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Category: Environment
This page is distilled from the thread Environment Modeling FAQ & Resources.
Contents
Level Design
Environment Artist: The Story Teller - by Adam "adamBrome" Bromell
How To Develop A Map That Works - from The Valve Developer Community
Map Planning - from the Unreal Wiki
The Hows and Whys of Level Design - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
Ben's Small Bible of Realistic Multiplayer Level Design by Benjamin Bauer
What Is Level Design? - by Sérgio Duarte
Unreal Tournament 2003 video tutorials - from 3D Buzz
Level Design Blogs
Life of a Design Monkey - a blog by Mark Davies, game designer at Ninja Theory
Random Encounters in Imaginary Realms - a blog by Random Encounters, game designer
Lost Garden - a blog by Danc, game designer
CliffyB.com - a blog by Cliff Bleszinski, game designer at Epic Games
Level Design - a blog by David Alexander Johnston, freelance game designer
Environment Planning & Workflow
Workflow techniques and modularity with Unreal game technology - by Epic Games
Unreal Engine 3 tutorials, game industry articles, level design/art/technical tutorials - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
Environment workflow from an artist on Crysis - by Stefan Morrell
Explanation of an 'imperfection pass' (making things believable) - by Adam "adamBrome" Bromell
Adam Bromell's sketchbook thread (work flow processes) - by Adam "adamBrome" Bromell
Chris' sketchbook thread (work flow processes) - by Chris "cholden" Holden
Visual Semiotics - from Wikipedia
What is a visual metaphor? - from Answers.com
Environment Modeling
Environment modeling basics - from the Polycount boards
Subdivision Surface Modeling section of the Polycount wiki has more modeling links.
Environment Sculpting
Sculpting for environment stuff - video tutorials - by Sascha Henrichs
Sculpting a wooden plank, a sandstone rock, and a tiled cliff.Generic wall tutorial - by Bram "Peris" Eulaers
Using 3ds Max and Mudbox to sculpt tilable modular sections for a stone wall.Optimisation workflow tutorial - by Bram "Peris" Eulaers
Using Meshlab to optimize a Mudbox sculpt for import into 3ds Max.Rock modeling approaches - from the Polycount boards
A variety of approaches for sculpting individual rocks and tilable cliffs.Stone Tutorial - by Pedro "bitmap" Amorim
Sculpting a rock using Modo, ZBrush, Meshlab, and Photoshop.Creating Perfectly Tiling Meshes in Zbrush for use in Videogame Environments - by Owen "SHEPEIRO" Shepherd
Using ZBrush's 2.5D canvas to tile stamped meshes, then using Maya to model tilable geometry.Creating Tiled Textures and Displacement in Mudbox 2009 - by Wayne Robson
Painting in Mudbox on the middle of a 3x3 grid where each quad has the same overlapped UVs. (video is about halfway down the page)Tileable Stone in Mudbox - by Sascha Henrichs
Sculpting in Mudbox, loading the displacement map in Photoshop for the offset filter, then fixing the seams with more sculpting in Mudbox.Tiling Rock Tutorial in Zbrush - by Stephen Jameson
Sculpting in Zbrush, loading the normal map in Photoshop for the offset filter, then fixing the seams in Photoshop.
Environment Skies
Skymap workflow by divi for converting a sky panorama into a square texture, the way Epic does. PDF here
How to: Convert a Skybox to a Skydome by Outpt for use in Unreal.
Cube Map wiki section describes how to create and use cubemaps.
Environment Texturing
Texture Workflow videos - by Hiten "Mistry10" Mistry, from the Polycount thread Mistry's Texture Workflow w/Video
Creating tiling textures in 3dsmax - by Chris "cholden" Holden
Thirding - Utilizing your texture space for environment work - by Ben "poopinmymouth" Mathis
Tutorial: Brick Arch (Baking Multiple Maps in 3dsmax) - by mikebart
Using vertex blending to grunge a level and add variety - by Mario "StrangeFate" Vazquez
Lighting in game environments - by Sjoerd "hourences" De Jong
Painting with Light - by the cinematographer John Alton.
Industry Information
Percentage of environment artists .vs. character artists at most studios - from the Polycount boards
What's the difference between a level designer and environment artist? - from the Polycount boards
Inspiration & Reference
BBC Motion Gallery - video reference
Corbis Motion - video reference
Getty Images Footage - video reference
The Reference Thread - from the Polycount boards
Ontario Architecture - Building Terms - a large collection of example images
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts - Building Terms - images and terms for Eastern architecture
Urbex - urban decay
Urban Adventure in Rotterdam - urban decay
Opacity.us - urban decay
Forbidden Places - urban decay
Modern Ruins - urban decay
Ohio Trespassers - urban decay
Underground Kent - urban decay
Ghost Town Explorers - urban decay
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