Category: Environment

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

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

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

Environment Concepting

• Digital Environment/Landscape painting for beginners Polycount thread
• 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

.Template:Http://boards.polycount.net/images/smilies/pcount/icons/icon arrow.gif The 2D Tutorials section has more tutorials and resources for concept painting.

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.

.Template:Http://boards.polycount.net/images/smilies/pcount/icons/icon arrow.gif The Digital Sculpting section has more tutorials about modular workflow.

Environment Modeling

• Gears2 Environment Art - by Kevin Johnstone
• UT3 & Gears Environment Art - by Kevin Johnstone
• SciFi Support Beam PDF - by Kevin Johnstone
• Environment tutorials - by Chris "cholden" Holden
• Environment modeling basics - from the Polycount boards

.Template:Http://boards.polycount.net/images/smilies/pcount/icons/icon arrow.gif The wiki section has more modeling tutorials.

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 vertex normals and using vertex color - by Eric Chadwick<
  > Using the Edit Normals modifier in 3ds Max to bend the vertex normals of low-poly foliage planes.
• Bending the vertex normals with Normal Thief - 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.
• Tree Modeling Techniques and Principles (PDF) - by Matthew D'Onofrio<
  > Modeling efficient low-poly branches in 3ds Max using Extrude Along Spline.
• Hedges and Topiary a quick tutorial - by 'Vig'<
  >Modeling and texturing method for stylized bushes.
• Tree making fast technique? thread on Polycount<
  > Tree modeling techniques discussed.
• Tree texturing thread on Polycount<
  > Tree texturing discussed.
• Real quick tree texturing question thread on Polycount<
  > More tree stuff.
• Stuff to research:
  • Warhammer Online trees?
  • RexM trees?
  • Adam trees?

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...

• ngPlant
• frecle tree[d] (exports formats .B3D, .OBJ, .X)
• TreeMaker script for 3ds Max
• Branches script for 3ds Max
• SpeedTree in UDK ($)

Environment Sculpting

.Template:Http://boards.polycount.net/images/smilies/pcount/icons/icon arrow.gif See the DigitalSculpting section of the Polycount wiki.

Environment Skies

• CG Textures - Panoramic Skies free 360-degree sky photos.
• 360 HDR skies for sale? from the Polycount forums has a tutorial and links about photographing HDR skies.
• How to: Create a Terragen 2 Skybox by Outpt.
• 3dmotive.com - Creating a Skydome is a tutorial for converting a latlong sky into a spheremap layout and mapping it to a dome mesh with Photoshop and 3ds Max.
• Skymap workflow by divi is a quick tutorial about converting a latlong sky into a square dome-like layout that uses all the texture space. PDF here
• How to: Convert a Skybox to a Skydome by Outpt is an in-depth tutorial about converting a cubemap into a latlong image with CubeMapGen, HDRShop, Photoshop, and Unreal.
• Vue is a popular skydome creation tool.
• Terragen is another popular skydome creation tool.
• Template:Http://boards.polycount.net/images/smilies/pcount/icons/icon arrow.gif The Cube Map wiki section describes how to create and use cube maps.

Environment Texturing

• Texture Workflow videos - by Hiten "Mistry10" Mistry, from the Polycount thread Mistry's Texture Workflow w/Video
• Creating tiling textures in 3dsmax - by Chris "cholden" Holden
• Thirding - Utilizing your texture space for environment work - by Ben "poopinmymouth" Mathis
• Hard Surface Texture Painting - by Stefan Morrell
• Tutorial: Brick Arch (Baking Multiple Maps in 3dsmax) - by mikebart
• UDN UnrealEngine2 Vertex Blending Tutorial - by Epic Games
• Using vertex blending to grunge a level and add variety - by Mario "StrangeFate" Vazquez
• UE3 Terrain Tutorial - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
• Lighting in game environments - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
• Painting with Light - by the cinematographer John Alton.

Industry Information

• Percentage of environment artists .vs. character artists at most studios - from the Polycount boards
• What's the difference between a level designer and environment artist? - from the Polycount boards

.Template:Http://boards.polycount.net/images/smilies/pcount/icons/icon arrow.gif The GameBusiness wiki section has links for threads and articles about how to get game jobs, how to negotiate your salary, how to manage your role, etc. 

Inspiration & Reference

• Google Image Search
• Flickr Image Search
• Yahoo Image Search
• BBC Motion Gallery - video reference
• Corbis Motion - video reference
• Getty Images Footage - video reference
• Polycount Forums - Reference Thread
• Polycount Forums - Environment Modeling FAQ & Resources
• Game Artist Forums - Reference Thread

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