This environment was inspired by the Le Splendid Hotel, designed by BAL Architecture — a boutique property known for its layered materiality, arched stonework, and the kind of intimate, candlelit atmosphere that feels carved out of the building itself rather than designed into it. I was drawn to the way the space balanced raw, tactile surfaces with carefully controlled light, and used the hotel's photography as a reference point — not a blueprint — to explore what that quality could look like inside a real-time engine.

Built entirely in Unreal Engine 5, the environment leverages Nanite and Lumen to achieve a level of material and lighting fidelity that defines the character of the space. Surface materials were authored from the ground up in Substance Designer — layered travertine with micro-variation and hand-laid mosaic tile with grout depth, both pushing Nanite displacement to add genuine physical relief to surfaces that would otherwise read as flat in a traditional real-time pipeline. Lumen global illumination handles the warm, diffuse light characteristic of spa environments, where indirect bounce from stone and warm-toned fixtures carries as much visual weight as direct sources. The result is an environment that functions as both a portfolio piece and a living material and lighting reference — a space designed to push the boundaries of what real-time rendering can deliver in intimate, material-driven interiors.