How to be an Environment Artist

#1

Hi, I’m posting here if anybody can shed light for me on the position of Game Environment Artist. I have decided to focus on this area after being inspired by the beautiful environments in the game World of Warcraft.

How one does focus in on this area? Searching on the internet I find many tutorials on how to create cars and human heads but very little on the art of building environments, from how to create assets to creating textures to colour the world and how they all fit together.

I have tried to get to grips with HL:2 and creating environs but I have found it hard importing my own assets and textures into it.

Can anybody post any links that would help more understand this area?
Also how close do the environment artists work with the level designer? Do they overlap?
And finally, when looking at the portfolio what kind of things should be in there? Photography? Landscape drawings?

Thank you for taking to time to read and it would be a real help if somebody could shine a torch for me.

#2

Env art is one the most complex art things in a game because its very extensive, it covers a whole range of things.
Its also something everyone appears to understand differently, you asked how an env artist works together with a level designer but in a lot of companies they simply are the same person. Or sometimes they arent… every company defines the name differently, the situation is so bad I use 4 different titles on my portfolio just to bring across the point what I do
What an env artist foremost is tho is someone who uses and brings together all aspects of an environment. Modelling, architecture, texturing, composition, lighting, sound, atmosphere etc.
Its that combination that makes its so extensive and that also makes it an environment. A lot of people make the mistake of only modelling some objects and rendering them and then naming it an environment. Without lighting, atmosphere, sound etc you dont have an environment but a group of objects.
And its that kind of stuff companies would want to see on a portfolio. The combination of things. And also very important is real time material. Renders are nice but mean little. You need to show you can also get it run real time and smooth without any technical problems + you understand the correct workflow.
Making inidivual rooms or objects is pretty simple, bringing all the different things together and making sure it keeps working and working well is the harder part.

Look outside the modelling community for tutorials on it. Inside the game communities, such as the Half Life, Quake or Unreal communities.

Youre best bet is absolutely to use an engine such as HL2/Source indeed and practice in that, create levels for the community. They can help you a lot trough critiques.
Youre better off using the Unreal engine tho, its far more user friendly and easier to import things + pretty much no company uses the source engine where as every single big publisher got a UE license. There are more than 50 next gen games in the go using the UE currently

#3

Hourences, I just checked out your site and wanted to congratulate you on some amazing work. It’s really impressive that you’ve generated so much output at the tender age of 21. Continued success!

#4

yes you are right, i recently started as landscaper and when it comes to adding all the details to the huge environment, its something different.

i was browsing this forum to search for some specific topics on using multiple blend maps but couldnt find any… i’ll put it to you… Can we use multiple blendmaps on one polygon, llike a blend in blend. and if we do what will be the result…??? and what is clamping of texture…???

#5

Thanks Islanddreamer, my portfolio is quite outdated tho. I got a lot more but NDA’s currently withhold me from adding lots of new stuff. 22 btw by now.

abyjoe It depends on what engine you use and what exactly you mean by blend to blend. You want to mix up multiple different textures for example dirt and brick ? You can do that in most engines by using alpha maps and combiners/mixers/whatever its named in your program and engine.
It might have a problem mixing more than 2 tho but with a good engine you can work around that or with some extra programming if you got the engines license and some programmers.
In unreal you can also mix them by using vertex colors. Each material gets a color assigned and blends itself in to the next one by looking at the vtx colors. Also restricted to just 2 tho right now.

#6

I’m going to echo what Hourences said in his first post. In short, level design is like a culmination of quite a few other disciplines, programming (entiy logic, scripting), 2d art (textures), 3d art (lighting, the working enviroment). But most importantly, level design requires the ability to put all of these aspects together in an enviroment that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also enjoyable to traverse and play through.

#7

I have tried to get to grips with HL:2 and creating environs but I have found it hard importing my own assets and textures into it.

I can help you with that if you’d like.

#8

if you want any advice on being in the industry then please email away. I’ve been doing this since 1988 and now work for Rockstar Leeds.

To sum it up I would say its a time consuming job but atleast you dont have to wear a suit :slight_smile:

Mark
www.m-e-art.co.uk

#9

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.