Inspired by Halo, this stunning sci-fi landscape is a real-time render from Unreal Engine

Renders of a scene inspired by Halo, by James Naughton.

James Naughton is an environment artist from Manchester in the UK. His piece Installation 04 is a tribute to Halo. He used ZBrush and Blender for modelling and Unreal Engine for rendering, with SpeedTree, Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer and Photoshop all lending a hand at various stages.

If you're inspired by James’ work, take a look at our collection of the best ZBrush tutorials to help refine your 3D skills. Looking to upgrade your creative kit? Check out our guide to the best laptops for 3D modelling.

Hard-surface elements like this crashed ship were made in Blender, while ZBrush and SpeedTree handled organics (Image credit: James Naughton)

James says: This environment piece was created in Unreal Engine 5 and is fan art for the popular video game franchise Halo, which has been one of my favourite franchises going back to when I was younger.

I created all the assets from scratch myself aside from the character models, which I found on 3D asset websites. I made the hard surface assets in Blender using various plugins such as BoxCutter and anything organic was done in ZBrush and SpeedTree.

Whenever you create any environment art, spend lots of time on the blockout and lighting stages: it’s the difference between your art turning out great or falling flat.

Check out James’ ArtStation.

---

This content originally appeared in 3D World magazine.