As you're working on the final touches for your Halloween decorations, make sure to check out @EMC3D's lighting tech demo featuring some dangerously evil glowing pumpkins: youtube.com/live/Ew65gWsJgXc

Happening today at 11am PT/ 6pm UK! We'll be talking with Elliott (@EMC3D) about his career journey, lighting tips and tricks, as well taking questions from the community. This will be lit! See you all on Discord!

Will you be at @UnwrapFestival in Belgium tomorrow? Come by our booth to say hi and learn about opportunities with our studio!

We're excited to finally share a client project from late 2024 and early 2025, where our studio was brought on to create a futuristic loft for Bella, a super-intelligent being. The creative brief was particularly interesting. Bella lives in a world of her own design, constantly building and reshaping her surroundings to reflect her mood and imagination. Her living space needed to feel warm and inviting while revealing its digital nature. Inspired by a solarpunk aesthetic, the loft environment features organic shapes, warm wood tones, vegetation, and cityscape backdrop. This project brought together our expertise in environment art and cinematic production to create a detailed, atmospheric world that feels both futuristic and inviting. Our team was involved in environment creation, ideation, and overall production, contributing to everything from concept development, art direction, 3D modeling, cityscape creation, foliage, materials, texturing, lighting, camera work, cinematic animation, and final rendering. Tools used: Blender, 3dsMax, Substance and Unreal

Congratulations to @MustafaYer7026 on completing Creating Realistic Textures in Substance 3D Painter with Niels Couvreur at Sierra Division Academy. Mustafa is a 3D artist from Turkey looking to learn professional workflows and improve his game asset creation skills, particularly in materials, texturing, and storytelling. With his project "Old Toolbox," Mustafa wanted to tell a story through scratches, rust patches, and stains. To achieve his vision, he aimed to stay as close as possible to his reference and create realistic textures with plenty of microdetails. He particularly enjoyed creating procedural layers and using anchor points to reuse masks. For example, he could create a crack mask once and reuse it across different layers and materials, making his workflow much faster and more flexible. Excellent work Mustafa! See more of his project: artstation.com/artwork/Y8GqG…

Will you be at Lightbox this year? Maybe you can't make it, but you're in the area? Join us for a chill evening of networking at Stone Brewing Tap Room in Pasadena on October 24th from 7-10 PM. No RSVP needed, just bring yourself, your friends, good vibes, and come say hi. Looking forward to connecting! @LightBoxExpo @PurePolygons

Come meet your mentors. We’re headed to #LightboxExpo! We’re thrilled to be attending LBX this year. While we won’t have a booth, we'll be checking out the expo and offering informal portfolio reviews. If you see us wearing our Academy swag you’re welcome to come say hi and ask for feedback. We’d be happy to chat! Attending from the Sierra Division Academy team: - @PurePolygons (Jacob Norris) CEO and Creative Director at Sierra Division - @JonArellano3D : Sr. Environment Artist at Santa Monica Studio - Gabriel Cervantes Sr. Environment Artist at Naughty Dog - @peyart13 (Peyton Varney) : Sr. Environment Artist at Naughty - Sarah Swenson: Sr. Environment Artist at Naughty Dog To find out where we'll be or request a meeting, connect with us on our Discord sierradivision.com/discord. We'll be posting pics and updates there. See you next week!

Congratulations to @Enrik_3d on completing Crafting Environments: Career Kickstarter with @BeddowsDesign at Sierra Division Academy. The main goal of Quique's mentorship project was to expand his environment art skills and challenge himself to take ownership of every aspect from modeling and sculpting to texturing, materials, shaders, VFX and lighting. Another important goal was to deepen his knowledge of Substance Designer and get more practice creating procedural materials. He also wanted to learn about shader creation, vertex painting and how to achieve natural transitions between materials. With so much to focus on, one of his biggest challenges was staying organized and motivated. Through Alex's guidance, he learned the importance of planning, selecting the right workflows, and trusting his own abilities. Quique Your environment came out beautifully! Great work! Credit: Arab Quarter is inspired by Vladimir Manyukhin’s concept art. See more of Quique's project: artstation.com/artwork/wOr81…

Excited to share my project from Substance Painter Masterclass Niels Couvreur at @sierra_division Learned a lot during the process and really enjoyed texturing it! Thanks to Niels, and Sierra Division Academy!

Beyond making an environment feel more pretty, butterflies can also play a role in gameplay. For example, helping guide players toward points of interest or becoming part of interactive puzzles and exploration. For this project, we used a simple shape key animation for the butterflies and had them follow a spline path to create a seamless loop.

🎨 Toolbag Artist Highlight - ICA Antique Folding Plate Camera by Rajan Verma Find more of Rajan’s work on ArtStation: artstation.com/rajan_verma 👉 Tag your art with #madewithMarmoset for a chance to be featured. Discover Toolbag: marmoset.co

With a limited triangle count it’s really important to be efficient.@MiroslavBaev95 focused on the geometry, creating a strong silhouette, with pushed out corners and curved lines, to create the biggest visual impact.

(Reposting due to typo. Crazy how we only have an hour to edit. Anyway!) Most people know us as a studio specializing in realism, but we love the creativity and character of stylized art too! Our Senior Environment Artist @MiroslavBaev95 is a huge fan of Arcane and World of Warcraft and has been experimenting with different stylized techniques and workflows. We’ve been seriously impressed with what he’s been able to create. As part of this R&D, Miroslav created this stunning fan art inspired by Jordan Powers’ Battle for Azeroth: Kul Tiras Monuments from WoW. Made with Blender, 3Dcoat, and Photoshop.

Challenge and Solution: moss coverage ⤵️ Nibir Khan is one of our mentees at SDA. One of the main challenges he faced while creating his 3D project was implementing moss coverage across the environment. Initially, he used distance fields to drive the moss mask, but the effect disappeared at longer camera distances due to limited distance-field resolution. Solution: he replaced with a combination of RGB masks and shader-driven Z-up masks, providing more precise control over moss distribution and more consistent shading across the scene.

Knowing how to create beautifully lit worlds that are also optimized for performance is crucial, especially since lighting is one of the most expensive parts of making games. If you find your environments looking flat or you're struggling to understand what you could do to improve and take your skills further, check out @EMC3D 's new Lighting Art Mentorship at Sierra Division Academy. Limited spots! academy.sierradivision.com/l…