Creating a Gritty Industrial Cyberpunk 2077-Inspired Room in UE5

Introduction

My name is Beck Meisel, and I'm an Environment and Prop artist from the United States. I currently work in Pullman, WA; I freelance for anyone who reaches out in the insane chaos of the industry right now.

I started when I was 17, making small, complex hard-surface models and doing lots of topology Practice. Nothing too serious, but it was fun. From Blender, I got into 3D modeling in Maya and eventually, years later, discovered Plasticity as well. Funny enough, I went back and relearned Blender years later; I started off with simple props and slowly got into environment art in Unreal Engine 5. I would like to say I have moderate proficiency in Unreal Engine, Substance 3D Painter, ZBrush, and Marvelous Designer as well. I went to school at Think Tank Training Centre, where I studied 3d Environments and prop art. Graduating just this year. I've yet to take a real step in the industry, but now I am actively looking for an opportunity.

Backroom Deal Inspiration

I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 around March, and soon after, I watched Edge Runners on Netflix. I felt that I wanted to start another project, something relatively small and self-contained. I decided to create a Cyberpunk-inspired environment. When crafting a cyberpunk environment in Unreal, I was heavily inspired by the dilapidated, high-tech-meets-low-life aesthetic of the All Foods deal room. The space is industrial and claustrophobic, with rusted metal/concrete walls, flickering overhead fluorescents, and cables snaking across the floor. The lighting is a mix of harsh red security strobes and the cold blue glow of the hologram, creating a tense, high-contrast mood. The air feels thick with dust and humidity, accentuated by volumetric fog creeping through vents.

I'm layering environmental storytelling – open drug containers, bullet casings, and holograms displaying merchandise. Every surface is textured with grime, oil stains, and chipped paint, reinforcing that this place has seen countless shady deals before yours. The scene is a blend of oppression and unease, where tech and decay clash. Everything has a purpose of telling who has spent time here and what is his personality. For me, that is the biggest inspiration and something I always look for when creating environments.

References

I rely on PureRef for gathering references, as it's a crucial step in shaping the vision for any project. This phase lays the foundation for your assets and environment, providing both inspiration and direction. Taking the time to carefully collect and organize references is essential, so don't rush it. For this project, I dedicated a few days to refining my reference board, ensuring every detail aligned with the atmosphere and style I wanted to achieve.

I prefer a straightforward approach, and I typically limit myself to two to five references per asset. While some artists create hoards of images, I've found that collecting more than six images can be overwhelming and makes it easy to lose sight of the original intent. Keeping my reference selection concise helps me stay focused and ensures that every image serves a clear purpose in shaping the final design.

Sticking to mostly realistic references for this project helps maintain a strong sense of believability and immersion in the environment. Since the scene is heavily inspired by a gritty cyberpunk setting, using real-world industrial spaces, abandoned factories, and worn-down tech as references ensures that materials, lighting, and details feel authentic and grounded. Realism also helps with texturing and asset creation, making sure that metal surfaces, grime buildup, and wear patterns follow natural logic rather than feeling overly stylized. Additionally, real-world references provide a strong foundation for scale and composition, preventing the scene from feeling too exaggerated or artificial.

I begin my PureRef board with a solid foundation of key references, carefully selecting images that capture the overall mood, lighting, and material qualities I want to achieve. As the project evolves, I continuously expand my board, incorporating additional references for specific details like furniture, scattered debris, papers, weapons, and other environmental storytelling elements. This dynamic approach allows me to refine my vision organically, ensuring every new asset stays consistent with the scene's tone and atmosphere. By the end of the process, my PureRef file becomes a dense, chaotic collage of inspiration, seemingly messy yet meticulously curated, each image serving as a puzzle piece in the final composition.

Blockout

1. Start with Basic Layout & Composition

The first step is to establish the overall composition and layout of the scene. Think about how the environment is structured – whether it's a cramped industrial room, a dimly lit alley, or a high-tech factory.

