Realistic 3D environment
Environment art
outsourcing
for games
Modular kits, unique assets, nature and landscape. We take an environment from blockout to the final pass in engine and match your art direction so closely that you can’t tell our assets from your team’s.
- Modular kits
- Architecture
- Nature & foliage
- Terrain
- Ruins & destruction
- Set dressing
02The discipline
What we take on
Interiors and exteriors, on the grid.
Modules snap together with no tweaking in the level. Variety is built into the kit, so one kit can make hundreds of buildings and rooms that don’t read as twins. Texturing uses trim sheets and tiling materials at your texel density.
Not everything has to be modular.
The hero set pieces you can’t build from a kit: a furnace, an awning, a hut on stilts. With their own materials and LODs, built to the same metrics as the kit.
Rocks, cliffs, trees, vegetation.
Same scale as the buildings. Cliffs are sculpted at player scale and baked into a game mesh, with tiling materials built for your engine.
Form first, then materials.
The work runs in passes: blockout → art pass → final. Each pass covers the whole object, so you can change direction after any of them, while it’s still cheap.
No need to split the order between vendors. One team runs the kit, the unique asset and the cliff next to it, under one estimate and one set of metrics.
03External development
Why external production
You don’t need another team to manage.
We understand that, and we build our process to be useful without adding to your workload. A location is a lot of content at once: a modular kit, unique structures, cliffs and vegetation around them. That volume is needed while the levels are being built and then drops away. Hiring staff for it and then finding them work doesn’t pay. We can take the whole location under one art lead. You set the brief and make the calls at agreed checkpoints. Breaking the work down, assigning it, internal art review and keeping to the schedule are our job. That’s what you pay an external team for: not the ability to send a model, but taking the production load off your in-house team.
Start small. Most partnerships open with a paid pilot, sometimes as small as one unique asset built to your metrics. It tests the whole chain, from contract to delivery to payment. If it doesn’t click, we stop there: you pay only for the days worked, and the source files are yours.
04Team and review
How we work inside your team
Your rules stay your rules. Our process adapts to them.
We can bring experience and research while the requirements are still taking shape. But where the pipeline, the style guide and the decisions already exist, we don’t swap them for our own idea of what’s right.
- 01The team comes complete
Environment artists, an art lead and a manager arrive together. The kit, the unique structures and the rocks and foliage around them come from one crew.
- 02Review before your sign-off
Every asset goes through peer review, an art lead check and our automated QC gate before it reaches you. What you see has already been checked in the scene next to its neighbouring modules.
- 03Advice on request
If a decision is already made, such as metrics, grid size or texel density, we follow it to the letter. If it’s still open, we lay out the trade-offs and recommend a route: trim sheets or unique UVs, how many variants in the kit, where a module ends and a unique asset begins.
- 04Research and our own tools
Before work starts, we study the references, the construction of the buildings, the materials and the rules of the world. We also work out the production side: which pipeline suits your game and the shortest route to the result. That takes experience and a trained eye. Baking, naming checks and QC run through our own tools, with no extra line on the invoice.
- 05NDA and access
NDAs at two levels: the studio and each artist. Where you have your own infrastructure, we work inside it: your Perforce, your VPN. No subcontracting. Nothing goes into our portfolio without written permission.
- 06One point of contact
A manager and an art lead run the work on our side, and every question goes through one named contact. Dailies, not status meetings: once a day, everything in progress lands on one render sheet.
05Pipeline
Six stages, six sign-offs
- 01Brief and breakdown
We read the blockout, the style guide and the requirements, and ask our questions. We come back with an estimate. Sign-off: scope and estimate.
- 02Blockout and metrics
We set the dimensions and the modular grid to your metrics and check the joins on greybox geometry. Sign-off: dimensions and grid.
- 03High-poly
We sculpt form and detail for the bake. The level of detail follows the distance the asset is seen from. Sign-off: silhouette and detail.
