Fence systems are often overlooked but essential for believable level design. In this devlog, I break down the creation of a modular spline-based tool, focusing on low-poly optimization and workflow efficiency.
Key topics:
Full Devlog:
https://itch.io/blog/1505451/the-silent-heroes-of-level-design
The expansion of the Roadside Tales series continues. Following the well-received fences pack, https://emaceart.itch.io/fences-palisades-and-world-boundaries we are moving smoothly into river infrastructure. Main goal: full visual consistency with previous assets and maximizing the ease of environmental storytelling.
Technicals & Modularity I have prepared 12 bridge foundation segments based on a 5x5 grid.
Narrative & Level Design These aren't just water-blocking props. They are tools for level design and player guidance. The kit allows for quick assembly of:
All of this without investing massive amounts of time into manual set dressing. You tell the story simply by placing the assets.
Teaser You can build almost any type of crossing with this, and the asset itself will actually hint at how to best use its potential. This is driven by a dedicated support tool that I'm keeping under wraps for now. 🤫
Let me know in the comments what bridge variations you'd find most useful in your projects!
Just finished tinkering with this package and had to share — there’s a lot of solid stuff in here 😄
The Story Verge PRO: Low Poly Modular Fence Kit & Tool by EmaceArt
This was a bit of an experiment, with the whole process being pretty heavily AI-assisted — not as a replacement, but more like an extension of thinking while building. Iterating, refining, coming back to the same bits until they finally start to make sense as a system. It’s easy to slip into that hyperfocus loop where you just keep pushing until things click.
And honestly, it worked better than expected. AI doesn’t replace the work, but when it’s integrated well into the workflow, it really changes the pace and the way you iterate.
Best part is always the same: when the chaos stops being chaos and everything suddenly starts to “click” into place.
If you enjoy digging into systems, experimenting with workflows, and combining tools into something your own, it’s worth a look.
Curious how it looks on your side — does AI speed things up for you, or does it end up distracting more than helping?
Jump in to our Discord to Learn, Create and Share!
https://emaceart.itch.io/fences-palisades-and-world-boundaries
World-building is a state of mind. When you catch that rhythm, everything just flows. But I hit a massive wall with something incredibly mundane: manually placing hundreds of fence segments on uneven terrain. Instead of building atmosphere, I was just mindlessly clicking. I had to get my artistic flow back.
I have some coding background, but I didn't want to go back to staring at vector logic. So I did something better: I stepped into the role of Art Director and handed the engineering grunt work over to artificial intelligence. I explained my frustrations and what kind of fluidity an artist actually needs, and the AI turned that into hard spatial mathematics. No fighting with code, just pure creation.
Perfectly straight fences are just dead. A real environment breathes through imperfection. The system automatically generates gaps and bends on the fly, so the barrier line itself immediately sets a context—decay, haste, or the passage of time.
And this is the core of it all. Imagine you're building a fugitive camp. Instead of wasting an hour painstakingly snapping wooden stakes to a steep slope, you just paint a path. The algorithm projects it onto the terrain, bends it, breaks it. You have a complete, organic foundation in seconds. All that saved energy and time can be immediately poured into what gives the most satisfaction: sculpting micro-narratives.
This is where the real fun begins. You lean a chipped shield against the thickest post. You wedge an abandoned journal between rotting planks, and under the cover of the most ruined section of a wall, you drop a hastily rolled blanket and the ashes of a dead campfire. The fence is just the frame of the painting where you direct the quiet, second and third-plane history. Instead of wasting time on foundations, you immediately give the scene a soul.
I built this tool for myself, but I know how much solo devs and level designers need this kind of freedom. Right now, the pack gives you a powerful base to quickly build these environmental frames so you can populate them with your own details. But there's a massive update on the horizon. I'm working on a huge injection of RPG-style props designed specifically to fill the space around these barriers and complete that third-plane narrative right out of the box.
