Sci-fi 3D Environment Art in UE5 by Greedy3D

3D Environment Art involves combining various art assets into a playable game space using a game engine. With Unreal Engine 5’s advanced lighting features, creating amazing-looking environment art has become easier, bringing offline rendering quality to games. In this class, you’ll use Blender, Unreal Engine 5, and Quixel Megascans to create a cool sci-fi environment that runs in-engine.

Throughout the course, you’ll build an environment art kit, a collection of reusable models that can serve as building blocks to fill out a 3D scene in Unreal. The theme for this class’s environment is a sci-fi cryostasis prison where inmates are stored and frozen inside a row of pods.

The major steps for the project involve analyzing the concept art to identify repeating elements in the environment, breaking down the scene to determine what kit pieces are necessary to put together the scene in Unreal. Then, you’ll extract geo from the modeling used to generate the concept art and break it down into the smallest possible pieces that work well when duplicated multiple times. You’ll then model more details into the different kit pieces to use as final assets in Unreal and unwrap them for proper display of materials.

After that, you’ll bring the kit pieces into Unreal and set up collisions appropriate for each shape. You’ll download Megascan materials from the Quixel Bridge library and apply them to the kit pieces, adjusting UV scaling and offset as necessary. Finally, you’ll package these textured kit pieces into individual Blueprint Actors for easy drag-and-drop access.

To create the desired atmosphere, you’ll set up four walls and a ceiling to create a dark and enclosed space. You’ll add lights and fill in the room with the kit pieces, aiming to match the concept art in terms of visuals, mood, and lighting. By following the class lessons, you’ll gain the skills and knowledge to make amazing-looking environment art using the tools provided.