Toulouse Stylized — Reference to Blockout // #01

Work In Progress / 09 January 2024

Hey everyone! I recently started a new environment on Unreal and I wanted to share with you my thought process and work in this first blog post.

This environment is based on a city in South of France called Toulouse (aka. The Pink City), known for the use of brick and building lime giving it this major pink mood. 🧱

I went there back in April 2023 for a week and gathered a few references, but one street stood out for me.
Now in winter, truly missing the summer vibes, I decided to work on this simple quiet street and try reproducing it in a stylised look.


I really liked the look of this narrow street, slightly curved and hinting that there's more after the turn at the end, that it's not a deadend.
This street is clearly hiding more life and gardens behind those facades and buildings, it's something I wanna capture as well.

It would also be a good opportunity for me to implement foliage here and there. I've never done foliage for now so it would make it a good excuse to start learning. 

I jumped in Unreal Engine 5, quickly came out with a blockout following the same composition and flow, and the mood instantly clicked for me.

Then I went straight to the art blockout to further plan how I would approach this environment in the simplest way, how I could re-use buildings to fill my composition without producing too many unique ones.

In total, I'm gonna be using four main buildings, one arch filler and one unique facade, each buildings sharing components for windows and doors.

From the get-go, I knew I was gonna need some trims in this environment to frame my buildings and add some color variation, so I defined their shapes during the art blockout stage as well.

I'm excited to show you in the next blog my first tileables and trims textures I've produced for this new environment!
At the moment of writing, I'm already at a stage where I got blends, windows sheets and trims ready. I can't wait to post more as I'm truly loving working on this street 😁🤘

Thanks for reading and see you next blog! ✨