The Ashen Citadel - Environment Art

The Ashen Citadel - Environment Art I'm excited to share the final project from my mentorship in the CG Asset Portfolio Production (Very Advanced Term 16 weeks) program at Think Tank Training Centre. https://www.artstation.com/thinktanktrainingcentre This environment is inspired by traditional Japanese pagodas and draws influence from games such as Assassin's Creed Shadows and Ghost of Tsushima. To help develop a unique visual direction, I also utilized AI generated during the concept exploration phase. Everything in this scene was created by me from scratch, including modeling, texturing, lighting, composition, editing, and sound design. The final environment is fully optimized to run in real time while maintaining a high level of visual fidelity. This project represents months of learning, iteration, and growth, and I'm proud to finally share it with everyone. A huge thank you to my mentor, Kacper Niepokólczycki, for his invaluable guidance throughout this mentorship. His feedback, industry knowledge, and continuous support helped me make better artistic and technical decisions while pushing my work toward industry standard quality. https://www.artstation.com/kacperniepoklczycki Technical Highlights: • Fully modular and built as a reusable system designed to run smoothly with optimized polygon counts • Extensive use of trim sheets to maximize material reuse and maintain consistency across the environment. • Substance Designer for creating procedural and tilable materials, including texture variations from a single texture set. • Vertex blending with RGB masks for texture variation and seamless material transitions. • PCG (Procedural Content Generation) used for scattering debris, rocks, and environmental details. • Niagara FX utilized for fire effects and dynamic falling leaves. • Blueprints used to control Lantern variations and environmental interactions. • Lighting was created using IBL with a physically accurate setup and exposure control for realism. • HDRI was used for natural ambient lighting while keeping performance optimized through controlled light intensity and contribution. • Runtime Virtual Textures (RVT) implemented to blend roads and environment assets naturally with the landscape. • Advanced landscape material setup featuring automated texturing workflows, manual paint layers, and Nanite Tessellation for enhanced terrain detail. • Fully optimized for real time rendering while maintaining a high level of visual fidelity. • Speedtree+Nanite for trees and using simple wind setup for cloth animation. • Texel density was planned based on asset importance and camera distance. Terrain and distant objects were optimized at 128 to 256 px/m using 1K to 2K textures, while most foreground and gameplay relevant assets were maintained at around 512 px/m with 2K textures to balance performance and visual fidelity. • For large wall assets, 4K textures were used where necessary to properly maintain consistent 512 px/m texel density across larger surface areas without loss of detail. • Single texture sets were efficiently reused for rocks and stone assets to maximize texture space utilization and maintain material consistency across the environment. Workflow Highlights: Fully modular environment Reusable trim sheets Performance-focused asset setup PCG used for scattering debris, rocks, and environmental details Non-destructive texturing workflow Vertex Blending + RGB mask Technical Material setup #Digital 3D #Real-time #Game Art #Games #Lighting #NoAI #3DEnvironment #GameArt #EnvironmentArt #Props #UE5 #UnrealEngine5 #LevelArt #ThinkTank #TTTC #GamesAndRealTime3DEnvironmentArt #Pagoda #TheAshenCitadel #Japan #Animation Music Courtesy of Pixabay Audio File ID: 349846