Realistic 3D hard-surface & vehicles
Vehicle and hard-surface
art outsourcing
for games
Cars, trucks and tractor units, tracked and military vehicles, farm machinery, boats, ships and helicopters, plus fictional vehicles from your concept art. Modelled to scale from blueprints and broken down into moving parts for animation. Textured on your master materials (paint, chrome, glass, rubber), with wear and tear where it belongs.
- Cars
- Trucks & tractors
- Military & tracked
- Farm machinery
- Watercraft & aircraft
- Fictional vehicles
- Attachments & variants
02The discipline
What we take on
Cars and trucks, tanks and tractors, ships and helicopters, and the add-ons, versions and reskins for them.
New vehicles built from blueprints, on wheels or tracks, military or agricultural, on water or in the air. And for vehicles already in the game: add-ons, themed and special variants, reskins. The base vehicle’s geometry stays untouched.
From a silhouette in the wide shot to a sim where every nut and bolt holds up.
You set the level of detail, down to the seams and nameplates a sim player inspects up close. Broken down into moving groups with hierarchy and pivots for your animation.
Helicopters, boats, ships, and machines from your concept art.
Flying and floating machines follow the same rules as wheeled ones. Fictional ones get the same treatment: the mechanics read and the panels line up. We agree the silhouette at blockout and the construction at high-poly.
Screens, switches, dials: hard-surface up close.
Built at character scale, with as much detail as the player can see from their viewpoint.
A vehicle is assembled from parts that are usually made by different people: body, chassis, instruments. One team runs the whole vehicle through one checklist, so scale, texel density and wear don’t drift at the seams.
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 vehicle artist is a narrow specialist: SubD, blueprints, breakdown for animation. Hiring one for a few vehicles before an update takes too long, and keeping one between updates is expensive. We can take all the vehicles in the project from blueprints to sign-off in your build: on land, on water and in the air, new vehicles and add-ons for existing ones. 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 vehicle. 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
Vehicle artists, an art lead and a manager come as one team: the body, chassis and instruments of one vehicle do not have to be split between vendors and stitched together afterwards.
- 02Review before your sign-off
Every vehicle 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 engine.
- 03Advice on request
If a decision is already made, such as the triangle budget, the LOD scheme or the number of materials, we follow it to the letter. If it’s still open, we lay out the trade-offs and recommend a route: a new vehicle, a modification of an existing one or a reskin, how many groups for animation, how many LODs.
- 04Research and our own tools
Before work starts, we study the construction from blueprints and photos: how the assemblies connect and move, what they are made of and where they wear. 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 blueprints
We go through the list, the vehicles already in the game and the style guide. For each vehicle we study your blueprints and photos. We come back with an estimate. Sign-off: scope and estimate.
- 02Blockout
Dimensions and proportions to spec, against your character scale. We check the silhouette in the scene next to your existing vehicles. Sign-off: silhouette and proportions.
- 03High-poly
SubD modelling from blueprints: a clean mesh on complex intersections, panels and gaps from reference. Sign-off: construction and detail.
- 04Low-poly and bake
Game topology inside the budget, broken down into moving groups with hierarchy and pivots. LODs are built in the same pass. UVs go to your texel density, maps are baked from the high-poly. Sign-off: triangle budget, LODs and UVs.
- 05Materials
PBR on your master materials: paint and lacquer, glass, chrome, rubber. Wear goes where the vehicle would actually take it. Sign-off: texture sets and wear.
- 06In-engine check
Import, collision, hierarchy for animation, LODs. We check the vehicle in the build under your lighting: silhouette, reflections, highlights. Sign-off: the finished vehicle in your build.
06Delivered to your requirements
Drops into the build, 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 per LOD to your scheme before work starts, so at sign-off there’s nothing left to argue about.
Texel density. Matches the vehicles already in the game, so a new one doesn’t stand out.
Hierarchy and pivots. To your scheme: wheels, suspension, doors and mechanisms as separate groups with pivot points.
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 base vehicle with modifications, an add-on for an existing vehicle, or a set of instruments, 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 build. Invoiced at month end.
- We scale
- We take the next batch: a new vehicle, modifications or reskins for one already delivered.
The whole discipline
- We lock in
- A dedicated vehicle team on a monthly retainer. Same people, same rate, so you know the invoice in advance.
- We deliver
- At your project’s pace, for releases and updates, with sign-off at agreed checkpoints.
- We scale
- We add people as the volume grows. The core team stays.
08What we need for an estimate
Four things
Which vehicles and how many (wheeled or tracked, military, farm, boats, helicopters), which are new and which are modifications, add-ons or reskins, and any instruments.
Blueprints, photos or vehicles already in the game.
Engine, triangle budget and LOD scheme, 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 vehicle and hard-surface art outsourcing include?
Wheeled and tracked vehicles, military and agricultural, boats and ships, helicopters, fictional vehicles from your concept art; add-ons, modifications and reskins for vehicles already in the game; instruments and consoles. SubD modelling from blueprints, breakdown for animation, PBR materials, LODs and collision. Delivered into Unreal Engine 5, Unity or your engine, source files included.
What does it cost?
We bill by the day, at the agreed rate. What moves the number most is how many new vehicles are on the list against modifications and reskins of existing ones, and how finely a vehicle is broken down for animation. 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 scale, high-poly from blueprints, low-poly and LODs, UVs and bake, materials, delivery in the build. 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?
Anything off gets caught at the next sign-off, and there are six, from scope to the vehicle in your build. At worst, one stage of one vehicle is redone. Work you’ve already signed off isn’t touched.
We already have a fleet. Can you match it?
We work to your style guide and master materials. A new vehicle, add-on or reskin is checked next to the vehicles already in the game. The fit shows on the very first asset, before a batch is ordered.
Who sets the technical budgets?
You do: triangle budget, the LOD scheme, the number of materials, texture resolution. 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 list is enough: which vehicles are new and which are add-ons or reskins for existing ones, and whether you need instruments. If you have blueprints, a style guide and dates, attach them: the estimate gets more precise.
Or just email contacts@mutaform.com. We read everything.