Neo Metro - Unreal Environment Art Design

Neo Metro is a piece inspired by my own life experiences. My time living in New York, along with a recent trip where I luckily got to rent a Tesla, led me to create this work.

Sci-fi and hard surface environments have always been something I wanted to explore, but instead of just going for complex, flashy modeling, I wanted to use this piece to really think about what could be done better—how we can reach technical achievement while still keeping aesthetics and product design usefulness in mind. I don’t want to blindly chase just one of those goals, but instead aim for a mix of all three.

Because of that, you’ll see a lot of products and designs in this scene leaning toward more curvy shapes—what I imagine as a more humanized design approach for a futuristic setting (also inspired by real-life references).

For this post, I’m focusing on the render showcase: environment rendering, lighting, and modular assets. In a separate post, I’ll share some of the detailed shaders, such as some simple animation and how I set up exposed parameters for modular materials I worked on for this project.

Thank you so much for taking the time to take a look at my piece, any suggestions are appreciated for now and future!!