Star-Log#01: 3D Environment Design

Hello Patrons

welcome to my first Star-Log on Patreon - what "IS" Star-Log actually? Well I'm glad you asking, Star-Log is an type of journal where I'd like to talk about certain things such as worklogs, behind the scenes, misc. tech and off topic which doesn't always refer to my 3D art.

For this episode I'd like to talk a bit about 3D Environment Design. 

We all know 3D games since the mid 90's, before this big jump into the third dimension we used to have sprites and "flat" looking panels but even without 3D Polygons people created some of the most amazing games ever that we still love playing these days. 

I like to mention few of my 2D Classics that I still like to play these days: Super Mario Land 2 on GameBoy - a timeless jump and run that held up very well to this day. One of the games I also play is the original F-ZERO on the Super Nintendo

This game was revolutionary for it's time. The designers archived a "fake" 3D look by using some clever hardware features of the console which allowed them to rotate a flat surface in various angles which resulted into a 3D-like look and depth illusion. I could write an entire story about that but let's keep it simple and short this time. 😅

When we moved over to 3D for video game consoles for the first time, the technology was very young and designers/programmers were pretty much unexperienced with this entire new "world". So that's why some earlier 3D games looked more like something a "child had drawn on paper" rather than an blockbuster-like movie experience what can be archived these days (when the ppl who work on that stuff doesn't rush their own game to release an unfinished product which is full of bugs and other weird stuff ugh).

In other words we have come a  long way from flat looking shapes to realistic looking textures and scene lighting that almost matches our daily life environments. For example I have found something on Google which was created in the early 90's using big workstations which were super expensive and not really comparable to a modern "home PC".

As you can see things like "Texture-Mapping" and "Surface-Lighting" was very basic back in the days. Most of this stuff looked rather "glossy" like a mirror or just flat like a paper plane. It still has it's own charm but let's be honest: I would have none of you patrons supporting me if my art looked something like this - haha little joke aside. It hasn't aged very well and with the addition of new technologies our games just become how they look today. All the fancy shaders, lighting effects and high quality Models can be rendered on a single Graphics processor - something what people back in the 90's were dreaming about finally came true.

But how about modern graphics and it's design?

That is a POINT which has many ways to start a topic and many ways which can lead into something you may not aware of. In the first place it doesn't really matter how "beefy" your Console/PC really is if you don't have the vision and skill to create something which is looking pleasant to the human eye. Pushing raw polycount and hardware specs is something what the industry likes to do these days since when it sounds impressive on paper means it will look good, right? - Absolutely not. Yes, with faster hardware you can add more effects and aim for a higher resolution BUT that doesn't help you when your art style isn't good. Remember when Nintendo announced The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker back in 2001 with it's colorful and bright cel-shading graphics?

First people were really disappointed that this game looked so "cartoony and childish" now almost 20 Years later this game looks remarkably good and has held up extremely well unlike other games from this area which used to have a more "mature" graphics setting into it. The game became a huge success and made milestone with it's remarkable timeless cel-shading graphics that companies like to use in their own game creations these days. The Wolf Among Us where Bigby Wolf comes from is another example of great looking art style.

I can remember seeing GTAIII the first time and I thought it was great - now almost 20 years later it looks completely outdated and rather ugly (not judging the gameplay just talking about the visuals here 😉) And this is always important to keep in mind that no matter how good your tech is it's the art style which makes the final impression of something.

If I look on older pictures of mine I get sometimes a cold shower running down my back just seeing how "bad" some of the artworks have aged to this day. But hey, with each artwork you working on you will start to learn from your mistakes and eventually improving your workflow. This is a normal thing which artists have to deal with so I think I'm not the only one who is creeped out by your own artworks sometimes. xD

Now talking about current tech in video games, it's amazing to see what designers are able to do with 3D Polygons and environments. Some games look like a true movie, others aim for a more cartoony look - no matter what it is, when it's done in the right way it can look absolutely stunning.

For me as a gamer since the late 90's (yes I am THAT old 😂) it's always nice to see how things were improving over the years in both visuals and gameplay wise. While I do love retro games I also enjoy newer games even when I don't play much on PC besides very few titles such as Red Dead Redemption II (because Cowboy daddy Arthur hehe) or the latest Avengers Games from Crystal Dynamics. 

I always like to look on their environments and try to take some inspiration out of it for my future artworks.

