When @Ahlvie “picks up” her digital paintbrush in Blender or paves a windy tree-covered road in Studio, her mind wanders to the lush nature of Scotland and rural England. 
Ahlvie started building on Roblox at age 12, intrigued by how she could turn the fantasy worlds of her dreams into real games. Now, she’s a 3D Artist and Modeler at Twin Atlas and also a UGC creator. Her dreamy landscapes can be seen in the multi-floor open world of Swordburst 3 and the mystical habitat of Griffin’s Destiny, among others. Outside of Roblox, she also finds joy in creative hobbies and side projects like cake decorating, gardening, and crocheting.
Building Enchanting 3D Environments That Bloom 
Ahlvie spends her free time hiking, gardening, and soaking up the natural beauty of the United Kingdom countryside. Being surrounded by nature motivates Ahlvie to recreate her environment in her 3D projects. She describes her art style as cute, stylized fantasy, using bold colors, natural lighting, and various flowers to bring her worlds to life.
Much of Ahlvie’s work draws inspiration from her own life and environment. In Swordburst 3, you’re spawned to a farm with rows of vegetables and crops. She created this inspired by her own garden at home, where she grows cabbages and other crops. And, on each floor of Swordburst 3, Ahlvie has created a unique flower — a detail she adds both for herself and to delight players. 
Vegetable farm in Swordburst 3
Flowers Ahlvie designed for Horse Life
Real life flowers that inspired Ahlvie’s designs
How a World Comes to Life From Start to Finish 
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Concept: When designing a new world, Ahlvie starts creating a mood board on a blank canvas using the app PureRef. She spends a couple of hours adding as many reference images as possible to visualize the look and feel of the world. And when she can’t find inspiration for an obscure, fantastical object, she’ll sketch out her idea by hand.
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Greybox: Then, she greyboxes an environment in Studio by adding simple parts to the space to figure out her map design. She lines out paths, maps out multiple locations and spawning points, and figures out what the endpoint is and how a player will get there. She’s learned that through building open worlds, you don’t want a straight path — rather you want curves and multiple directions to encourage that sense of exploration.
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Create the environment: She uses the Part to Terrain plugin to convert the parts she’s placed into terrain then begins sculpting the landscape. She then adds in the material, colors, skybox, and atmosphere.
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Make stylized environmental props: Much of Ahlvie’s environmental art relies on a distinct style that adds to the charm of the experience. To make her props, she models in Blender and at times will texture them in Substance Painter.
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Place the props: Finally, she places the props and ensures the environment looks like what she envisioned. Some of her favorite plugins include:
- Brushtool for quickly placing a lot of pre-made props easily
- TerrainPainter for adding a lot of color and material variety quickly and easily
- MeshVox to make mountains, hills, and other formations instantaneously. She can then sculpt down if needed.
Life as a Professional Roblox Artist 
Ahlvie’s first notable freelance project involved redesigning Kingdom Life 2. The team was just her and the programmer, so she led the creative direction for restyling the environment. She was an avid fan of the game and therefore had a clear vision for creating the medieval fantasy world of her dreams.
To keep the map layout the same to avoid confusing veteran players, Ahlvie added artistic details to give the game a visual refresh. She upgraded the simplistic, blockier buildings to its current detailed, cottagecore style. To make the environment feel more lived in, she added medieval stone fencing, grassy parks, backyards, and floral front gardens.
Kingdom Life 2 before and after Ahlvie’s revamp
Afterwards, she applied for a job at Twin Atlas (at the time Sonar Studios) as a 3D modeler for Winds of Fortune and then continued at the studio as the lead map developer for Swordburst 3. This gave her the opportunity to then work on multiple projects like Dragon Adventures and the Horse Life beta. Sometimes, Ahlvie can be working on up to four experiences at once. Juggling different art styles and multiple avenues of feedback can be challenging, so staying organized is key. Ahlvie feels blessed to be surrounded every day by other talented developers who’ve shared their expertise in environmental art and exposed her to many new skills.
Crocodiles Ahlvie designed for Winds of Fortune
In the future, Ahlvie wants to be a project manager to round out her skillset and grow on Roblox. She’s also passionate about teaching and mentoring others, so she’d like to create tutorials for new creators looking to design maps and environmental art.
Thank you @Ahlvie for sharing your story with the community! You can connect with her on Roblox and Twitter to stay up to date on her next builds 
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