As an Environment Artist myself, I have always seen environment creation as a creative process — from blockout and composition to set dressing and the final art pass.
But after becoming a Lead Artist, I started looking at these processes from a broader perspective.
It is not only about the artistic result. From a production and business standpoint, the workflow also needs to be efficient, scalable and predictable — while still preserving the creative freedom of artists and proper Art Direction.
That is one of the reasons I started building my own tools.
The tool demonstrated in this video is a procedural rock and architectural gravel generation tool built on top of Unreal Engine PCG.
Its main purpose is simple: make repetitive set-dressing tasks faster, easier and fully procedural.
It can be used to quickly create:
• decorative gravel borders around bushes, objects and architectural elements;
• gravel roads and paths;
• piles and mounds;
• procedural cutouts, transitions and other shapes;
• various rock and gravel formations for environment dressing.
But one of the most useful features is automatic foliage removal.
Grass, small rocks and other foliage elements that intersect with the generated gravel or rock meshes are automatically removed. This helps eliminate those unrealistic overlaps that would normally require a lot of manual cleanup.
And the removed foliage can be restored at any time.
This becomes especially valuable in production.
Imagine a client asks you to move a road, change the shape of a gravel area, or remove part of the rock dressing. Instead of manually fixing or rebuilding dozens or hundreds of assets, you simply adjust the procedural parameters and regenerate the result.
Another important feature is how easy it is to extend the tool.
To add new meshes to the generation library, simply select them in the Content Browser and press a dedicated button. They are automatically added to the available generation assets.
The tool also supports overlay materials and provides centralized randomization controls for material properties such as color, brightness, contrast, roughness, normal and more.
So this is more than just a rock generator.
It is a production-oriented tool designed to take repetitive work away from Environment Artists while keeping the artistic control in their hands.
And that is exactly what I believe good procedural tools should do: not replace the artist, but remove the routine and give them more time to focus on creative decisions.
The tool is quite universal, but I see particular value for ArchViz and other projects where large amounts of environment dressing need to be produced quickly and consistently.
If you like the tool and would like something similar for your own projects, feel free to reach out — I’d be happy to discuss it.