When I was playing Avengers lately I took a closer look at the environment design which looks pretty clean sci-fi style similar to the movies (I haven't seen any of them yet - I know what you're thinking right now.. Relax, I still know the characters and their origins.) which got me thinking if I can create my "own version" of this from scratch.

First I took few screenshots of the part I wanted to work on - which in this case is Thor's room in the Chimera. As you can see he has many stuff like blankets, furniture and other objects laying around which I also wanted to re-create in my scene.

Firing up blender and starting to work on my concept - the goal was clear: I wanted to create something from scratch with a suitable Polygon count to render out in 4K resolution while utilizing extensive texture mapping to create high quality effects such as seen in the screenshot above.

First I made a model of the viewable area which is located in the left corner of the room with a big window.

later on I've added the bed and the pillows which thank god I didn't need to model myself otherwise this big project would have never been done. As you can see no textures were added here and the geometry is rather simple which is exactly the point I was talking about earlier on - it doesn't matter how much polygons you push into something, the style is what matters.

To fill out the empty space in the scene I carefully placed some assets into the shelf behind the bed to make the overall scene more look more alive instead of an empty prison. Selecting assets for your scene can be pretty challenging too since everything need to fit nicely into the main image without "standing" out too much. That's like you like to drive an 80's car on a sidewalk but there's no space for it.

With the background assets done I went more into detail with the scene and wanted to create more random objects to fill out the rest of the scene I went with more pillows and comfy blankets. Making blankets from scratch is a tedious process esp. with all it's wrinkles and random shapes it takes some serious time to make it look good and original.

Alright with the sculpt of the scene finished it was time for me to work on the materials for the rendering process. Taking my ref picture of the in-game room got me into creating the first layers of the base materials for the walls. In game the walls of Thor's room are made of some sort "painted metal tiles" which have a very scratched surface and lacking paint on some spots - signs of wear and tear.

Searching for the right textures and shading properties also takes it's time since you like to get a good overall result and don't want some sort of pixelated or blurry looking surfaces. So the base layer of my metal Plate material looked like this:

With the base layer done I added more layers of textures for more detail such as the rusty ventilation system which are placed underneath the window. The screenshot up here has most of it's materials placed on point already and sadly I don't have saved any screenshot's of an earlier state. As you can see I also added a layer of cracking paint around the window frame and some "dirt wipes" on the glass window to give it a less "clean and perfect" look since the interior of his room show sings of wear, adding little imperfections makes your render look more natural.

OK with this done I set up a first lighting test to see how the materials interact with each other.

The Chimera flies high in the sky so I went with a skydome environment for the lighting but it was pretty dark - still good enough to see that the materials were waaay to glossy and acted like a mirror which I don't want. So back to the texture and shading properties until I found something which looked a lot nicer. Still I didn't liked the scene lighting, it was too dark and too much blue so I went with a different time of the day setting which made the sky less looking blue.

With this done it was time to setup full scene global illumination which makes light bouncing off of each object and interacting with each other to create the illusion of real life light rays travelling through the room. This technique however is very taxing on the computer since every material in the scene can reflect light rays in different ways and all this need to be calculated. 

This looks much better, right? I really liked this result so I kept the lighting environment and worked further on the props in the scene which also needed their own materials. Adding in the bed lead me into creating materials for the sheets and blankets. Since sheets can have wrinkles depending on the "weight" they carry I had to make sure using textures with high resolution to prevent stuff from looking stretched or pixelated which can ruin the whole image harmony. 

With all this done I share my last preview image with you in this post:

Overall I worked around 60 hours+ on this simple yet complex looking environment. From sculpting to texturing to shading and then lighting - all this is necessary to create something visually "impressive" which has it's unique style and characteristics. I simply didn't wanted to make a 1:1 copy of the room you have seen in the game - first this would have cost even more time and secondly being a "copycat" isn't something I want to aim for.

Anyways I have huge respect for designers who work on this stuff on a daily basis. It is very time consuming even when you're a skilled person who is familiar with building environments. This project has once more shown me what it takes if you really want to take on something new and exciting yet also exhausting - but for good.

So is it finished?... Yet?... The answer is no it's not and I have plans for this environment even further since it's also missing the main part of it - the character model which takes the main place in it... You guess what I am talking about. So stay tuned to find out. ;)

I hope you guys liked this type of content - I'm sitting here for a while now typing my thoughts and impressions (hopefully without too much grammar mistakes 😅) and I'm very curious what you think.

Let it me know in the comment section below thank you for reading this is the end of the first Star-Log

~F0