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Source: Roblox Creator Hub · CC BY 4.0 · View source · Code samples: MIT Imported 2026-10-03. Formatting adapted for this site.

Develop polished assets


Developing polished assets is the process of planning and creating high-quality assets to replace or convert the greybox environment and meet your game's aesthetic goals and design requirements. After you have the basis for how you want to lay out your assets in the 3D space from the greybox process, it's much easier to visualize what assets are necessary to bring your environment to life.

Using the Environment Art Asset Library as a reference, this section of the environmental art curriculum shows you how to prepare what you need to turn your basic greybox layout into a futuristic laser tag environment, including guidance on:

After you complete this section, you will learn how to pull all of your polished assets into the 3D space with additional terrain, light sources, and special effects to add character and storytelling elements to your environment.

A polished group of assets that make up an entryway.

Note

It's important to note the process between polishing assets and constructing your environment hardly ever looks like a straight line from your original idea to the final art. Iteration between each step and across steps is normal and almost always necessary in the development process.

Choose an art style

Choosing an art style at the start of your design process allows you to have a main source of truth for the aesthetic treatment of your assets. You can treat it as your visual ground rules, constantly referencing it as you design your assets to ensure they always inform users of what you want your environment to communicate. An effective art style provides users information about the world they're playing in, such as its climate, rich history, or relationship to technology.

Many developers choose to create a mood or theme board, then add as many pictures as you need until you feel that you have a visual representation of what you want your world to look like. For example, the final sample laser tag environment's art style references the following images to pull references for the focal elements of the 3D space, such as lush foliage, rounded frames, rectangular concrete forms, and stylistically uniform metal adornments. Although users may never see your reference images, they will feel the impact of their influence in the cohesiveness of your world's identity.

A collage of reference images for the sample laser tag game.

Design textures

Now that you have an art style for your game, it's time to review your layout and figure out what textures you need to create materials for the 3D space. Environments often require textures that can cover large surfaces, as well as textures that can provide a level of detail to your assets without adding additional geometry. For example, your greybox environment needs textures that can cover the outdoor space, such as moss, flowers and stones, as well as textures to provide details to the combat pockets, such as panels and bolts to frame doorways.

There are two high-level texturing methods that you can use to meet these requirements: tileable textures and trim sheets. The following sections provide information and guidance on both texture methods, including what to consider as you find textures on the Creator Store, or design them in third-party tools.

Tileable textures

Tileable textures are textures that tile both on the X and Y axis, and they allow you to cover large surfaces in your environment, such as floors, walls, and terrain. This type of texture requires minimal manual adjustments after you apply them to block Parts because blocks have flat surfaces, meaning you don't need to account for how the texture might deform on more complex geometry. In addition, you can import tileable textures MaterialVariant objects within the MaterialService to apply to your terrain, which is a process you will learn in Create custom materials in the next section of this tutorial.

A top-down view of a block part with a tileable moss with flowers material applied.

The most fundamental rule for tileable textures is that they cannot have a seam, otherwise where the texture begins and ends on a surface is noticeable to users, which can break their sense of immersion in the game. It's for this reason that tileable textures work well for natural materials, such as grass and stone, which are seamless by nature in the real world. In fact, the laser tag sample game uses the following four organic tileable textures to represent natural materials for the outdoor space, which you can use in the world building section of this tutorial.

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TileableTextures-Moss.png" alt="A sphere part with a tileable moss material applied." width="100%"/>

Moss

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TileableTextures-MossFlowers.png" alt="A sphere part with a tileable moss with flowers material applied." width="100%"/>

MossFlowers

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TileableTextures-MossStones.png" alt="A sphere part with a tileable moss with stones material applied." width="100%"/>

MossStones

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TileableTextures-Stones.png" alt="A sphere part with a tileable stones material applied." width="100%"/>

Stones

Notice how all of these sample tileable textures have equal visible distribution of their moss, flower, and rock elements. If you were to include any distinctive elements, such as a massive rock or a patch of flowers, it would attract user attention to the fact that the texture is repeating. For example, the first image in the following two images has a noticeable patch of dirt that pulls the eye to the texture's repetition. The second image makes this patch much smaller, which balances the texture's elements, and makes its repetition much less noticeable.

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TileableTextures-WithElement.jpg" alt="A tileable rock texture with a distinct patch of rocks highlighted to show that the repetition of the distinct element is noticeable." width="100%"/>




<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TileableTextures-NoElement.jpg" alt="A tileable rock texture with no distinct elements to show that this technique makes the repetition of elements not noticeable." width="100%"/>

If you decide to design your own tileable textures in third-party modeling tools like Substance Designer or Blender, keep the following in mind:

The previous point is near impossible to remove entirely, but you can set Studio material to tile organically, or add in additional decal overlays to hide the repetition effectively. For more information on these techniques, see Assemble an asset library - Creating custom materials and Assemble modular environments - Reduce visible repetition, respectively.

Trim sheets

Trim sheets are textures that tile on either the X or Y axis, and they allow you to add significantly more visual complexity to your game without having to import additional textures, saving you a negative impact on memory. Each row or column of a trim sheet has a unique visual appearance, giving you many different surface treatments to choose from when you're mapping UV data to a mesh. For example, the door frame and ceiling assets in the following two images use different layers of the same trim sheet to add detail work to the space.

