Open-World Environment Set
Astel Games built a modular environment library for an unannounced open-world title: 1,240 assets across four biomes, from hero rock formations to interior props. We handled blockout through final in-engine polish in Unreal Engine 5, delivering kit-based sets that level designers could recombine without art support.
- Client
- Confidential — global AAA publisher
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
- Year
- 2024
- Duration
- 14 months
- Team size
- 18 artists
- Disciplines
- Environment art, Level design, Texture & material authoring
- Category
- Environments
Artwork from our archive. High-resolution originals are available on request under NDA.
What the client needed.
The publisher's internal team had shipped a vertical slice with inconsistent asset scale and a 4K material budget that broke down at distance. Our sets also had to match an art direction already established by three different studios, and every asset was reviewed in-engine by the client across a 13-hour time-zone offset.
- Rebuilt the modular kit around a strict 4 m grid and locked pivot conventions in a shared spec document.
- Audited 60 hero assets against a 12-point scale checklist, then re-exported with corrected pivots and collision.
- Wrote three master materials with runtime switch parameters, cutting shader permutations from 240 to 34.
- Ran weekly in-engine reviews in Unreal 5.2 with the client's technical director, screen-sharing Nanite and Lumen debug views.
- Delivered in three milestone drops, each with source-file handover, naming-convention checks and a signed asset manifest.
- 1,240 assets delivered across four biomes, with zero scale-related defects reported at integration.
- Shader permutations reduced by 86%, holding 60 fps on base consoles in the client's benchmark scene.
- Level designers assembled 22 distinct play spaces from the kit without raising additional art requests.
- The library was reused on a second project, avoiding roughly three months of new modelling work.
Have a similar production coming up?
Tell us the scope and the date. We will tell you what it takes — honestly, including what we would not promise.