CGTalk - Modeling Game environments

PlayfulPuppy

11-17-2005, 04:11 AM

I've just come out of a job doing exactly that, so I should be able to be of some assistance. :)

First off, the grid is your friend. Try to make everything align to the grid as best as possible, and come up with a set of units to help you maintain a consistant scale (I normally use a scale of 10 units = 1 meter, so a character would be roughly 20 units with the knees at 5 and the waist at 10).

Due to the fact that you're doing a mock-up, you probably wont have access to data like jump heights, mantle heights (Climbing over waist-high objects) or the like, so come up with you own and stick to them. Consistancy in this regard is what's going to make your entry look like a game level instead of a 'set', and it's almost immediately obvious to people in the industry.

Secondly, keep in mind the sort of game you're likely to be creating for. Go through the companies previous titles and work out where their strengths are. There are a couple of things to keep in mind for various game styles;

FPS games: You have a lot more freedom to be realistic in FPS games due to the fact that you don't have to worry about the camera. However, object scale in regards to the player height is critical; monitors and signs should always try to be centered around head-height, doorways need to seem realistically scaled but slightly exagerrated (Bumping into door frames is a big no-no, about 1.25 times a realistic size should be fine) and you need to keep occlusion and visibility in mind. If you're at the base of the hill, can you see the transmitting tower you need to get to at the top? Make sure you can, leading the player using landmarks is important. Is there a point in the level where you can see the ENTIRE level? If so, try to work out how you can make it so that you can only see no more than a quater of the level at any one time, rendering lots is expensive! As a final note, try to make sure that you can see a world around the level; hills off into the distance, a crack in a brick wall that allows you to see into another alleyway, just something to make the world seem bigger than it really is.

Third-person games: Your main enemy here is going to be the camera. Cameras have a horrible habit of constantly getting stuck on things (Especially objects like pillars or twisting corridors). These are fairly difficult to avoid without actually testing it in-game, but there are a few rules to help. First of all, always exagerrate the size of your rooms. Keep the scales consistant, but make the objects further apart and make the actual rooms larger (Max Payne is a good example of this). Try to avoid cramped areas wherever possible, and try to keep a rough 'sphere' of empty space above where you want the player to go to allow for camera movement.

Fighting games: With these, you need to try and avoid as many occluders as possible. Try to make the room into a cylidrical or rectangular arena, put the main details around the outside and put in about 3 'areas of interest'. In a carpark arena, you'd have a rectangular room with a few pillars, maybe a couple of cars and possibly a security booth to smash people through. In a japanese garden, you'd want a few streams, a couple of gates to smash people through and maybe a gazebo for interest.

The other main thing to keep in mind is reusability. Especially if you're going to be doing work on consoles where memory is incredibly limited, try to make objects as reusable as possible. Make a crate look different on different sides, make a computer console that has something on the back, make a boulder that can be rotated and scaled around to fill out large areas. This is also incredibly important with textures, try to make them as multipurpose as possible. Try to keep your texture sizes at 256x256 or 512x512 where you REALLY need them (Assuming a PS2/XBox platform). On the PC you can be a lot more fast and loose, but showing them that you're concious of memory limitations is always a plus.

Anyways, that should help you out, good luck!

In other news, first post! \o