Hey everyone,
I’ve been really interested lately in how large open-world games are actually built under the hood, especially in Unreal Engine.
One thing that really caught my attention is that many huge games don’t necessarily rely on thousands of completely unique assets — instead, a lot of the magic seems to come from smart modular design, composition, material variation, streaming systems, and clever world-building techniques that make environments feel unique without destroying performance.
More specifically:
How do developers structure massive worlds in a modular and scalable way while still keeping good performance and variety?
I’m curious about things like:
- Modular environment workflows
- World partitioning / level streaming
- Reusable assets and kits
- Procedural vs handmade content
- Performance optimization for huge maps
- How studios avoid repetition while still building efficiently
- Whether the workflow usually starts in the modeling software first (Blender/Maya/etc) or directly inside the engine
Games like GTA V, Cyberpunk, RDR2, or similar titles feel incredibly diverse and alive, but obviously they can’t be building every single area uniquely from scratch. So I’d love to understand more about the actual techniques and production pipelines behind these kinds of worlds.
For those with experience in large-scale environment development:
What practices, workflows, or systems are commonly used?
What are the biggest challenges?
And what’s something beginners usually misunderstand about open-world development?
Would love to hear opinions, technical insights, or even personal experiences on this topic.
Thanks in advance to everyone who shares their thoughts.
All opinions, ideas, workflows, and experiences are welcome — it would be really interesting to discuss this topic together, debate different approaches, and share knowledge with the community.