Abandoned Dacha Environment - Modular Kit with interiors
Hey everyone!
I’m a Senior/Lead Environment Artist with about 7 years of industry experience. For the last 3.5 years, I've been heavily focused on building modular environment systems for a VR project.
Anyone who's worked in VR knows the constant struggle between visual aesthetics and aggressive optimization (though to be fair, that's not strictly limited to VR!). So, for my portfolio, I decided to take these exact game-ready assets and render them in UE5 using Lumen just to see how they hold up without VR limitations.
A bit about the workflow and technical side:
Modeling: Everything was modeled in Blender.
Modularity: The system ended up being extremely flexible. From this single kit, you can build several distinct villages with completely unique houses (small shacks, massive 2-3 story buildings, varying roof sizes, etc.).
Texturing: Created from scratch, mostly in Substance Painter (I personally prefer it over Designer for my workflow). For some base textures, I used Megascans normals as a starting point, but heavily reworked them and added a ton of custom layers and grime on top.
Engine: Fully assembled and lit in Unreal Engine 5 using Lumen.
This is actually my first time posting my work publicly in 7 years. Emerging from "production hell" to finally show what I’ve been making is a pretty emotional moment for me!
If you want to see the full technical breakdown and more renders, I’ve uploaded the full project on my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8BAOPE
I'm totally open to answering any questions about the VR pipeline, texturing workflow, modular systems, or just my experience in general!
Replies
Really impressive work!
Especially the modularity and how well the assets hold up outside of VR constraints.
I’d be very interested to hear more about the VR pipeline you mentioned. How much did it change your approach compared to a more traditional environment pipeline, particularly in terms of geometry, materials, and modular design?