substance Painter), "asset gyms," material creation, and final scene assembly and lighting in Unreal...

Brian Recktenwald headshot by Brian Recktenwald
Intermediate
2h 19m
12 Lessons
Digital Sculpting Digital Sets Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development Photogrammetry Texturing & Shading
3ds Max icon 3ds Max Marmoset Toolbag icon Marmoset Toolbag ZBrush icon ZBrush Unreal icon Unreal Substance Painter icon Substance Painter Photoshop icon Photoshop ReCap icon ReCap
3D Illustration and Environment Modeling Workflows thumbnail
10

3D Illustration and Environment Modeling Workflows

Senior Environment Modeler Toni Bratincevic shares his techniques for creating an epic 3D environment illustration. This 5h 24m workshop covers all key stages from concept to final illustration, including organizing 3D environments, building materials, using procedural modeling with RailClone and ForestPack for scattering, developing futuristic architecture in 3ds Max, and compositing/post-production using Fusion...

Toni Bratincevic headshot by Toni Bratincevic
Intermediate
5h 24m
12 Lessons
Compositing Digital Sets Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Modeling Texturing & Shading
Redshift icon Redshift World Machine icon World Machine 3ds Max icon 3ds Max Fusion icon Fusion V-Ray icon V-Ray
Creating a Swamp Scene for Games with SpeedTree & Photogrammetry thumbnail
11

Creating a Swamp Scene for Games with SpeedTree & Photogrammetry

Senior Environment Artist Adrien Paguet-Brunella shares a complete biome collection workflow for creating a swamp scene. This 2h 36m workshop covers using photogrammetry to capture high-resolution foliage (leaves, branches, flowers), processing scanned grounds/rocks into tileable materials, creating a hero tree and variations in SpeedTree, and final scene assembly in-engine, along with AAA production tips for natural environments...

Adrien Paguet-Brunella headshot by Adrien Paguet-Brunella
Intermediate
2h 36m
9 Lessons
Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Photogrammetry
Unreal icon Unreal Speed Tree icon Speed Tree Blender icon Blender
Creating a Medieval Castle in Unreal Engine 5 thumbnail
12

Creating a Medieval Castle in Unreal Engine 5

Senior Environment Artist Phil Stoltz shares his tips and techniques for creating a photorealistic medieval castle scene. This 4h 00m workshop guides viewers through the complete environment creation pipeline, from blockout and world-building to sculpting, material blending, and lighting using Unreal Engine 5's Lumen system. The workflow incorporates Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, and Megascans...

Phil Stoltz headshot by Phil Stoltz
Intermediate
4h
8 Lessons
Digital Sculpting Environment Art Environment Design Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading
Unreal icon Unreal Quixel Megascans icon Quixel Megascans Maya icon Maya Substance Painter icon Substance Painter ZBrush icon ZBrush
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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  • Over 350 Workshops. 250+ Instructors.
  • Concept Art, Visual Effects, Games and much more.
  • New Workshops released every month.
  • Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Levels
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