Embark built automated pipelines combining photogrammetry, Houdini-based procedural generation, and custom tools to convert real-world scan data into game-ready environments and characters, reducing asset creation time from weeks to days.

Embark's content pipeline automates traditionally manual tasks across environment art, character creation, and asset processing. A flagship demonstration: 3 artists converted photographs from Tenerife into a 256 sq km Unreal Engine landscape demo in just 3 weeks using their photogrammetry automation. Their internally built Asset Processor (Blender UI + Houdini backend) brought "asset creation times down from weeks to days, and iteration times from hours to minutes," according to Lead 3D Artist Erik Hallberg at GDC 2023. Chief Content Officer Rob Runesson wrote in 2020 that Embark strives "to remove as much of any tedious and manual work as possible." The pipeline also includes a procedural character creation system using Houdini + USD, presented at GDC 2026 by Erik Östsjö and Björn Arvidsson. CEO Söderlund framed this as core strategy: "We realised that tasks like texturing, lighting, and placement of objects were difficult, so we tried to see how much of this boring work could be removed."