Steampunk House

A highly detailed steampunk environment built around handcrafted modularity, visual storytelling, and the challenge of making every building feel unique.

This environment was one of the projects where I really pushed myself to think about architecture as more than just modeling a building. Every day, I was putting in at least three hours working on these structures, constantly refining the design and trying to bring everything to a finished state.

The building style I developed with Eli is extremely intricate, combining wood, brick, metal, pipes, machinery, and countless smaller details throughout the structure. Nearly every part of the building had to be considered carefully, from individual roof tiles and wooden panels to the placement of pipes, cables, speakers, lights, and mechanical components.

Designing From Every Angle

One of the biggest challenges was remembering that the audience would experience this world through a locked camera.

That gave us an opportunity to reuse some buildings throughout the environment, but I didn't want that reuse to be obvious.

I challenged myself to make the front and back of the same building feel so different that they could almost be mistaken for two separate structures.

I achieved this through everything from the overall silhouette down to the smallest details. One side of a building might have dense, chaotic pipework that almost resembles a bundle of cables, while the opposite side might have much cleaner mechanical layouts. Even something as simple as the speakers could change dramatically—one side might use squared speakers while another uses circular designs.

The goal was to create recognizable architectural rules without creating identical buildings.

Making the World Feel Connected

A major part of my process was constantly asking myself:

Why is this here? How does it work? And where does everything connect?

The lights, speakers, cables, pipes, boilers, water tanks, cooling systems, and other machinery weren't placed randomly. I wanted them to feel like they belonged to a functioning world.

I started creating rules for how the technology of this world should work and then tried to maintain those rules throughout the structure. Thinking through where things would be stored, how they would be heated or cooled, and how that infrastructure would travel through the buildings made the designs feel much more cohesive.

It also made the environment far more fun to build.

Even something as simple as running a pipe from one section to another became a design problem: Where would it realistically go? What would it connect to? What else would need to be nearby?

The more believable I wanted the building to feel, the more time I had to spend thinking about it like a real structure.

Building a Modular System

With an entire steampunk city to create, making every building completely from scratch wasn't practical.

Instead, I began creating a collection of modular assets that could be reused throughout the environment without making every building look identical. I developed different pipes, speakers, structural pieces, mechanical details, and other assets that could be mixed and matched in different configurations.

This became an important balance:

Cohesion without repetition.

I wanted the same visual language to exist throughout the city, while still making each structure feel like it had its own identity.

That meant constantly creating new variations and finding new ways to combine existing pieces. A modular system only works when the pieces are flexible enough to create something different every time.

Pushing the Design Further

Throughout the process, I also experimented with larger structural elements to push the silhouettes of the buildings further.

One example was a sky bridge connecting two houses. Earlier versions of the structure weren't distinctive enough, so I went back into Maya and redesigned the connection between the buildings. The result dramatically changed the silhouette while making the environment feel more fantastical.

I also experimented with larger industrial structures and eventually incorporated a crane directly into the middle of the building. Details like these helped break up the architecture and give the structures more personality.

At the same time, I had to continually rethink which details actually belonged in this world. The goal wasn't simply to cover everything in pipes—it was to create a visual language that felt like steampunk technology interpreted through a fantasy world.

Modeling, Cleanup & UVs

Once the modeling was complete, I was also responsible for preparing the building for texturing.

Because I had been moving quickly while modeling, the Maya scene had become fairly messy in the Outliner. Before moving further, I had to go back through the scene and clean up the organization.

I primarily separated the assets by material and function so that the scene would be easier to understand and work with later. From there, I began the UV process and prepared the building for texturing in Substance 3D Painter.

That cleanup stage was an important reminder that environment art isn't just about building something that looks good. The asset also needs to be organized, understandable, and usable by the rest of the pipeline.

The Details Are the Architecture

What I enjoyed most about this project was how much of the final design came from the small decisions.

Even the roof tiles were individually considered for their shape and placement. Pipes needed to connect logically. Machinery needed somewhere to live. Lights needed to make sense. Decorative elements needed to support the silhouette instead of simply filling empty space.

The result is an environment that feels chaotic at first glance, but is actually built around a set of rules I established throughout the process.

That balance—creating something intricate and busy while still making it feel intentional—is one of the biggest challenges I gave myself with this project.

And honestly, it's one of the most fun parts of building environments like this.