- 04Low-poly and bake
We stay inside the triangle budget agreed up front with your tech artists. UVs go to your texel density, maps are baked from the high-poly and LODs are built in the same pass. Sign-off: triangle budget, UVs and LODs.
- 05Materials
Textured on your master materials. Wear and dirt matched to the neighbouring locations. Sign-off: texture sets and wear.
- 06In-engine check
Import, collision, LODs and lighting in your project. Final review happens in your build. Sign-off: the finished asset in your scene.
06Delivered to your requirements
Into the scene, no rework
Engines. UE5, Unity or your own. We hand over the assets, or assemble and check them right in your build.
Triangle budgets. Fixed before work starts, so at sign-off there is nothing left to argue about.
Texel density. One for the whole location, so a new asset doesn’t stand out from what’s already in the scene.
Naming and pivots. To your rules. The level designer places the asset in the scene and renames nothing.
Source files. High-poly, low-poly, bakes and texture sets. All of it is yours.
LODs and collision. Built and checked in your engine, delivered with the asset.
07Two ways to work
A batch of assets or the whole discipline
A batch of assets
- We lock in
- The batch, say a modular kit for one location or a series of unique structures, and the day rate. You get a stage-by-stage estimate, billed as time and materials.
- We deliver
- Stage by stage. You sign off each one before the next starts, and the final sign-off happens in your scene. Invoiced at month end.
- We scale
- We take a new batch: the next location or the rocks and foliage around a kit you already have.
The whole discipline
- We lock in
- A dedicated environment team on a monthly retainer. Same people, same rate, so you know the invoice in advance.
- We deliver
- At your project’s pace, location after location, with sign-off at agreed checkpoints.
- We scale
- We add people as the volume grows. The core team stays, so new modules land on the same grid.
08What we need for an estimate
Four things
How many locations or assets, and which.
Screenshots, concepts or simply similar work.
Engine, budgets, texel density, naming.
When you need the result.
Missing something? Send what you have. No list yet? We’ll get on a call and build one together.
09Before you write
Quick answers
Eight questions people ask before the first email. Don’t see yours? Write to us and we’ll answer by email.
What does environment art outsourcing include?
Modular kits for interiors and exteriors, unique environment assets, nature and landscape (rocks, cliffs, trees, vegetation) and art passes, taking a location from blockout through the art pass to final in engine. Delivered into Unreal Engine 5, Unity or your engine, with LODs, collision and source files. Props and set dressing are a separate discipline.
What does it cost?
We bill by the day, at the agreed rate. The day count depends on the size of the kit, the number of unique assets, how close the player gets and how hard the scene has to be optimised. A module is built once and reused across the whole location. A unique structure is a one-off. Send the list and we’ll return a stage-by-stage estimate with the rate. On a retainer, the monthly invoice is fixed in advance.
How long does it take?
We give you a timeline with the estimate, broken down by stage: blockout to your metrics, high-poly, low-poly, UVs and bake, materials, assembly in the scene. How many items we can run in parallel depends on who’s free, and we’ll tell you that with the estimate.
What if the quality isn’t right?
The most expensive mistake in a kit is the grid: it carries into every module. So you sign off dimensions and the grid at the second stage, on greybox, before the first final module. From there a mismatch is caught at the stage sign-off, and one stage of one asset gets redone.
Our art style is already set. Can you match it?
We work to your style guide and your master materials. The fit shows on the very first asset, before a batch is ordered.
Who sets the technical budgets?
You do: texel density, triangle budget, the LOD scheme, draw calls per scene. If there are no requirements yet, we propose ours for your platform and agree them before work starts, so they don’t change along the way.
Do we get the source files?
Yes, all of it is yours: high-poly, low-poly, bakes, texture sets. Portfolio use and in-game credits are a separate clause in the contract, agreed before work starts.
How fast do we get an estimate?
Within 48 hours of getting the list, along with a straight answer on capacity: who on the team is free.
Send the list and we’ll come back with an estimate
A one-page list is enough. If you have a blockout, a style guide and dates, attach them: the estimate gets tighter.
Or just email contacts@mutaform.com. We read everything.