Becoming an Environment Artist
With the release of Unreal Engine 5, the ease of creating and sculpting terrain, then using blueprints to quickly add responsive grass, dirt, and rock materials to my levels, made environment art very enticing and accessible for me. Being a programmer, I often felt the urge to explore more aspects of game development, since the barrier of entry has been completely shattered.
I wouldn’t consider myself a full-blown artist just yet. I first learned Blender to build some basic 3D models. We can call it “programmer art” – just enough to get a prototype playable.
The main challenges were that most 3D software required subscriptions, which wasn’t ideal for someone just learning without commercial intent. Free trials helped at first, but I eventually ran out of emails to renew them. Blender was difficult to grasp initially, but I got through it with the help of countless YouTube tutorials.
Whenever I wanted to build a model for a prototype, I would find a tutorial making something similar and follow along.
On YouTube, I watched and subscribed to Stylized Station. I also browsed ArtStation regularly for references and inspiration for the types of levels I wanted to build.
Environment art was a natural next step in my game dev journey. While I could program gameplay and other systems, I lacked the ability to build engaging levels to make my games feel polished. In the kinds of games I want to create, players will spend most of their time exploring environments. They need to look good and contain landmarks that resonate with the player.
My main sources of inspiration are games I’ve played. Sometimes I want to recreate the worlds I’ve explored. I often return to ArtStation for inspiration and references.
