Thiago: I agree with Martin that the new tech really sets us free! In my opinion story heavy experiences will become even more necessary than ever before with the advent of VR. All you need in VR is a nice experience, so games like Dear Esther will translate perfectly to that new media. It’s really a brave new world and for us environment artists it’s a dream coming true because we can finally focus on making kickass environments that feel alive without having to limit our vision because of gameplay constraints. We will finally be able to make “games” (I’d rather call them experiences) that consist only of kickass environments where all you do is just walk around and enjoy your time there.

A Thin Line Between Good and Bad Environment

Martin: Every environment should start off with a great idea that you’re passionate about like we discussed earlier. The next step should be the blockout. I like to do this in 3DS Max, then drop the mesh in UE4. Your scene should look cool as a flat shaded greybox environment. If it doesn’t, no amount of fancy textures and statues will change that. Once I’m happy with the space I’ve blocked out I move on and start blocking in materials and play around with the set pieces to create alternate sightlines. To me, that is good environment design.

Thiago: To complement what Martin said in a more abstract way, to me what makes an environment work is if it feels like a real place. Sometimes there’s this misconception that a game environment only works if the art is awesome and everything is perfect, but I strongly disagree with this. When I play games I want to feel immersed in the world and this happens when everything makes sense. By that I don’t necessarily mean making a realistic city with cars stopping at automated traffic lights, but setting a few “rules” for your environment and sticking with those. The best example I can give to illustrate this is Skyrim. If you look at the individual pieces they are not masterpieces, what makes that game so good is how everything blends nicely together. When you are walking around that world you really feel like you were transported to an alternate universe where virtual people live alongside dragons and magic. This is where your backstory come into play. Ask yourself these simple questions and I guarantee you will always be on the right track. What is the level of technology of your environment? How people live in this place? How well maintained is everything? What time is it set? Is there any major event going on that you can hint at the environment? For example if there’s an alien invasion going on in your city you can fill the walls with anti-alien graffiti or propaganda posters instead of jokes or cool art you like that has nothing to do with that.

A very common mistake when making environments is focusing only on adding shiny cool stuff and letting the vision fall apart. Before adding anything you should ask yourself: is this going to improve the cohesion of my environment? If the answer is no, move on to other things.

I’m very proud of what we accomplished with our Throne Room because that’s what we set out to do when we started. I think the best compliment an environment artist can get is when people say things like “I want to explore that place” or “wow, it feels like a real place”.

The Long Awaited CGI-quality in Games

Martin: I feel game environments still have a long way to go in terms of hitting the same fidelity as movies. The main reason though I think is time. Movies never have to worry about what’s outside of the camera’s field of view. We as game developers do. So in short, the problem is the volume of work you have to do. The good thing is that software like Substance Designer lets you make high res textures fast and clean, and UE4 does a great job at rendering it all out for you. It’s really just up to us as environment artists to work smart and invent new pipelines that use the full benefits of these programs.

Thiago: Yeah, I agree with Martin. On one hand it’s good to still have limitations though. We artists tend to go really overboard with details and stuff we want to add if there’s no one watching us. Imagine how long games would take to be made if we could place an infinite amount of art in a level.

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We hope this article sheds some light on how we built this environment and that the reader found some bits of useful information that might help them in their future projects. Our sincere thanks also go out to Allegorithmic for hosting the awesome Throne challenge. We learned a ton from it and can’t wait to explore Substance Designer further.

Martin Holmberg and Thiago Klafke

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