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Roles in the games industry are quickly evolving like the industry itself so keep this in mind that this list might not be extensive.
However, for the roles that do exist, it always comes down to what you want to do and how this lines up with a position that a company needs filled. So ideally a job you apply for needs to align with your personal goals and preferences.
<aside> 📍 For an overview of what an environment artist does, you can listen to you can listen to this little podcast we did on the topic a while back.
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Environment artist role and responsibilities
Now, Let’s dive into all the different specialisations that environment artists can encounter, starting with the biggest one.
Environment Artist is usually the generalist type role, since this means that you can do all the parts of an environment. This can consist of foliage, materials, props, landscape, etc…
So if this is on an application then you have to make sure you know the responsibilities of the work you will be doing as usually it will be a selection rather than all of it. (The exception maybe being smaller developers)
<aside> ⚠️ Even though a lot of applications have “ENVIRONMENT ARTIST” in their name, see this more as a collection of everything that needs to be done in environments. Make sure to read the application qualifications to figure out the specific focus.
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<aside> 🕕 YOUR DAILY ROUTINE:
Your daily responsibilities consists of creating props for environments, laying out assets, telling stories through the set dressing and working together with level designers.
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<aside> 💻 PROGRAMS USED
3DS Max, Maya, Zbrush, Speedtree, Blender, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Houdini, In-House Engine, Unity, In-House Engines, Worldmachine, ...
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<aside> 👥 WHO YOU COLLABORATE WITH:
Environment Art Leads, Art Directors, Concept Artists, Game Designers, Programmers, Tech Artists and more…
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<aside> 📍 RESPONSIBILITIES
Creating assets both hard surface and organic, landscape sculpting, set dressing, texture creation, material creation, …
Good sense of form, volume, structure, and silhouette
Familiarity with current modelling and texture workflows
Strong understanding of current composition and balance
Solid understanding of efficient low poly mesh techniques
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Specialisation that focuses on creating small to big assets that will be used by other people in the team to build levels, locations and cinematics with. Texture size and time spent depends on how close you can get, important or size of the assets.
Depending on the company a prop artist might also be responsible for texture and materials creation.
<aside> 🕕 YOUR DAILY ROUTINE:
Your daily routine consists of creating standalone assets and potentially modular assets inside of the preferred 3D modelling package of the studio, which can be Max, Maya or Blender. This consists of modelling and unwrapping them, and depending on the studio also make textures for them too or are provided with them from materials artists.
You will also have regular discussions and feedback from other artists and your lead artist. After this you will also be responsible for implementation into the game engine and get feedback from the larger team.
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<aside> 💻 PROGRAMS USED
3DS Max, Maya, Blender, Marmoset Toolbag, Substance Painter, ...
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<aside> ❕ NAME VARIATIONS
Asset Artist, …
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<aside> 👥 WHO YOU COLLABORATE WITH:
Level Design, Lighting, VFX and Tech Art.
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<aside> 📍 RESPONSIBILITIES
Create standalone and modular environment assets varying in scale and complexity
Model assets using reference photographs and concept art
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Sometimes also called a foliage artist but for this one I will expand this a little bit to also include rocks into this specialisation. Some studios might have specific rock sculpting position depending on the game being developed.
This specialisation focuses on the creation of organic assets such as foliage and rocks.
<aside> 🕕 YOUR DAILY ROUTINE:
Your daily routine might look like this, spending your time between Zbrush and Speedtree for asset creation, taking to fellow foliage artists for feedback and then getting these assets textured and into the game for final iteration and polish.
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<aside> 💻 PROGRAMS USED
Zbrush, Speedtree, Blender, Substance Painter, Unreal Engine, Unity, In-House Engines, Worldmachine, ...
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<aside> ❕ NAME VARIATIONS
Foliage Artist, Rock Artist, Organic Environment Artist, …
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<aside> 👥 WHO YOU COLLABORATE WITH:
Tech Artists, Art Direction and Map Leads and potentially other Environment or Biome Artists.
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<aside> 📍 RESPONSIBILITIES
Create models and textures for a variation of vegetation and foliage.
Create varied rock assets and cliffs.
Modelling in Speedtree, sculpting rocks, creation of rock and rubble pieces, creation of grass, bushes and trees.
Identify and troubleshoot foliage to stay within frame rate, memory, and design specifications
Work with scanned vegetation and capturing scans of vegetation
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Specialised in storytelling of locations, these artists handle set dressing of locations and through that tell stories setup by narrative designers and level designers.
<aside> 🕕 YOUR DAILY ROUTINE:
As a level artist most of your time will be spent on the set dressing of levels built by level designers in the engine the company uses. You will also be in meetings or conversations with level designers and occasionally narrative designer to make sure both the structure and storytelling is aligned between all of you.
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<aside> 💻 PROGRAMS USED
Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Houdini, Unreal Engine, Unity, In-House Engine, Worldmachine, ...
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