Jan Zepp started his career in the games industry five years ago as an environment artist. Studying environment concept art and practicing sketching inspired him to explore stylised worlds. He now works across multiple tools, including Zbrush, Unreal Engine, Gaea, Blender, Photoshop, Substance Painter and Designer, and Maya.
See our guides to the best drawing tablets and the best laptops for 3D modelling if you need new hardware for your own projects. Below, Ian tells us a little about this latest project.
Iomall
My latest stylised project, Iomall, was inspired by Yehliu Geopark and Seceda Mountain. Built in Unreal Engine 5, it combines Lumen and Nanite Foliage to create a stylised environment.
For this project, I wanted to create two distinct biomes. I began with a series of simple sketches to establish the overall concept, materials, and color palette for each biome. This approach helped minimise unnecessary iterations in 3D and ensured that all elements worked together cohesively from the start. I used Nanite for both vegetation and rock assets.
Terrain
The landscape shader combines Global Albedo Maps, Nanite Tessellation, RVT blending, height blending and cell bombing.
To reduce texture tiling across large landscapes, I implemented cell bombing in the terrain material. This technique adds variation to repeated textures, allowing large surfaces to be covered with fewer material layers while maintaining a natural appearance.
You can see more of Jan's work on his ArtStation profile.
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This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. You can order back issues.
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