Urban Gustavsson

Introduction

At Infinite Mana, a Malmö-based studio built around AAA industry veterans, I had the opportunity to contribute to two unannounced projects during my internship. My mentors were Tommy Norberg and Niklas Briselius.

“Project Expeditions” was an action-RPG where my primary role was that of a level artist, bridging the gap between level design and art direction. I also got to do a fair bit of level design exploration.

Following studio layoffs and restructuring, we started our new rogue lite project “New Beginnings”. With a reduced team, I took ownership of level art and became responsible for set dressing, lighting, and material tweaks, while also level designing some important parts of the game. Deadlines were tight and it was important to wear multiple hats.

I aim to present things I was responsible for, but this is still a team effort, supported by my leads, mentors, and other team members.

Specifications

• Internship between September 2024 and March 2025

• Main tools: Unreal Engine 5, Blender, Photoshop

• Other: Perforce, Miro, Slack, Jira

My contributions

• Level Design blockout and whiteboxing
  Built playable spaces with a focus on player movement and guidance, while keeping metrics under control.

• Prefab creation
  Made several types of "level instances" to help the team build and iterate faster across both projects.

• Modular kit blockouts in Blender / Unreal
  Created modular kits for different biomes. Worked with artists to support both gameplay and art goals.

• Level Art
  Responsible for modular and prop set dressing and material iteration.

• Lighting preset creation and lighting passes
  Created reusable lighting presets and made lighting passes to define mood, atmosphere, and highlight areas.

• Game mode exploration
  Helped explore ideas for new game modes, testing their feasibility and sharing feedback with the team.

Prefab creation

One of my first tasks for Project Expeditions was to create level instance prefabs to speed up the level design and level art process. This involved kitbashing assets into new ones and designing environment clusters that maintained a visual cohesiveness.
‍
I collaborated with my level design lead and mentor, as well as the art director to balance gameplay and aesthetics.

Without occlusion culling, Extra care was taken to avoid clipping, and ensure player visibility from all angles.

Level design

I explored a new game mode, focusing on forward motion and platforming, a future biome, and on important player areas which were later implemented.
‍
Much is left out but can be discussed upon request.

Set dressing (and lighting)

For "New Beginnings", I was responsible for modular and prop set dressing. Often, a small level design pass was done (avoiding breaking the playable space) before moving on to bring levels closer toward completion.

The examples show areas where I also handled the lighting, as it went hand in hand with the process. As we did not use Lumen, a traditional lighting approach was used, adding reflection captures, bounce lights, etc.

Lighting presets

I created a series of lighting/weather presets to be used across multiple levels. Goal was to easier maintain visual cohesivenes while also saving time during the development process. I used existing VFX.

Modular kits

I worked on two modular kits to support our pipeline. For the first kit, an existing kit blocked out in Unreal was used, in which I added new modular pieces and blocked out everything in Blender. For the second kit, I owned the initial art direction, created blockouts in Blender, imported them in Unreal, and built a test level to ensure everything worked as intended.

This helped handoffs between disciplines, as our artist could start to work directly in Blender, knowing our needs and metrics.