• Use simple geometric shapes (cubes, spheres, etc.) to block out the major structures. This allows you to get a feel for how the space will be organized without worrying about details yet.
• Focus on the room's scale, ensuring it feels claustrophobic yet functional. A cyberpunk setting often involves tight spaces, so low ceilings, cramped corners, and clustered machinery help enhance that feeling of being enclosed.
• Pay attention to where key elements of the narrative, like the Projection device or the space the gang, would spend time. Consider the flow of action and how characters will move through the space.

2. Define the Key Focal Points

Identify where you want to draw the viewer's eye. In a cyberpunk setting, this could be a glowing neon sign, a hologram, or a weapon wall.

• Block out these elements using basic shapes like planes for holograms or rectangular boxes for terminals. Position them in a way that draws attention without feeling too forced.
• Start to consider lighting placement. What will cast light on the important areas? Positioning simple lights early on helps you visualize how shadows will interact with the space. For a scene like this, you might want flickering, harsh light sources (like broken fluorescents or neon tubes) to create a gritty, industrial vibe.

3. Add Basic Props and Environmental Details

Once the main structures are in place, start populating the scene with simple placeholders for props and environmental assets.

• Furniture like an old couch, shelf, crates, or tech devices can help fill the space and add realism.
• Block in elements like trash, papers, tools, and other clutter that might be scattered around – this makes the environment feel lived-in and gritty, key aspects of cyberpunk.
• Don't worry about making these assets look perfect yet; the goal is to get a sense of how everything fits together in space.

Blockout in Unreal:

Once the initial blockout is finished and I am happy with the proportions, I can start modeling my assets. For the modeling in this project, I made sure to practice different ways of creating high to low poly assets or even mid poly where I wouldn't bake them at all.

Example of the low poly couch model:

Example of the high poly couch model:

Composition

When planning a 3D scene, I like to know what my shots are before I really focus on polishing the entire scene. This step is important because it helps you figure out which parts of the scene need the most attention. By understanding what will be most visible or important, you can spend time focusing on those areas and avoid wasting time on parts that won't show up much or are far away. It also lets you start thinking about the story you want to tell with the environment, adding small details that help create the right atmosphere and make the scene feel more real.

The advice I would give is to focus on guiding the viewer's eye using composition techniques like the rule of thirds, leading lines, and contrast. Establish mood and storytelling through lighting, color, and small environmental details that hint at past events or emotions. Finally, maintain balance and harmony by considering symmetry vs. asymmetry, using negative space effectively, and ensuring visual cohesion through repetition of shapes and forms. 

Cameras

When setting up cameras for my scene, it was crucial to think about the scale and spatial dynamics of the environment to evoke the right emotional response from the viewer. In this case, I aimed for a sense of cramped, claustrophobic intimacy, where the room feels overwhelming and restrictive. To achieve this, I primarily employed short focal length lenses to capture wide angles and portray a sense of immersion, as if the viewer were physically present in the scene, standing right there. These wide shots help emphasize the cramped nature of the space while also showcasing the intricate details in the environment. To enhance the feeling of overabundance and visual tension, I often used low-angle shots. This perspective makes the scene feel larger than life as if towering structures or piles of clutter are looming over the viewer.

However, one of the more challenging aspects of this approach is managing depth of field effectively. It's easy to fall into the trap of creating an illusion that the scene is composed of miniature models, which can make it feel unnatural. To combat this, I meticulously controlled focus and ensured that my focal plane was consistent with the scale of the scene.

For my preferred camera settings, I favored a 35mm lens with a full-frame DSLR, which gave me a good balance between perspective and wide coverage without distorting the geometry too much. I also cropped my shots to a 16:9 aspect ratio to maintain cinematic framing. For wide shots, I set my aperture to f/22 to keep the entire scene in sharp focus, avoiding any shallow depth of field that could break the sense of scale.

