Artist builds stylized Barcelona scene with modular kit in UE5

Frankie Povarchik, a 3D environment artist and indie developer based in Barcelona, described his workflow for a stylized Barcelona street in a breakdown published by 80 Level on 4 November 2026. He spent six months on the project alongside his job and the EAM course. The aim was to improve his modular architecture, material and environment composition skills.

The architecture started in Blender as shells built from reusable walls, windows, arches, doors and other structural details. Povarchik says the modules had to be flexible enough for different layouts while keeping consistent proportions. Building from a kit let him create building variations without modeling each facade from scratch, and change the composition without rebuilding whole buildings.

For texturing, he made tileable materials in Substance 3D Designer so the same material could be reused across meshes and scaled over large areas. Trim sheets covered borders, edges, frames and decorative elements. He made the trims in Photoshop and used a 45-degree normal direction to fake sculpted detail, which gave a more stylized response to lighting. His visual references included Overwatch, VALORANT and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

To fight repetition, he combined vertex painting, RGB masking, decals and overlay masks in Unreal Engine. A height mask controls whether vertex-painted blends are soft or sharp. RGB masking adds color variation, and decals handle localized detail such as dust beneath windows and balconies. Overlay masks add surface information while preserving the original material.

Set dressing added foliage, wall decorations and street furniture, placed in clusters to guide attention while leaving calmer areas. Povarchik made some plants and pots himself and retextured other foliage from external sources. He lit the scene first with base materials to establish mood, then added decals, props and effects.