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Workflow: Environment / Level Artist

Persona: Jordan — only environment artist at a 6-person studio making a post-apocalyptic open-world survival game in Unreal Engine 5. Needs biome-specific assets at scale.

The fast path — compose environment

To generate a full prop kit, matching ground material, and ambient audio for a biome in one command, use compose environment:

# 5 biome props + ground material + audio (Unreal export)
assgen compose environment "overgrown highway, post-apocalyptic" \
    --count 5 --engine unreal --wait

This runs ~20 sequential ML steps and produces:

  • 5 props (.uasset-ready .glb) each with concept art, mesh, UV, texture, LOD, and collider
  • Ground material: albedo.png + normal.png + roughness.png + ao.png + metallic.png
  • Ambient loop + biome music

For finer control over what props are generated:

assgen compose environment "overgrown highway, post-apocalyptic" \
    --items "cracked concrete barrier,rusted car wreck,overgrown billboard,chain-link fence,abandoned oil drum" \
    --engine unreal --wait

Preview the full step plan before committing GPU time:

assgen compose environment "post-apocalyptic highway" --count 5 --dry-run

Runtime expectations on an RTX 3060/3070

5 props + ground + audio ≈ 40 min. Use --quality low to prototype the kit direction first (~15 min), then re-run at default quality for the keeper: 

assgen compose environment "overgrown highway" --count 5 --quality low --wait

For PBR material sets only (no props, no audio):

assgen compose material "cracked asphalt, post-apocalyptic, road surface" \
    --resolution 2048 --upscale --engine unreal --wait
assgen compose material "dead grass and gravel, dry wasteland" \
    --resolution 2048 --engine unreal --wait

See the Compose Pipelines guide for all options.

Manual step-by-step (more control)

For finer iteration — e.g. approving concept art before the mesh step — run individual assgen gen commands:

What you'll generate

  • Concept art for a new biome
  • Seamless tileable PBR ground textures (albedo, normal, roughness)
  • A 360° equirectangular HDRI sky for the scene
  • Depth map from a reference photograph for terrain sculpting
  • Inpainted fix for any texture seams

Prerequisites

pip install "assgen[inference]"
assgen server status   # confirm GPU is visible

Biome workflow: overgrown highway

1 — Concept art for art direction

Before generating any textures, lock down the visual language with a concept:

assgen gen visual concept generate \
  --prompt "overgrown highway, post-apocalyptic, foggy morning, cracked asphalt, vines, desolate" \
  --wait

Pin this image somewhere visible during the rest of the session. Adjust the prompt until the palette and mood match your target biome.

2 — Seamless tileable ground texture

# Cracked asphalt — primary road surface
assgen gen visual texture generate \
  --prompt "cracked asphalt, post-apocalyptic, seamless tile, 4K, PBR" \
  --resolution 2048 \
  --wait

# Overgrown verge
assgen gen visual texture generate \
  --prompt "cracked concrete with weeds, seamless tile, 4K, PBR" \
  --resolution 2048 \
  --wait

Always include 'seamless tile' in your prompt

The SDXL model responds well to this phrase. If you still see edges, use the inpaint step below to fix them.

3 — Fix seams with inpainting

If a generated texture has visible tiling artefacts:

  1. Open the texture in any paint app and draw a solid white mask over the seam area
  2. Export the mask as seam_mask.png (same resolution as the texture)
  3. Run inpaint:
assgen gen visual texture inpaint \
  --input asphalt_texture.png \
  --mask seam_mask.png \
  --prompt "cracked asphalt, seamless, match surrounding texture" \
  --wait

Repeat with a smaller mask if the first pass is still visible.

4 — HDRI sky generation

assgen gen scene lighting hdri \
  --prompt "stormy industrial skyline at dusk, post-apocalyptic, heavy clouds, orange haze" \
  --wait

Output: hdri_<id>.exr — a 16-bit equirectangular HDR image.

Import into Unreal Engine 5:

  1. Drag hdri_<id>.exr into your Content Browser
  2. In World Settings → Sky Light: set Source Type → SLS Specified Cubemap
  3. Set the Cubemap to your imported .exr
  4. Adjust Intensity and Sky Distance Threshold to taste

Equirectangular = Unreal-ready

assgen outputs standard equirectangular .exr. No conversion or HDRIBackdrop plugin required — UE5 consumes it natively.

5 — Depth map from a reference photo

If you have a reference photo of a real location and want to sculpt terrain from it:

assgen gen scene depth estimate \
  --input reference_highway.jpg \
  --wait

Output: depth_<id>.png — a 16-bit greyscale depth map.

Use in Unreal to sculpt terrain:

  1. In Landscape Mode → Import → Heightmap: point at depth_<id>.png
  2. Set Import Scale to match your world scale
  3. Sculpt on top of the generated base

Batch-generating texture variants

For biome-wide coverage, generate a family of related textures in one go:

#!/bin/bash
PROMPTS=(
  "cracked asphalt, post-apocalyptic, seamless, 4K PBR"
  "concrete rubble, post-apocalyptic, seamless, 4K PBR"
  "dried mud with tire tracks, post-apocalyptic, seamless, 4K PBR"
  "rusted metal grating, post-apocalyptic, seamless, 4K PBR"
  "dead grass and gravel, post-apocalyptic, seamless, 4K PBR"
)

for PROMPT in "${PROMPTS[@]}"; do
  assgen gen visual texture generate --prompt "$PROMPT" --resolution 2048 &
done
wait
echo "✓ All variants queued — check: assgen jobs list"

This submits all jobs concurrently. The server processes them serially (one GPU), but you get the output as each finishes without babysitting.

Known limitations

Gap Status Workaround
LOD generation Not ML — algorithmic only Use UE5 built-in automatic LOD (nanite or static mesh reduction)
Texture super-resolution Planned Use Real-ESRGAN standalone for 2K→4K upscaling
Normal / roughness separation Albedo only from SDXL Use Materialize (free) to derive normal/roughness from albedo

Tips

  • Iterative prompting: generate 4–6 concept variants at low resolution (--resolution 512) first to find the right look, then re-run at 2048 for the keeper.
  • Consistent palette: add a colour note to every prompt in a biome — orange haze, desaturated greens — to keep assets cohesive across the set.
  • Source image: --input photo.jpg on concept generation gives the model a colour and composition anchor that purely text prompts lack.

Next steps