My exposure settings were intentionally simple and straightforward to avoid overcomplicating things: I used auto exposure with a histogram for guidance, setting my Min EV100 to -1 and Max EV100 to +1. These settings allowed me to easily balance the light levels in the scene, ensuring that the lighting remained consistent and visually readable without too much trial and error. When I finally ended up pushing render, the sequence I had constructed was 24fps 2k resolution.

Modeling Assets

Most of my asset creation process is fairly straightforward, leveraging Blender, ZBrush, and Marvelous Designer as my primary tools. I always begin by thoroughly studying my reference material, as I believe understanding how an asset is made in real life is crucial to achieving believable realism. For example, with the wooden bomb crates in my scene, I see lots of people make the mistake of modeling the wood as if it were one solid block with the grain running in the same direction. In reality, such crates would be constructed from multiple planks, each with its own grain direction. Additionally, making the text appear imperfect – as if it bled into the wood or was written with some errors – adds another layer of authenticity. Humans just aren't perfect.

My modeling approach is simple yet effective. For the majority of assets, I model both the high poly and low poly versions simultaneously, making use of ZBrush for any finer details when necessary. Marvelous Designer is my go-to tool for all cloth-based assets. Then I do a sculpting pass to polish folds I like. My workflow begins with blocking out the largest shapes of the scene, progressively refining and adding smaller details as I go. This method allows me to maintain a solid foundation while ensuring the scene's design remains intact as it evolves. I've found that using the modifier stack in Blender has significantly improved my non-destructive workflow. This means that the only difference between my high and low poly versions is that the modifier stack is toggled off on the low poly version, preserving flexibility for adjustments.

By the end of the project, I had created approximately 130 assets, most of which were modeled from scratch. Some assets were completed in a few hours, while others, more complex or hero props, took multiple days or weeks to refine and perfect. This balance between speed and attention to detail allowed me to keep the project moving forward while ensuring high-quality, realistic assets.

The example above of the modifiers being turned on and off within Blender to make fast changes:

Some examples of props created for the scene:

Texturing

Texturing is probably my biggest foe when creating environments. It is where I can put a lot of creativity in though and push the model to 100%. I like to think about the story and the asset's place within the environment. For me, it is not about how good the individual asset looks but also how it looks with all the other assets in the scene.

Before I even open Substance 3D Painter or Marmoset, I make sure the 3D model is ready. This means ensuring UVs are unwrapped properly, with a good balance between efficient space usage and minimal distortion. I typically check for any overlapping UVs or areas that might cause texturing issues later.

I also review the reference material again to make sure I understand the material properties and the general wear and tear of the asset. For example, if I'm working on a cyberpunk crate, I need to think about whether the surface is metallic, painted, rusted, or dirty.

Once I have the model ready, I import it into Marmoset for baking. I make sure to set up the correct resolution for my textures based on the final asset's requirements. If it's a hero asset, I tend to work with higher texture resolutions (2K or 4K), but for smaller props, 1K textures are often sufficient.

Baking the model comes next. I bake the high poly details (such as normal maps, ambient occlusion, curvature, and thickness maps) onto the low poly model. This step is crucial because it gives me the base information I need to create realistic surface details, such as small scratches, creases, or depth variations. If the model has hard edges, I make sure to adjust the baking cage appropriately to avoid unwanted artifacts.

After baking, I exported the maps back to Substance with a plugin I found speeds up the workflow for repetition a ton. After I start adding base materials. In Substance 3D Painter, there's a library of pre-made materials, but I like to begin with simple, neutral materials that I can adjust and build upon. For example, I might start with a simple metal or wood material as a base, and from there, I begin layering on different elements to match the reference.

Layering is an essential part of the texturing process. I use the layer-based workflow in Substance 3D Painter, which is similar to Photoshop. I create multiple layers for different types of details – each of these layers can be adjusted, masked, and refined later. I always think about the order of materials – for example, a paint layer should be applied on top of the base material, but below grunge or dirt layers.

