Big inspiration from Playdead's Inside. What a game

Yep, there’s a few preset graybox materials

That about covers it. Very happy with the result, but that level of fidelity is exhausting. Everything becomes a can of worms.

My biggest takeaway is that Scythe + procedural tools are a really effective combo for making levels with a lot of creative freedom and room to iterate.

Finally, here's the fab assets I used. The rest are megascan assets.
www.fab.com/listings/394...
www.fab.com/listings/515...
www.fab.com/listings/9bd...

The background buildings are put together from modular megascan assets and packed into PLIs.

To add detail and hide texture repetition I used a lot of decals. I was surprised how many decals are used in some of the Quixel UE5 environments, obviously decals are an essential component but they really go crazy with them.

For the lighting, I made some basic light BPs with static mesh + spotlights. I also made heavy use of emissive planes to fill in areas.

The HDAs I made are pretty basic spline tools. Pipe tool, stiff cable tool, soft cable tool. The soft cables are really basic. I tried a version that physically drapes cables, only to return to manually drawn splines because it’s simpler to art direct and bezier curves convey weight easily.

The shell was a challenge to model, because it has such a strange structure which is what makes the facade compelling. Initially I made a simpler version, but then I realized the specific forms are what drew me to the building. The “medieval bauhaus” look is pretty unique.

The first pass in Unreal was pretty mid. The whole thing was stuck on 90 degree angles and frankly uninspired. I made the mistake of pushing it into set dressing and lighting early before realizing it was a fundamentally bad layout. So afterwards I downloaded Scythe and redid all the level geo.

I did some initial blender sketches while developing the overall feeling and direction, particularly the "normal building hiding portal to underworld" theme

The building is part of a ventilation system for the Holland Tunnel, the world's first mechanically ventilated tunnel. The first two chief engineers on the project actually died during the project's construction. I'm guessing it's haunted.

The real building was constructed in 1927 and designed by the architect Erling Owre, a Norwegian architect combining Romanesque and Gothic elements with Bauhaus and Constructivist ideas. The result is a spooky, minimalist castle.
Ref from the Library of Congress entry:
www.loc.gov/item/ny1516/

The main tools I used are Unreal Engine 5.5, Scythe (@kronok.bsky.social), Houdini HDAs, and Megascan/Fab assets. Here's the graybox vs final using Scythe to block out the level.

Full walkthrough:
vimeo.com/1064057629