Before that ultimate update drops, take the current version for a spin. See how quickly you can drop the technical baggage and get back to the pure joy of world-building: https://emaceart.itch.io/fences-palisades-and-world-boundaries
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Enjoy and thank you for downloading!
I’ve just pushed the biggest update to this project so far. Winter Update 2026 is a real new chapter: the art direction is shifting toward a calmer, slightly darker woodland dark-fantasy mood. Less “cute”, more wild, with stronger tree silhouettes and a heavier atmosphere at scene level.
Everwood: Stylized Woodland Forest Pack by EmaceArt
The biggest readability change happens around eye height. Previously the pack essentially had no real bushes, now there’s a full set of them, which gives the whole project a much more vertical look. You can finally break up your stages colour-wise in the mid layer - between grass and tree crowns - instead of relying mostly on trunks and terrain. On top of that comes 168 new assets: trees, leaves, flowers, vines, plants, 22 new terrain tiles (grass, mud, sand), 16 cliffs and 11 rocks. The whole library has grown to 388 mid-poly models converted into around 400 Unity prefabs, with clean pivots, sane scale and frozen transforms.
Another layer that gained a lot of character is all fences and barrier pieces. Before, they were mostly pure gameplay markers; now some variants are overgrown with ivy. It’s a simple change, but in a scene it matters: level boundaries stop looking like “editor geometry” and feel more like something that has been standing there for years and got swallowed by nature. You can use that to lead the player’s eye along a path, or to deliberately break the rhythm by mixing clean fence segments with ivy-wrapped ones.
This is a breaking update, so a quick technical warning: if you’re on an older version (2.6 or earlier), please back up your project before upgrading. Some meshes were completely replaced, several tree prefabs were overwritten with new geometry and settings, and the scale of a few models was adjusted. All other pivots stayed the same, so migration should be predictable, but better to keep a copy than lose a forest that already works.
Hey, Emace here. My free “Meadow & farm: Low Poly Nature Kit” just got a 2026 Winter Expansion with 74 new models, so the meadow finally feels like a small farm instead of just a flat green field. The update adds new wildflowers, dry shrubs, layered grass and flower clusters, mud and sand patches for roads and fields, full hay bale sets (round, square, neatly stacked and a bit messy) plus small props like pumpkins, a barrel, table and bench. It all stays in a stylized / low poly look, meant for building cozy RPG paths and farm corners without fighting realism.
For the full changelog, a breakdown of all 74 new models (split into foliage, terrain details, hay and props), extra screenshots and direct file links, I put everything into the “Winter Expansion 2026 - 74 New Free Models for Your Meadows and farm” devlog. Feel free to check the details here:
To wrap it up: if you end up using this meadow or farm setup in your game and you’re able to share it, I’d love to see a few screenshots or a short write-up. Seeing the pack in real projects helps me plan future updates and decide which chunks or props should come next. Thanks for reading and good luck with your game.
Thanks for taking the time to check this out and for all the feedback you’ve already shared on earlier versions of the pack - that’s what keeps this meadow and farm evolving. If the pack helps your project, feel free to drop a comment. Good luck with building your own worlds, and see you in the next devlog.
Small meadow update: I’ve finished working on the trunks and basic tree silhouettes, so now I’ve moved on to the crowns. In Blender I model individual leaves, group them into small clusters and, with the Project Align Rotation to Target tool, snap those clusters onto the trunk. From these leaf clumps I build the whole canopy, trying to make it read nicely from all camera angles, not just as a random cloud of triangles.
Right now I have eight trees done in a “common meadow” version - something between a small field grove and roadside trees in the countryside. In parallel I’m sketching another eight, this time more on the fantasy side, with pushed shapes and slightly weird crowns. Those fantasy ones will go into a separate asset pack later, because they have a very different character from the everyday trees in Farm on the Meadow. I’m attaching a few fresh Blender screenshots in the post so you can see this little tree herd slowly growing.
