Jobye-Kyle Karmaker has worked in Ubisoft on a number of great games, including Far Cry 4 and Rainbow Six: Patriots. He actually started his work in Ubisoft Toronto as a Modeler for Splinter Cell: Blacklist. These skills proved to be extremely useful for him. As a modeler he was responsible for modeling and texturing of different props, which were used by the level artist. Working on these models specialists learned to focus on details & gameplay constraints, which is incredibly important for games.

How to work with 3D props.

Slowly he started to develop an eye for good level and environment design and figured out his main guiding prop design principles.

Context – From a core question like: Where is this prop being used? You can extrapolate many other questions: How is a person using it (where are the hand and feet going)? What weather or natural elements are affecting it? Etc. All of those inform my decisions in both modeling and texturing and not to mention reference gathering. I never add any detail just for the sake of detail. Everything should have a purpose or a reason it’s there, however small the reasoning is.

– From a core question like: Where is this prop being used? You can extrapolate many other questions: How is a person using it (where are the hand and feet going)? What weather or natural elements are affecting it? Etc. All of those inform my decisions in both modeling and texturing and not to mention reference gathering. I never add any detail just for the sake of detail. Everything should have a purpose or a reason it’s there, however small the reasoning is. Imperfection – This is a tenant I’ve carried with me ever since our very first high-level Art Direction meeting with Scott Lee. One of the art pillars of Splinter Cell: Blacklist was Imperfection. That’s something that applies whether you’re making something for a war-torn map, an abandoned warehouse or a perfectly pristine government facility or private estate. Nothing in life is ever really perfect. There’s always some sort of imperfection whether it be in its placement, its shape, its material quality (this is where you get a lot of your imperfections for ‘clean’ environments), etc.

– This is a tenant I’ve carried with me ever since our very first high-level Art Direction meeting with Scott Lee. One of the art pillars of Splinter Cell: Blacklist was Imperfection. That’s something that applies whether you’re making something for a war-torn map, an abandoned warehouse or a perfectly pristine government facility or private estate. Nothing in life is ever really perfect. There’s always some sort of imperfection whether it be in its placement, its shape, its material quality (this is where you get a lot of your imperfections for ‘clean’ environments), etc. Gameplay – Does this prop need to be gameplay friendly? Does the player need to take cover behind it? Can the player vault over it? Is it purely visual dressing and other props will stack near it to form cover instead? A lot of those questions can drastically change the design and approach of whatever you’re making, so it’s good to answer those questions early.

With full environments the situation is a bit different. Most of the times users won’t be able to notice detailed props (if these are not weapons or vehicles). What gamers are really interested in is the whole environment. Jobye-Kyle believes that environments evoke emotions, give chills and give an opportunity to dive deeper into the game world. The thing is that a lot of principles applied to props can actually apply to environment design, however there’s a little difference.