Sewer Dead End – Malignant (Unreal Engine 5)
This environment was created for the upcoming horror co-op game Malignant. In the game’s lore, this sewer served as a dumping site for failed test subjects from cancer research experiments and debris. Researchers sealed the bodies in bags, tagged them, and hung them in the depths of the sewer. My goal was to capture that disturbing backstory through atmosphere and detail, pushing toward storytelling in a small but impactful, cinematic space.
Development
Completed over ~6 weeks with daily iteration and polish passes.
Blockout was provided by the team. Some particles and set-dressing props came from teammates, but I handled the majority of modeling, sculpting, texturing, lighting, set dressing, atmosphere, and optimization.
Focus Areas
Atmosphere & Lighting – Blue-tinted sewer lighting to balance eerie mood with player readability.
Narrative Props – Hero assets (body bags) with tags + storytelling cues tied to Malignant’s lore.
Technical Skills – Vertex painting for surface variation, ZBrush sculpting, custom particle systems (fog, fire, dust).
Optimization – Merged meshes, LODs, and efficient asset management kept the scene stable at 50–60 FPS in UE5.
Tools
Unreal Engine 5, Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Quixel Megascans, Photoshop, Marmoset Toolbag, Niagara.
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to the Malignant team for feedback and inspiration.
Some reference images and artistic inspiration were sourced from other artists on ArtStation. Big thanks to these artists for their incredible work, which helped guide the mood, materials, and overall direction of this project:
https://www.artstation.com/eliastsirides
https://www.artstation.com/jakedunlop
https://www.artstation.com/rboyer22
https://www.artstation.com/klllj0y
https://www.artstation.com/lewislabram
https://www.artstation.com/davidegrimani
https://www.artstation.com/russ3d
https://www.artstation.com/meshmodeler
Link to BuzzKill Interactive (Studio of Malignant): https://buzzkillinteractive.com/
Wireframe view
Lighting only view
Detailed lit view
Debris Props Overview: All assets were baked and textured at 2048px using Substance Painter
Trash bag prop variations assets built for clustering and reuse to add realism and clutter
Body Bag Variations: High-to-Low workflow - sculpted in ZBrush (~300K tris) → Low Poly (~6.5K tris per bag). Baked and textured in Substance Painter (2048px PBR textures).
Broken Office Chair – Texture Maps
Base Color, Normal, and ORM maps made with Substance Painter and exported at 2048px resolution.
Central drain pipe and surrounding sewer walls were textured at 4K resolution to preserve fine detail and graffiti readability
Curved modular wall set. Textured with 4K Quixel Megascans materials
Quixel Megascans Ivy (three variations). Slight sway animation added to enhance immersion and realism.
Base Color / Roughness / Specular Setup – Quixel brick base with custom vertex paint blending for grime, plus specular controls to fine-tune surface response.
Emissive Graph – Custom setup to drive the glowing graffiti (“THEY LIED”), balanced with fresnel and glow strength controls.
Normals & amp; Parallax Occlusion – Adds depth and variation to the brick surface.
Adjusting brightness parameters on my animated burnt wood material in UE5 to refine detail visibility and surface readability
Vertex painting pass — adding subtle waterlines along the walls and leaks beneath the sewer pipes to ground the environment. Used in Unlit mode for clarity.
Physics-Driven Flag with Cloth Weight Painting. Skeletal mesh flag placed on the central gate of the sewer dead end
Walkthrough of Dead End Sewer area environment. Gizmos and FPS stats visible to demonstrate performance and real-time setup
Reference board compiled using real-world photos sourced from Freepik, Reddit, and various public resources. Images used for reference purposes only.
Mood, lighting, and composition reference board created to guide the Dead End sewer environment in Malignant. Inspiration was drawn from AAA titles (The Last of Us Part I, and other indie/other projects (Voyager 3D, Soulstice), and community ArtStation