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Category: Environment

Topics about the design and creation of levels and environment artwork in games.

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Level Design

Level Design Help Files, a collection of help sites for level design themed files - from the MapCore forums
Environment Artist: The Story Teller - by Adam "adamBrome" Bromell
How To Develop A Map That Works - from The Valve Developer Community
Map Planning - from the Unreal Wiki
Ben's Small Bible of Realistic Multiplayer Level Design by Benjamin Bauer
What Is Level Design? - by Sérgio Duarte
The 400 Project - by Hal Barwood & Noah Falstein
Design Techniques and Ideals from The Art of Computer Game Design - by Chris Crawford
Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice ($) - by Rudolf Kremers
The Hows and Whys of Level Design ($) - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
Visual Semiotics - from Wikipedia
Environments involve the player more if they have several layers of thinking behind their design.
What is a visual metaphor? - from Answers.com

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Level Design Blogs

Life of a Design Monkey - a blog by Mark Davies, game designer at Ninja Theory
Random Encounters in Imaginary Realms - a blog by Random Encounters, game designer
Lost Garden - a blog by Danc, game designer
CliffyB.com - a blog by Cliff Bleszinski, game designer at Epic Games
Level Design - a blog by David Alexander Johnston, freelance game designer

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Environment Concepting

Enviromentoring and Tutorials, Tips & Tricks - at ConceptArt.Org
elements of perspective - by Bruce MacEvoy
Whit Brachna Snowy Mountain timelapse video with voiceover - by Whit Brachna (more freebies from Massive Black)
Coastline step by step image - by Jaime Jones (final)
Fire Escape step by step image - by Daarken
Concept Design Video Tutorials ($) - by Feng Zhu
Introduction to Landscape Matte Painting ($) - by Dylan Cole
Perspective Made Easy ($) - by Ernest R. Norling

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Environment Workflow & Modularity

Workflow techniques and modularity with Unreal game technology - by Epic Games
A guide to setting up your art-to-level-design pipeline and designing modularly.
Environment workflow @ EpicGames - by Kevin Johnstone
A summary of the modular workflow used at Epic on Unreal Tournament 3.
Gears of War 2 modular modeling - by Kevin Johnstone
Tips and screenshots of using the grid for modular work, as well as a ton of useful insight into the Environment worflow at Epic. A highly recommended read!
Modular brick wall tiling - by Glynn Smith
Tips and screenshots for sculpting modular brick walls.
Generic wall tutorial - by Bram "Peris" Eulaers
Using 3ds Max and Mudbox to sculpt tilable modular sections for a stone wall.
Rock modeling approaches - a Polycount thread
A variety of approaches for sculpting individual rocks and tilable cliffs.
Creating Perfectly Tiling Meshes in Zbrush for use in Videogame Environments - by Owen "SHEPEIRO" Shepherd
Using ZBrush's 2.5D canvas to tile stamped meshes, then using Maya to model tilable geometry.
Unreal Engine 3 tutorials, game industry articles, level design/art/technical tutorials - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
A ton of tutorials and articles about designing levels with the Unreal Technology.
Environment workflow from an artist working on a Crysis mod - by Stefan Morrell
A modular city building and its texture sheet.
Mod Facade Challenge - by Joe "EarthQuake" Wilson
Breaking up a building into modular pieces and designing the texture sheet.
Maintaining the suspension of disbelief... Polycount thread
Discussion about the importance of using imperfection to create believable worlds.
Adam Bromell's sketchbook thread - by Adam "adamBrome" Bromell
Breaking an environment down into modular pieces.
Chris' sketchbook thread - by Chris "cholden" Holden
Environment design & modular workflow.
Level Design Video Tutorials - from 3DBuzz
A ton of useful tutorials and design tips about creating levels.
Visually Appealing Building Guide - by Christopher Albeluhn
An excellent breakdown of how to create visual interest with game buildings. Additional tutorials here.
The [wiki:Self:Digital_Sculpting#TS Digital Sculpting] section has more tutorials about modular workflow.

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Environment Modeling

Gears2 Environment Art - by Kevin Johnstone
UT3 & Gears Environment Art - by Kevin Johnstone
[attachment:rorshach_scifi_supportbeam.pdf SciFi Support Beam PDF] - by Kevin Johnstone
Environment tutorials - by Chris "cholden" Holden
Environment modeling basics - from the Polycount boards
The section has more tutorials about modeling.

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Environment Foliage

3D TreesTutorials thread from the Polycount boards
Multiple methods.
Trees for Beginners in 3ds Max Tutorial - by "braveryd"
Using the AEC Extended: Foliage tree generator in 3ds Max.
Tree creation using particle generator - by Andy Zibits
Using a particle system in 3ds Max.
Sprite-Based Particle Trees - by Steven J. Tubbrit
Using a particle system in Maya.
Ultra-efficient tree texturing and modeling - by Andy Zibits
Using Paint Effects in Maya to create the foliage texture and branches.
Low-poly Tree Using Maya PaintFX - by Jeramy Cooke
Using Paint Effects in Maya to create the foliage texture, then hand-modeling the tree.
Bending the vertex normals for better shading - by Eric Chadwick
Using the Normal Thief script in 3ds Max to bend the vertex normals of low-poly foliage planes.
Vegetation Procedural Animation and Shading in Crysis - by Tiago Sousa
A detailed overview of Crytek's process for vegetation shading.

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Foliage Modeling Tools

There are a lot of tools for modeling high-resolution plants, but few for modeling game-resolution models. Here are a few...

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Environment Sculpting

See the Digital Sculpting section of the Polycount wiki.

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Environment Skies

Skymap workflow by divi for converting a sky panorama into a square texture, the way Epic does. [attachment:Skymap_workflow.pdf PDF here]
How to: Convert a Skybox to a Skydome by Outpt for use in Unreal.
360 HDR skies for sale? from the Polycount forums has a tutorial and links about photographing HDR skies.
Cube Map wiki section describes how to create and use cubemaps.