🌾 [Devlog] Farm on the Meadow – the field grows up in 2026 🌾
I’m back on the meadow, slowly turning it into a small farm. This is my most downloaded asset on itch.io, so it’s getting a big free upgrade. I’ve been adding all the things that always felt missing: bushes with real volume, leafy clumps with a clear flow, fences that look patched and repaired over time. Rocks that actually sit in the ground, and flowers that don’t scream for attention, they just support the scene.
Meadow & Forest: Low Poly Nature Kit (Free Remake) by EmaceArt
Hay bales - finally. In stacks, in rows, and in a bit of a mess. On top of that a few slightly fantasy trees, a bench by the path, a sign that points nowhere, and a barrel someone forgot here years ago. Everything stays low poly, but never hollow.
Right now there are 74 new meshes - quiet upgrades to the free
“Free Low Poly Meadows” pack, which is slowly growing into “Farm on the Meadow”. The update is still in progress, so it’s a good moment to help shape the final form. Requests and suggestions can be bold: I’m even considering adding a farmer’s house. If there’s a specific piece you’d love to have in this meadow-farm setup - a house, a shed, a distinctive prop for your shots or level design - just shout in the comments.
It’s a big free update and I’m happy to polish the last bits around your needs. Screenshot below, feedback very welcome.
This pack is completely free and I treat it as an intro to a much larger pack on the same topic - guiding the player using fences and walls. It contains 120+ modular fences and walls meant to be the silent hero of your background storytelling - and only then to take work off both designers and artists: they help draw clear paths, level boundaries and soft blockers while keeping pivots consistent and module lengths sensible.
FREE Low Poly Meadow Fences and Wall Bundle Pack 1-3 LODS by EmaceArt
Besides navigation, it has another job: helping you build story along roads and paths. A different fence type around a farm than around a ruined house, a broken segment hinting at a shortcut, a newly reinforced wall near an important gate - these pieces are meant to make environmental storytelling easier, using only the roadside props and how these fences look and end. It is a solid starting point for the bigger pack that will push player guidance and environmental storytelling even further.
Join the Discord if you want to shape how this pack looks – you share screenshots, tell me what you need, and I tweak the fences to fit your projects. https://discord.gg/meWGSGVs
Hej, tu EmaceArt Wasz nadworny nędzny artysta :D
(PL): Pracuję nad większym zestawem płotów, murów, murków, palisad, bram i drobnych elementów ogrodzeniowych w jednym stylu lowpoly. Całość projektuję z myślą o różnych epokach i kręgach kulturowych - na start skupiam się na średniowiecznych traktach i szlakach. Przydrożne płoty przy gospodach, słupki przy rozstajach, prowizoryczne bramy z doczepionymi wstążkami, porzucone tarcze, zgubione sakiewki, małe dary zostawione przy drodze - to propy, które mają opowiadać o ludziach w drodze: kupcach, wojownikach, pielgrzymach i całych procesjach, które przechodziły tędy i zostawiły po sobie ślad. Do tego dochodzą różne wysokości, stopnie zużycia oraz moduły proste, narożne, połamane, przejścia, końcówki i słupki, które składają się na czytelne linie graniczne w świecie gry. Całość oparta jest na modularnej siatce, więc można to po prostu układać w scenie, zamiast ratować pivoty i skalę.
W praktyce to właśnie ogrodzenia najczęściej prowadzą gracza po mapie, blokują niechciane skróty, porządkują przestrzeń i domykają kadr, zanim pojawi się jakikolwiek interfejs. Różnica między lekkim płotem przy chacie, cięższą palisadą przy obozie a przegnitą bramą do zapomnianego miejsca potrafi załatwić pół narracji wizualnej: od razu czuć, co jest „oswojone”, co wygląda podejrzanie, a co dawno zostało odpuszczone. Ten zestaw powstaje właśnie z myślą o takich sytuacjach na etapie blockoutu i późniejszego level artu.
Przy okazji wychodzi na to, że zwykłe pola i lasy zyskują wizualnie znacznie więcej, niż sugeruje sama ilość geometrii. W kilku testowych scenach zmiana była prosta: ten sam teren, te same drzewa, ten sam skybox, ale dodane ogrodzenia porządkujące granice pól, linie drzew przy traktach i pojedyncze słupki z propami przy drodze sprawiały, że scena wyglądała, jakby dostała nagle „+50% do ogólnego wrażenia”. Nie dlatego, że pojawiło się więcej rzeczy, tylko dlatego, że przestrzeń zaczęła mieć czytelne kierunki, rytm i ślady ludzi, którzy czegoś tu pilnowali, coś ogrodzili, coś po drodze zgubili.
Na razie to etap WIP – testuję warianty w normalnych scenach, nie tylko w jednym ładnym kadrze. Jeśli macie swoje doświadczenia z ogrodzeniami w grach, chętnie poczytam: czego wam zwykle brakuje, gdy budujecie mapy? Bardziej przydaje się różnorodność stylów, mocniej zniszczone wersje, czy może sensowne „układanki” pod typowe miejscówki jak farmy, obozy, miasteczka?
(EN): I’ve been working for a while on a larger lowpoly set of fences, palisades, gates and small boundary props for game worlds (in my case, Unity). The idea is to handle fences in a game with a single coherent lowpoly style that can stretch across different periods and cultures, starting with medieval roads and routes. Roadside fences by inns, wayposts at crossroads, makeshift gates with ribbons tied to them, abandoned shields, lost pouches and small offerings by the road - these are props meant to tell stories about people on the move: merchants, soldiers, pilgrims and whole processions that passed through and left their mark. On top of that there are different heights, levels of wear, straight and corner modules, broken sections, transitions, end caps, posts and small details that tie everything into readable boundary lines. Everything sits on a modular grid so you can drop it into a scene without spending time fixing pivots and scale.
In many games it’s the fences that quietly guide the player through the map, stop awkward shortcuts, organise the space and hold the shot together long before any UI shows up. The contrast between a light fence near a hut, a heavier palisade around a camp and a weathered gate into a forgotten place can easily carry half of the visual narrative: you immediately feel what’s familiar, what looks risky and what has been abandoned. This set is growing out of exactly those moments in blockout and later level art.
One side effect that keeps showing up in tests is how much plain fields and forests benefit from having clear boundaries. In a few prototype scenes the change was minimal on paper: same terrain, same trees, same skybox, but with fence lines marking field edges, treelines pulled along the road and a handful of roadside posts with props, the whole area suddenly felt like it had gained "+50%" in perceived quality. Not because there was more stuff, but because the space finally had clear directions, a readable rhythm and traces of people who had fenced something off, guarded it for a while and left things behind as they travelled.
Right now it’s still WIP – I’m testing different variants in actual scenes, not just in one pretty render. If you have your own pain points with fences in games, I’d be glad to hear them: do you usually miss variety in styles, stronger damaged versions, or more “ready to rearrange” layouts for typical locations like farms, camps, small towns?
Hey!
I’ve just released LumaGrove: Wonky Woods on itch - a stylized low poly nature pack for building crooked, fairy-tale forests, meadows, and riverside paths. This is actually a remake of the very first pack I ever made 10 years ago - back then it was much simpler, now it returns in an updated form and gets its official premiere here on itch.io. I wanted to keep that slightly “wonky” forest vibe - bent trees, imperfect fences - but in a clean, minimalist style that stays readable from gameplay camera and doesn’t clutter the scene.
Inside you’ll find over 200 modular prefabs: trees, bushes, bridges, fences, rivers, rocks, signposts and more, all built to quickly block out paths, biomes, and small dioramas. There are two material / prefab variants: a solid-color version (consistent with my other packs) and a more painterly gradient variant - you can pick whichever look fits your project better or mix them in one scene. The pack is set up for Unity URP with a clean folder structure and LODs on all prefabs, so it should drop into your project without much friction.
