Before I begin development for my
3D environment piece, I believe it would be a good idea to look at already established examples of a 3d
environment pipeline so that I can adapt my workflow to better fit within what
the industry expects of me, as well as plan out a more efficient way to work.
First of all, I am looking at How to Plan Level Designs and Game
Environments on World of Level Design (1). There are a few segments of this
article that have caught my eye. Firstly is the story. The article suggests
looking at ‘The story of your environment. What happened in the environment
prior to the player getting there?’. There are also elaborations about how or
why a character is in this environment but this is not as relevant to me as I
am not designing this environment for any specific characters but rather for
the environment itself. However, I still need to consider addressing why the
environment exists and what it is for when designing it.
An image from the
article demonstrating the use of focal points in Skyrim
The second interesting point
within this article is about focal
points. The article dictates that there are generally 3 reasons for focal
points. One reason is for a functional reason; a player is able to orient
themselves around this focal point and can tell where they are in relation to
the focal point. Another is for visual appeal. The final is to draw the
player’s attention to a specific point. The article says this can be done through
certain architectural structures or using the landscape to guide the player’s
view from one focus to another. This, I feel, is incredibly important towards
guiding the player through my environment efficiently and effectively.
I also decided to investigate Designing 3D Environments: Lights, Camera,
Polygons? Action! (2). This
article offers a few more points that may interest me when developing my own
environment. First is envisioning the overall scene and using reference to
drive your inspiration but also keep it grounded within reason. The article
suggests ‘to consider whether you can start them as basic primitives and later
replace them with higher end assets’. This is to help aid with collision and
playability. Even if the environment looks stunning, there is little point to
getting stuck on geometry or lagging the game because you have too much complex
collision. So, when beginning to envision my environment, I should keep the
geometry as close as possible to what they would look like represented as
primitives so I have a better idea of how to create the pathing through it
later.
Another
interesting tip is toward lighting scenes. As the article states, if one is not
careful, they could ‘have overblown lighting and improperly adjust textures to
be too dark, or to have lighting that's too dim and adjust tons of assets to be
properly visible, only to realize you've just made every asset far too bright
under normal lighting conditions.’ The suggested solution is to create a dummy
sphere to set up your lighting on so that you know the right balance of
lighting when it comes to develop your assets for the scene. This may not
matter so much in the advent of PBR shading which is a lot more engine driven
but is still useful for managing and maintaining the lighting on a clean object
if one feels like the mood of the environment should be changed.
An image from the
article demonstrating the use of a sphere in the scene to get a feel for the
lighting. The lighting on the right is too overblown which results in a large
flat area, which means that assets within the scene may not be shown at their
best
A final point from this article is considering modularity
within the assets when designing your scene. You will save a lot of time
designing one asset and scaling and rotating it for use elsewhere. However, one
should also be careful not using it too much within one area, or have too much
unique detail, else the player may notice and their immersion within a scene
will be lost.
The last article I am going to
look at is actually an interview with James Munroe (3), an environment artist
at 343 Industries, about his work on Halo 4. This one is especially important
as it gives me an eye into how a professional environment artist works on a
level or environment.
The first part that stands out to
me is his talking about approaching an environment given to him by the level
designers. ‘I commonly get a rough layout from the designers. It is generally
composed of squares and rectangles that indicate their needs for gameplay. I go
in and give visual meaning to these forms…I start with a general massout, and
start placing in what I would like the space to become.’ From this, we learn
that generally a level starts out in the very basic primitive state to get an
idea of how the gameplay will work. This ties into the earlier point from the
second article about how important this first stage is to get an idea of how a
player can move through an environment. Leading on from this, the artists would
build onto these primitives with the shapes they want the environment to take.
Munroe goes on further to explain
‘Then, I will break down what I have into secondary and tertiary shapes. This
will be more time consuming for me because this is where I design my shapes and
balance my proportions. From here, it is a matter of controlling where the
player needs to go…The fundamentals of focal points can be employed to great
effect.’ The gist of this, I believe, is that after creating the initial
block-out, one should start refining the shapes of the environment. They need
to select which parts of the scene will be the major focal points and what
would be the guiding focal points, balancing them and their shapes to give a
cohesive flow to the piece. ‘Starting large and working down into the details works
best’.
From this, I am able to deduce a
general plan for how I should approach the creation of an environment piece:
Firstly, I should start with a plan of how the player can move throughout the level. This is
to get an idea of how I should begin the grey-box process. This can be done
with primitives to provide a walkable area, or sketched out from a plan view.
Secondly, I
should start massing out the large shapes that I want in the scene, deciding
where the general focus points of a scene should be and how I will utilise the
non-walkable space effectively.
Then, I will
begin developing these large shapes into more detailed and refined shapes,
designing how the focal points will draw and guide attention from one point to
the next. I should keep the shapes simple (probably as close to primitives as
possible) so that I do not have issues introducing possible collision if need
be. I could probably draw diagrams on top of key images of my scene to help as
visual guides for when I start focusing down.
After this, I
should try and get a general idea of how my scene will be lit – I will not be
focusing on area lights unless this ties into a particular focal point. Since I
will still be in a grey-box stage I should not need to use a sphere to preview
my lighting, but it may still be useful.
Finally, I
should consider and select assets that can be used best for modularity and
focus on producing these first, as well as working on larger scene pieces,
before narrowing down on smaller detail.
Since I have not directly
approached creating a 3D environment before, this base plan gives me a broad scope of helpful information going forward, which will be needed to create a
fully cohesive environment as a portfolio piece.
Sources:
