Introduction

Hey everyone, I’m Luiza Tanaka and I am currently an environment artist at Hi-Rez Studios. Since my last article on 80 Level, I worked as a CGI lighting artist at Armstrong White in Detroit, then accepted an environment artist position at Hi-Rez Studios and moved down to Atlanta. Out of the games our studio develops, I’ve been primarily tasked on SMITE, which is a stylized 3rd person MOBA. I personally really enjoy playing the game and have logged over a hundred hours on my SMITE account.

SMITE: Assault Mode

SMITE as a game has evolved a lot since its initial release. When I first joined the studio, the environment team had been pivoting their art style towards high stylization, with key points being clean and distinct shape language, low contrast textures, and a more deliberate and thoughtful use of hues and values to lead the player through the maps. We have since then updated three of our most played maps to this new art style.

For our season 6 update, we completely revamped the environment for the Assault game mode. I was tasked to develop the skybox and foliage for the map. Because of the eclipse we have going on and the map’s Nordic location, we wanted a colorful skybox to break up the frozen environment. I wanted to work on the aurora borealis first before the rest of the skybox because I was the least sure how long it would take compared to my other tasks.