LumaGrove: Unity Wonky Woods – Low Poly Nature Asset Pack by EmaceArt
I’d really love to hear if you’re interested in this pack being migrated to other engines. If yes, please let me know in the replies which ones you’d actually use: Unreal, Godot, something else? Also, tell me what you feel is missing in this pack: specific tree types, extra props, another material variant, or maybe ready-made “mini scenes” for menus and splash screens. I’ll treat this thread as a feedback hub - it will help me plan future updates and possible ports. Thanks a lot for any thoughts!
PS1 PSX Alone in the DUSK – environment asset kit by EmaceArt
Alone in the DUSK is a PSX-style environment asset kit inspired by the mood of Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark and Twin Peaks Movie. Below you’ll find a description of the location, the current technical state of the pack, and plans for its further development.
Introduction
The location represents the outskirts of a town - a slightly hilly, tourist spot with a small bridge, benches, trash bins, guardrails and warning signs for visitors. It sits on the edge between nature and infrastructure: part scenic viewpoint for tourists, part unsettling road to nowhere.
The current screenshots show the scene without final post-processing. You’re looking at raw Unity lighting, still without the target colour grading, PSX/CRT filters, final fog or a finished sky. This makes it easier to clearly see how the models, materials and composition work on their own.
What still needs improvement (technical)
At this stage there are two main pain points in the scene, both already broken down into concrete tasks:
Overexposed, overly bright props - the guardrails, posts and some signs have albedo values that are too high, so under the current lighting they start to glow like small lamps in the frame. This breaks the value balance and the readability hierarchy of the scene. To fix: lowering the albedo on these materials and doing another exposure pass.
Inconsistent texel density - different objects use different UV scales, so the “pixel size” jumps between meshes. The PSX style stops feeling unified and the scene looks like a collage of different sources. To fix: a UV / texture pass to unify texel density across assets and repair stretched UVs.
Shading artefacts on some meshes - the current normal and tangent setup creates overly smooth shading that clashes with the low-poly PSX look. A few props pick up weird light gradients and specular streaks. To fix: simplify the shading by hardening vertex normals, cleaning up tangents and reducing normal map influence so lighting reads flatter and more consistent across assets.
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These issues are intentionally parked for a later focused pass, so that at this stage I can iterate quickly on layout and mood.
Roadmap for the pack
In the next iterations I plan to:
- UV / material pass: unify texel density and fix overbright materials on props - Shading pass: simplify shading by hardening vertex normals, cleaning up tangents and reducing normal map influence so lighting reads flatter and more PSX-like - Add post-processing: colour grading, PSX/CRT filter, and final fog and atmosphere for the location - Prepare ready-made scenes and prefabs so the asset kit can be dropped straight into a Unity project - Consider preparing a Godot version of the scenes if there is real interest in that
I’d really appreciate your feedback: how do you like the mood of this location and the overall direction of the pack so far? Let me know in the comments which elements work best for you, what you feel is missing, and what extra props or variants (for example different signs, more tourist-area details, support for a specific engine) would be most useful in your projects. Suggestions from the comments will help shape future updates of the asset kit.
Hi!
Sharing my freshly updated CosmoKit - Low Poly Planet Pack. It’s one of my most downloaded packs, so I gave it a proper refresh and I’m still putting it out there just out of pure love for spacey, low poly vibes. If you need a Sun, Moon and a bunch of colorful planets for a galaxy map, menu or a small space game, feel free to grab and use it.
👉 https://emaceart.itch.io/cosmokit-low-poly-planet-pack
I know quite a few people have already used this pack, so if these planets end up in your project, prototype or even just on a loading screen, I’d love to see a screenshot or a short clip.
Hi everyone,
I've been working on some stylized environment workflows lately and just finished a modular Low Poly Cemetery Kit. I decided to release it for free to help out other devs working on horror or stylized projects.
I'm particularly curious about your thoughts on the optimization side. I’ve included 3 levels of LODs for all 50 meshes to make them viable for mobile and VR/AR, which can be a bit of a balancing act with this aesthetic.
Low Poly Cemetery Grave Kit with LODs by EmaceArt
A few technical details:
I'd love to hear how these perform in your engines or if there are specific props you feel are missing from typical graveyard sets.