As I start detailing the surface, I focus on things that will give the asset a realistic feel. For example, if I'm texturing wood crates, I'd focus on adding grain detail, chipped edges, and variations in the paint that give it that worn weathered look. If it's a metallic object, I'll pay attention to things like rust, scratches, and dirt accumulation.

To achieve this, I use procedural masks like curvature, ambient occlusion, and position to generate wear in logical places. I'll apply dirt or rust in areas where the object would naturally experience the most exposure to the environment (for example, edges or around joints). This helps ground the texture in reality and makes it feel like it's part of a lived-in world.

Smart Masks are another tool I frequently use. These allow me to easily add a bit of grunge or wear that responds to the natural contours of the model (such as dirt accumulating in crevices or scratches on raised areas). I always refine the opacity and blend modes of these masks to get the exact amount of wear I'm aiming for.

At this stage, I focus on adding smaller details that push the realism of the texture further. This includes:

• Fine scratches, dents, and fingerprints: These are often added using brushes or stamps. I make sure to vary the intensity of these marks, as real-world surfaces are never perfectly uniform.
• Text and logos: I'll create any necessary decals or stamps, being careful to place them logically on the surface. If it's a logo or stencil, I make sure the texture looks like it’s either printed, stamped, or worn off over time. I love adding slight imperfections in the text, like misalignment or ink bleeding, to make it feel more realistic.

Once the surface details are set, I shift my focus to the material properties themselves. Roughness, metallic, and normal maps play a huge role in how a material reacts to light, and getting these right is crucial for realism.

• Roughness: I'll adjust the roughness map to define how smooth or rough the surface appears. For a metal crate, I'll make the surface more reflective in areas that have been polished or frequently touched, while areas that are rusted or weathered will have a much higher roughness value.
• Metallic: For metal surfaces, the Metallic Map is often fairly simple – anything that should look metallic will be fully white on the metallic map, and non-metallic areas (like wood or plastic) will be black.
• Normal Maps: Using the Normal Map, I enhance the detail of small surface irregularities, like grain on wood or imperfections in metal. This adds depth to the texture that isn't immediately visible in the base color.

Once all the detail layers are in place and I'm happy with the look, I take a step back and ensure that all the textures work harmoniously. I'll look for any discrepancies in the textures, especially around seams or where materials transition.

I also make sure to check the asset under various lighting conditions to see if any areas are too dark, too bright, or lack sufficient detail. Finally, I export the textures in the required formats, usually PNG or TGA, for use in Unreal and make sure to set them up and pack what I can for easy integration into the engine. This includes checking the resolution and making sure the textures are optimized for performance without sacrificing too much detail.

After importing the textures into the engine, I always take a moment to review the asset in its final environment. Sometimes, I notice things I missed or areas that need fine-tuning, and I'll often iterate on the textures, making small adjustments to further enhance the realism or fit the look of the scene.

By following these steps and keeping a balance between technical precision and art direction, I ensure that the textures I create feel immersive, authentic, and integrated into the overall scene. Texturing in Substance 3D Painter is all about building layers and details that come together to tell the story of the object.

Wall Texturing

For the wall textures in my scene, I wanted to achieve a high level of realism and depth. To do this, I took a more advanced approach using vertex paint. Essentially, what I did was create a specialized vertex paint system that incorporates multiple textures – each serving a distinct purpose – to blend and layer the visual elements of the wall seamlessly. The process involves three key textures: a primary texture, a secondary texture, and a third texture that acts as a blending agent between the primary and secondary.

The primary texture is the foundational material of the wall, something like concrete, brick, or plaster, depending on what I'm trying to achieve. This texture is the dominant layer and defines the bulk of the wall's look. The secondary texture could be a rust, grime, or chipped paint effect that provides variation and realism. The third texture – acting as a blending layer – helps smoothly merge the primary and secondary textures, enabling them to transition seamlessly in areas where they meet, creating a more natural flow between materials. To enhance the sense of depth within the wall, I went beyond traditional texturing and integrated parallax mapping through the vertex blending technique.

