Workflow

The AI 3D asset pipeline for game production

Atlas turns an untextured clay prototype into a production-ready 3D asset — art direction, a lookdev render, retopology and 4K PBR texturing, in one pipeline.

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Four stages, prototype to milestone-ready mesh

01Neutral grey untextured 3D prototype of a chest, the starting point for the pipeline

Read the prototype

A vision pass analyzes the untextured base shape — its geometry, seams, hinges and proportions.

02

Art direction

An LLM turns that structural read into an image-to-image lookdev prompt — surface wear, materials, decals and lighting — while preserving the prototype’s silhouette.

03The prototype chest reimagined with a worn, weathered post-apocalyptic material treatment and a skull decal

Lookdev render

A 2D concept render is generated from the art direction prompt, showing the finished look before any mesh work happens.

04The finished chest mesh shown as a wireframe alongside its baked normal and roughness maps

Retopology & texturing

The concept is reconstructed into a 3D mesh, retopologized to a clean ~35k-poly quad/triangle budget, and baked with 4K PBR maps referencing the concept render.

Where the time goes

Stage
Manual
Atlas
Vision & LLM prompting
2–4 hours
5–15 seconds
2D concept generation
4–8 hours
15–30 seconds
Image-to-3D reconstruction
4–8 hours
1–2 minutes
Remeshing / retopology
2–4 hours
30–60 seconds
PBR mesh texturing
2–8 hours
1–2 minutes
Total time to milestone-ready mesh
2–4 days
2–4 minutes

Common questions

What does this workflow output?
A retopologized, game-ready 3D model (GLB) with baked 4K PBR textures — base color, roughness, metallic and normal maps — plus the structural analysis, lookdev prompt and concept render along the way.
How long does it take?
2 to 4 minutes end to end: vision and prompting take 5–15 seconds, the concept render 15–30 seconds, 3D reconstruction 1–2 minutes, retopology 30–60 seconds, and PBR texturing 1–2 minutes.
Can I control the art style?
Yes — the art-director system prompt can be pointed at any aesthetic (cyberpunk, hand-painted fantasy, clean hard-surface sci-fi, gothic steampunk), and the texture node accepts extra prompts or a swapped style reference image.
Which engines are supported?
GLB with standard PBR materials — drops into Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D and Houdini.

Related workflows

AI for game art: test 10 art directions in one day →Consistent art style across AI-generated game assets →Image to 3D assets for Unity →

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Free to start. No credit card required.

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