If you're looking for some spooky assets for a jam or a prototype, you can grab them here: [Link do Twojego assetu]
Feedback is always welcome!
That turned into a small diorama-style “rest stop after the adventure” with a grounded raft and a bus cut in half. It’s all stylised, low poly and built in Blender + Unity, but I tried to give each asset a bit of its own story so the composition itself hints at what might have happened here.
The bus is sliced open and turned into something between a small home and a base camp. The raft feels like it once travelled down a big river that no longer exists - now it’s buried in sand, but there are still flags, paddles and scattered belongings around it, as if someone is about to come back. Nearby there’s a broken barrel with dried bones of some tiny creature. On the roof of the raft a lone seagull is sitting, probably the only living thing in sight. On the deck there’s a cooking pot over a long-dead campfire. The whole scene is basically a bunch of frozen moments arranged to guide the eye while staying light on the technical side.
If you want to actually step into the scene, I uploaded a Unity package with all the prefabs and the demo scene:
https://emaceart.itch.io/raft-on-the-desert
You can open it, fly around with the camera, hide stuff, move props and see how everything is put together. Lighting and atmosphere are already set up, so you can instantly build your own mini diorama on top of it - or completely tear it apart, change time of day, fog, contrast and mood, add your own props. I honestly didn’t spend a huge amount of time polishing this example scene, so I’m really curious to see what you can squeeze out of it.
And here’s a small, low-key challenge rather than a flashy contest: using this pack, create your own shot of this place. It can be a heavily reworked scene, a new camera angle, different lighting, whatever you like as long as it’s based on these assets. Post your screenshots (or a gif) as a reply to this devlog. From all entries I’ll pick one shot that surprises me the most in terms of composition or mood, and for that author I’ll rebuild this scene for their engine of choice and send them the project - for example for Godot or Roblox. So in short: you play with composition, light and layout, and as a prize I’ll take care of the engine-porting and technical work for you.
Hi everyone. I’m not new here, but I’m getting seriously active now and I want to be genuinely present in the community.
I’m EmacEArt. I create 3D assets, mostly environments and level art, modular kits, and props. I’ve been in gamedev for about 15 years. More info is in my bio. If you have quick questions, drop them in this thread and I’ll gladly answer.
I really appreciate what people build on itch. There’s a lot of creativity here, especially in 2D. I have a strong soft spot for pixel art because I grew up on 8-bit games. I’ve worked with pixel art before, and I’d love to go deeper into it in the future. For context, Blind Shot on Steam was a focused, a few-month sprint I shipped with a friend. I was responsible for the entire visual side of the game: all graphics and animations (excluding code), the full UI from concept to final implementation, and also the game theme plus the core gameplay mechanic concept.
I’m now running a 3 to 4 month marathon until March. All my packs will go through an update cycle: Tech, MidArt, MegaArt, and a final Tech pass to lock things in. I’ll also release 8 new packs during the sprint. The first stage, the technical update, is already done for all packs almost 100%. I’m devlogging progress regularly. I’m now moving into stage two, MidArt.
One important note: my profile also has a lot of free packs, and every single one of them has received the technical update as well. I don’t want the free stuff to be neglected. I want it to be a properly maintained part of the library.
The most important thing for me is speed and matching real user needs, so I need prioritization. What’s a must-have, what blocks you, what saves the most time. Join my Discord. There will be a timelining section where you can directly influence what gets done first and where updates go next. If you’ve bought any of my packs, during this sprint you’re guaranteed support. I’m available daily and I take solid feedback seriously.
And one more key point: I’m moving into Godot support. I want to build a Godot-focused library and demo scenes with lighting and post-processing, so the packs look good right after import. I haven’t done this workflow before, so if you’re experienced with Godot and have practical tips, especially about importing, materials, lighting, workflow, and best practices, I’d really appreciate the help. Ideally in the timelining section so we can set priorities right away.
See you in the next episode.
ArtStation - EmacEArt !