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TrimSheets-Doorway.jpg" alt="An doorway with trim sheet textures applied." width="100%"/>




<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TrimSheets-Ceiling.jpg" alt="A group of ceiling tiles with trim sheet textures applied." width="100%"/>

The most fundamental rule for trim sheets is to avoid contextual details that you can only apply to a single object. This is because trim sheets must have use for many types of objects in your world, and highly specific details are also distinguishable to users as they repeat in the 3D space. For example, in the following image from the Mystery of Duvall showcase, the left-side furniture set's trim sheet includes more stain detail than the right-side furniture set's trim sheet. Notice how the extra stain detail makes its repetition prominent in comparison to the furniture set on the right.

The same furniture set has different trim sheets applied. The furniture set on the left with more distict stain elements has noticeable repetition.

Following this fundamental rule, the final sample laser tag environment uses the following trim sheet texture maps with six rows of simple detail work to add visual interest and cohesion to its modular kit and props. You can use this trim sheet for UV unwrapping in third-party modeling tools, then utilize its texture maps in a SurfaceAppearance object when you assemble your asset library. For more information on what each of these texture maps provide to meshes, see PBR textures - Texture maps.

Note

This trim sheet file is only useful for UV unwrapping processes in third-party modeling tools. If you try to upload its texture maps to a [`SurfaceAppearance`](/docs/surfaceappearance) object without completing a UV unwrapping process, there isn't any data for Studio to map to the texture itself.
The sample laser tag game's trim sheet.
<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TrimSheets-Albedo.png" alt="The sample laser tag game's trim sheet's albedo texture map." width="100%"/>

Albedo

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TrimSheets-Normal.png" alt="The sample laser tag game's trim sheet's normal texture map." width="100%"/>

Normal

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TrimSheets-Roughness.png" alt="The sample laser tag game's trim sheet's roughness texture map." width="100%"/>

Roughness

<img src="https://prod.docsiteassets.roblox.com/assets/tutorials/environmental-art-curriculum/Section2/TrimSheets-Metalness.png" alt="The sample laser tag game's trim sheet's metalness texture map." width="100%"/>

Metalness

If you decide to design your own trim sheets in third-party modeling tools like Substance Designer, Blender, or ZBrush, keep the following in mind:

For more information on this technique, see Building architecture - Creating trim sheets.

Design modular kits

Modular kits are sets of assets that seamlessly snap together to create variations of a larger complex object. Designing and using modular kits as a part of your development process is useful because it means you don't need to manually create each individual asset in your game. Instead, you only need to create a few assets that you can reuse and customize to create variety throughout the scene.

Not only does this process significantly speed up how quickly you can replace or convert the greybox environment, but when you UV wrap a trim sheet onto the meshes in your modular kit for detail work, it can also help each distinct object throughout the game feel cohesive. For example, the final sample laser tag environment utilizes a single SA_EC_Trim_Metal_A trimsheet to UV wrap onto all of its modular assets that create the overall building where most of the gameplay takes place, including assets that accommodate a rise in elevation between the first and second floor.

The sample laser tag game's modular kit.

Each asset in this modular kit has a consistent pivot point location either at the forward-most, lower corner, or in a location that allows them to snap to a logical position on the building in 5 stud increments when you enable grid snapping, such as trim pieces onto walls, or doors into their doorway position. In addition, each asset is at least 5 studs tall and wide, so there is never any clashing geometry, even when you rotate and move the assets. For more information on this concept, see Assemble modular environments - The importance of consistent pivot point locations.

You can use or modify the sample modular kit for replacing graybox geometry in the world building section of this tutorial. However, if you decide to design your own modular kit in third-party modeling tools like Blender or Maya, keep the following in mind:

No matter what modular kit you use, it's important to test often and look at your assets from multiple perspectives to see if there is any clashing geometry. If there is, it often means that one of the asset's pivot point locations isn't relatively consistent with the other.

Design props

Props are non-modular assets that enhance an environment's level of visual storytelling while providing users important context about the world they're in. For example, if users are exploring a cave and see props like glowing orbs and skeletons, they can infer that their environment is both magical and dangerous, so it might be wise to proceed with caution.

Props are most effective when they connect to larger themes in your game's art style. For example, the final sample laser tag environment utilizes props to provide users context regarding the environment's relationship to technology and nature. In particular, the props kit includes clean, high-tech panels, crates, fire extinguishers, and security cameras alongside large rocks and a variety of plants, informing users that the world values technological advances, but not at the expense of the earth.

The sample laser tag game's prop kit.

Unlike modular assets, props don't need to have consistent pivot point locations because they don't need to snap together to create a larger complex object. However, they do need to have logical pivot point locations according to where you need to place them in the 3D space. For example, in the following image, the fire extinguisher prop has a pivot point location on the back of the object so it can snap onto walls, and the crate has a pivot point location on the bottom of the object so it can snap onto floors. This allows for universal contextual placement, no matter the respective wall or floor.

You can use or modify props from the Environment Art Asset Library in the world building section of this tutorial. However, if you decide to design your own props in third-party modeling tools like Blender or Maya, keep the following in mind:

Once you have all of the high-quality assets you need to replace or convert the greybox environment, you can move on to the next section of the tutorial to learn how to assemble an asset library within your place file that you can use to turn your greybox environment into an aesthetically pleasing setting.