Parallax mapping is essentially a way to simulate more complex surface detail without adding additional geometry, which is especially useful for wall surfaces that need to look weathered or cracked. By blending parallax with vertex colors, I created the illusion of depth where certain wall areas appear to be raised or sunken, adding tactile realism and visual complexity.

The automatic ambient occlusion (AO) generation is another important element I employed; as the textures blend together, AO helps to accentuate areas where natural shadows would fall, like in the corners, cracks, or crevices of the wall. This adds a sense of volume and weight to the surfaces, further enhancing the realism. To break up the hard edges that often form in a typical texture application, I used an additional mask to subtly control the falloff of each brush stroke.

When painting the textures onto the wall, I wanted to avoid the common issue of textures looking too perfect or sharp, so I made sure the transition between different areas of the texture was irregular and natural. This mask allows me to control the edge softness of each brush stroke, making the transition between the wall's primary texture and secondary elements more organic. For instance, when adding a layer of grime or dirt, the mask prevents the texture from abruptly stopping at a hard line, instead letting it fade out gently, which helps to create the illusion of age and wear in the material. This is particularly important for surfaces like concrete, which often have more random, erratic wear patterns rather than clean, smooth transitions.

The combined use of these techniques – vertex blending, parallax mapping, automatic AO generation, and dynamic brush falloff masks – has allowed me to create a much more complex and realistic-looking wall than if I had simply relied on traditional UV mapping and standard texturing. It adds an additional layer of tactile realism that feels grounded in the physical world, giving the wall texture not only a sense of depth but also a story of how it has weathered and aged over time.

Material Layers (ML)

In Unreal Engine, Material Layers (ML) is an underutilized tool that serves as a powerful procedural alternative to traditional workflows like master materials with RGBA masks on a secondary UV set. Essentially, ML acts as an integrated version of Substance 3D Painter within the engine, enabling the blending and layering of various textures within a single material. This approach offers remarkable flexibility, as it allows for dynamic, in-engine adjustments to assets without needing to repeatedly export and re-import textures.

In my workflow, I created RGBA masks within Substance 3D Painter, which serve as the key to unlocking complex material blending in Unreal Engine. I began by establishing custom output channels, meticulously renaming them to R, G, B, and A to correspond with the respective mask channels. To structure this, I initially created a fill layer that acted as the background, with all channel values set to zero and pure black color, ensuring a clean slate to start building up texture details.

From this base, I proceeded to create additional fill layers for different textures or material effects, assigning each one to the specific RGBA channel where I wanted its mask to be applied. This process enabled me to efficiently layer multiple textures, each with its own distinct properties, all while retaining full control over the blending process through the power of material layers.

This method is not only more procedural but also significantly more efficient when compared to the traditional approach of relying solely on RGBA masks within a master material. By leveraging ML in combination with Substance 3D Painter's powerful texture authoring tools, I can quickly iterate and modify materials directly within Unreal Engine, streamlining the asset creation and iteration process.

Scene Assembly

I approached the scene assembly with confidence, ensuring that every asset served a purpose within the space. My goal was to remain as faithful as possible to the source material while grounding the environment in a sense of logic and storytelling. Every element – walls, doors, and various assets – was designed with intent, making use of modular components to streamline the room's construction and maintain consistency.

For set dressing, I focused on the narrative function of the space, asking myself: What is this room used for? Who spends time here? Answering these questions helped guide the placement of props, ensuring they contributed to the story rather than feeling like arbitrary set pieces.

I meticulously hand-placed about 90% of the props to maintain control over composition and visual storytelling. However, I also incorporated PCG spline tools to scatter select elements efficiently, adding organic variation where needed. This balance between manual placement and procedural techniques allowed me to create a lived-in, believable environment while keeping workflow efficiency in mind.

