Encounter In the Wilds: An Environment Art Challenge for Worldbuilders
- Sierra Division
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
WHAT WILL YOU ENCOUNTER IN THE WILDS?
You are an adventurer lost in the Wilds. Days without food or water have tested you, but now the trees thin, and light touches the earth giving you hope.
What lies ahead? Safety, or danger? The Wilds keep their secrets, and only those who act shape their path.
Take up your Challenge toolkit to build bunkers, raise ruins, shape mountains! Only your vision decides what lies ahead.
YOUR MISSION
Your mission is to create the most ORIGINAL and STUNNING environment no one has seen before, using ONLY a limited number of assets. For your challenge toolkit, you will be provided with a list of free assets, available to download from FAB. These asset packs are your means to shape the Wilds and bring your environment to life.
A LOOK AT YOUR CHALLENGE TOOLKIT
To build your environment, you will be need to use the following assets:
The Sierra Division Challenge Pack - Industrial Infrastructure and Modular Corridors
your essential pack, filled with assets from our Oil Rig and Underground Bunker collections. Every hard surface in your environment must come from this pack.
Quixel Megascans Packs
To help your build stunning landscapes of the Wilds, you will be able to use assets from the following Quixel Megascans packs.
Download them below:
2-Month Free Access to Dash
Our friends at Dash are here to support you on your mission. With Dash in your toolkit, you’ll streamline your workflow and bring your worlds to life faster.
Dash is a plugin for UE5 that helps you create 3D worlds by removing the complexity of Unreal Engine. It includes tools for procedural scattering, asset management, procedural meshes, physics, and much more! For more information, check their website.
Join our Challenge to get access.
CHALLENGE JUDGES
Encounter in the Wilds submissions will be reviewed by an incredible panel of 12 expert judges from Sierra Division and AAA Game studios.
With years of experience across game art, design, and education, our judges will be on the lookout for Environments that stand out for their creativity, originality, technical skill, best use of assets, and presentation.
YOUR REWARDS
Impress our judges, and three of you will be rewarded with industry tools and learning to help you succeed in your Environment Art career.
First place winner will get a free scholarship to attend the January cohort of Procedural Texturing for Game Assets with Robin Marianičk. This 8-week course is a great opportunity to improve your texturing skills with a neat motorbike to showcase in your portfolio.
In addition to the Sierra Division Academy Scholarship, we will also have awesome prizes generously provided by our sponsors: Wacom, Dash, Adobe Substance 3D, Marmoset, Rizom-Lab, and ArtStation.
Wacom Intuos Pro Medium
See the full list of prizes:
KEY DATES:
Challenge Starts: Monday, September 8, 2025 at 10am PST
Challenge Ends: Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 11:45 PST
Winners Announced: Week of November 17
HOW TO JOIN
To participate in the Challenge, start by joining our Discord server, which is required to log in to our submission forum. Once you're in and the challenge has started, head to the Encounter In the Wilds section and start a new Discussion for your submission.
For the complete list of Deliverables, Guidelines, eligible countries and specifications please read our T&Cs