Lighting

For this project, I set out to deepen my understanding of lighting techniques, specifically focusing on the application of real-world color temperatures and values to convey the feeling of missing or insufficient light in my scene. The goal was to create a more atmospheric and emotionally charged environment by carefully manipulating light and shadow. To achieve this, I conducted extensive research into various lighting principles, learning how different color temperatures can affect mood and perception. I owe a significant amount of my progress to the valuable insights and advice shared by my friends, who helped guide me throughout the process.

One of the key principles I wanted to explore in this project was how to layer lighting effectively to direct the viewer's attention and enhance the overall composition of the scene. I aimed to create contrast in specific areas, subtly guiding the viewer's eye and encouraging them to engage with particular focal points.

To further reinforce these contrasts and achieve the desired atmosphere, I utilized a Post Process Volume to adjust the overall color palette of the scene. This allowed me to intensify certain tones and hues, helping to push the lighting values and amplify the effect I was striving for. The manipulation of these color temperatures and lighting conditions became a fundamental tool in ensuring the scene conveyed the narrative and emotional tone I aimed for.

My approach to lighting begins with the Main Fill Light, which serves as the foundational source of illumination for the scene. The fill light is critical in ensuring that the overall brightness is balanced and that the shadows do not fall to complete blackness, which can often create a harsh and unrealistic look. To achieve a more natural feel, I chose to soften the darker areas and allow for a more gentle gradation between light and shadow. I specifically chose fluorescent bulbs to provide the primary light source, as their distinct color temperature and soft, diffused illumination suited the tone I was trying to establish.

Once I had established the basic fill light and ensured the scene had a sufficient amount of soft, ambient lighting, I began the process of adding additional light sources, one layer at a time. The second light source I focused on was the hologram. This element needed to stand out but also blend naturally with the rest of the lighting, as it serves both a functional and aesthetic role in the scene. I carefully tuned its intensity and color to create contrast without overpowering the fill light. This step was essential in maintaining balance while still highlighting key narrative elements.

After finalizing the hologram light, I proceeded to introduce emissive materials throughout the scene, which I generated using a Greeble kit that I had created earlier. The use of emissive materials helped add localized pockets of light and energy, creating a sense of dynamism within the scene and further enhancing the depth of the lighting setup. These emissive elements served to bring life and interest to smaller details, enriching the visual storytelling by drawing attention to key points of the environment.

As the final step in my lighting workflow, I incorporated spotlights to accentuate particular assets within the scene, adding additional specular highlights to surfaces that required more visual emphasis. This not only served to enhance the realism and material detail but also helped create a more dramatic lighting effect, which contrasted with the broader ambient lighting. By carefully adjusting the falloff and cone angles of the spotlights, I ensured that the lighting remained focused and deliberate without spilling over into unintended areas.

Fun VFX

Using Geometry for Depth & Floating Effect

One of the key tricks I employed was relying on actual geometry instead of relying solely on transparency effects. This ensures that the hologram has a tangible sense of volume. By using 3D models (even decimated versions), the hologram retains structural depth and doesn't feel like a simple 2D projection. The floating objects in space help reinforce the idea that this is a volumetric projection rather than a flat screen.

Shader Setup: Banding & Vertical Movement

To enhance the holographic illusion, I designed a shader that generates bands and moves them along the Z-axis using a panner node that interacts with world space coordinates. This creates a scan-line effect commonly associated with holograms in sci-fi aesthetics. The movement along the Z-axis gives the impression of an active projection, further selling the idea that the hologram is being "scanned" in real-time.

Baked Wireframe for a Skeleton-Like Effect

Instead of purely relying on standard transparency or emissive materials, I incorporated a baked wireframe texture of the original models. Applying this to decimated versions of the models allows you to create a more abstract, skeletal representation of the object. This approach helps reinforce the feeling of digital reconstruction or data visualization rather than a glowing solid model.

Projection Illusion: Controlling Falloff & Secondary Textures

A key challenge with holograms is making them appear as projected rather than just transparent objects floating in space. You addressed this by:

• Using a secondary texture to control falloff, which adds a natural fade at the edges instead of an artificial cut-off from an alpha plane. This makes the hologram feel like a light being dispersed into the air rather than a hard-surface object.
• The texture is panned on a secondary UV set, adding a dynamic sense of motion and reinforcing the idea that the hologram is an active projection rather than a static image.

Integrated Text System with a Separate UV Set

To add UI elements or text into the hologram, I built a system that allows for precise masking of text using another UV set. This ensures that the text doesn't interfere with the rest of the projection, keeping it legible and separate from the surrounding volumetric effects.

• The separate UV mask ensures text placement remains independent of distortion or movement caused by the scan lines and other procedural effects.
• This also allows for text customization without affecting the core projection, making it a flexible system for different applications.

Final Touches & Enhancements

To push the realism even further, here are some additional tricks that could enhance the hologram effect:

• Depth Masking: Using depth fade to make the projection appear stronger in the center and gradually fade at the edges.
• Flickering & Distortion: Adding minor noise-based distortion or flicker to simulate data corruption or interference.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was achieving the right lighting balance. Getting the correct balance between realism and artistic intent required extensive tweaking. Different lighting setups were tested to ensure the scene conveyed the intended mood while maintaining proper visibility and contrast. It was also important to avoid overexposure or areas that were too dark, which could lose detail or lead to an unclear composition. Another challenge was ensuring that the lighting interacted well with materials and textures. Proper reflections, shadows, and bounce lighting were crucial to making the scene feel cohesive. Debugging issues with global illumination and adjusting light bounces took extra time, especially when working with complex assets.

One of the most valuable takeaways from this project was a deeper understanding of storytelling through lighting. Lighting isn't just a technical aspect – it's an essential narrative tool. By controlling the focus, contrast, and color temperature, lighting can guide the viewer's eye and reinforce the emotions behind a scene.

Additionally, the experience reinforced the importance of iteration. Many lighting setups were tested and refined to get the best possible result. It wasn't a linear process, but rather one of constant refinement, where small adjustments made a significant impact on the final look.

Advice for Beginner Artists

For beginners, one of the most important things is to experiment and try things out. Often, the best way to improve is to step outside your comfort zone and attempt techniques or styles you haven't tried before. Mistakes will happen, but they're an essential part of learning.

• Don't be afraid to iterate – rarely does something look perfect on the first try. Keep adjusting and refining.
• Use references – study real-world lighting, cinematography, and concept art to understand how professionals approach composition and illumination.
• Break the scene down into fundamentals – instead of getting overwhelmed, analyze individual elements like light direction, shadows, and color harmony.
• Being patient with every project is an opportunity to grow.
• Nobody truly has it all figured. There is no right answer.

Afterword

Working on Backroom Deal was an incredibly rewarding experience that pushed my skills in composition, lighting, and storytelling. From the initial blockout to the final render, every step of the process was an opportunity to refine my approach and problem-solving techniques. Balancing modularity with handcrafted details, optimizing assets while maintaining high-quality visuals, and leveraging a mix of procedural and manual workflows all contributed to the final piece.

One of the biggest takeaways from this project was the importance of storytelling through environment design – every prop, texture, and light source plays a role in immersing the viewer. The holograms, in particular, were a fun challenge that required technical problem-solving to achieve a believable, volumetric effect. Lighting was another key aspect, as it not only set the mood but also guided the viewer's eye through the scene.

This project reinforced the idea that iteration is key. Rarely does anything work perfectly on the first try, and being open to adjustments is essential for growth. For people trying this for the first time, my biggest advice is to experiment a lot – try new techniques, break things, and analyze what works. The more you push yourself outside your comfort zone, the faster you'll improve.

I hope this breakdown provided insight into my workflow and decision-making process. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to tackling even more ambitious projects in the future! 

One more special thanks to all those who helped get me here. I couldn't do it without you!

Beck Meisel, 3D Environment & Prop Artist