EXP - Asking The Experts - Environment Art
In this series, Kieran Goodson reveals what he learned from the most reputable artists in the industry, allowing us deep insight into their areas of expertise. In this Environment Art edition, Kieran explores vital topics from composition to communities, textures to triple A titles and much more. You're guaranteed some pocket-sized wisdom to take home.
Introduction
Improvise, adapt, overcome. It’s 2020 and since the world decided to fall out of its own backside, it’s evident the need to roll with the times hasn’t disappeared. With personal projects, new software and fresh tech, game artists seem to be on the beat about evolving and luckily for us, we’re a passionate bunch when it comes to exchanging info - me included.
My name is Kieran Goodson and I’m a Junior Environment Artist at Rebellion. I’m avoiding parks, places and public spaces as I work [from home] on the next Sniper Elite with the team down in Oxford, UK. Between pandemics, I’m also a mentor at Experience Points for our Patreons. I post my articles, podcasts and portfolio pieces on ArtStation and you can also find me on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn for extra content.
In this series, I’ll be sharing what I learned from interviewing some of the most experienced environment, material and lighting artists in the business. They’ve reviewed their careers for us, unpacked production knowledge and shone light on essential workflows allowing us a look into what they do best. Like Top Trumps but we’re only focusing on each artist’s strongest skill and area of expertise.
Covering everything from communities to composition, freelancing to full scale scenes and storytelling to studio life, without further ado welcome to ‘Asking the Experts: Environment Art’
Rise of The Freelancer
Games of all shapes and sizes are now being made from home offices and bedrooms around the world and that’s pretty nuts to think about. Many studio developers are adapting to the work from home life during lockdown and exercising unfamiliar skills and routines. For freelancers this is nothing new. There’s a household name who knows a thing or two about both so I caught up with him to find out about how the roles differ. The King Wash man as we know and love him - Clinton Crumpler.
What are the key qualities that freelance or outsource artists might have, that an in-house studio artist might not?
“Freelance or outsource artists generally will have more skills that are a bit different to an in-house artist due to how they go about their day-to-day tasks, work, and general life.
In-house artists generally have a longer road map drawn out for them and typically go into a project knowing what they will be working on for quite some time. They also tend to do more focused work in a particular skill set and reproduce those results as needed for the studio.
Outsource artists or freelancers will not have as steady of a plan laid out so generally these artists have learned to quickly pivot and move to keep up with changing production cycles required from the client. These artists also are generally a bit more self-driven and governed and often will take on tasks or test out skills they generally might not normally try in order to accommodate and accomplish the goals and needs requested by the client.
With this being said, these are all general statements as everyone is different and every studio works differently.”
So with that in mind, where do you see the relationship between in-house studios and outsourcing in 5 years?
“This is a process that is forever evolving. Many studios, especially smaller studios, are finding it very expensive to get tons of good artists in-house to do the work on their game only to be let go at the end of the process when artists are no longer needed, so there is definitely a push for a more sustainable method to getting high quality art, at a reasonable rate, and not have to have so many in-house artists during production. This is where outsourcers such as Dekogon are able to come in and provide these studios with exactly what they need during their production cycles.
I find it's also enjoyable for many of the artists as they are not stuck on a single project for more than a couple of months at a time which anyone that has been through a full game development cycle knows can become very tedious and hard to keep interest during the 2nd or 3rd year in production, especially if you are working on the same types of tasks and art. With all this being said I see the evolution of having more outsource art studios as a good thing to help with all of these issues that have developed over time in a production cycle.”
It’s an interesting evaluation of freelancing for an outsource studio. For many there’s no replacing the in-studio atmosphere of building a game or the face-to-face contact you get. However, for some, skipping the commute, catching the work from home bug and still being involved with big industry titles is a win win. One thing is for sure. Zoom has done well hasn’t it?
Now I couldn’t leave without picking Clinton’s brain about Dekogon’s renowned prop art.
What pushes the quality of a pretty decent and perfectly acceptable prop to ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING?
“I find that what brings a prop from meh to magnificent is really paying attention to how things are made. Part and panel lines, edge definition and wear, discoloration on the surface and edges, nice breakup in roughness that is not always visible in the albedo. These are all things that I see that can really push the limits on how a prop looks. Also a big mistake people tend to make is poly distribution. Some artists will pump tons of polys into a small area but forget to look at the big picture and see heavy faceting in other parts of their mesh. Always switch your mind back and forth from micro to macro and back again at all stages of creating a prop. It will help to guide your artistic skill to maintain focus on what makes the little details on the prop amazing without forgetting how the prop reads as a whole at a distance.”
If you model anything like me, 60% of the job is rotating around the model. These are words of wisdom accrued over more than a decade in the industry. Often the humble beginnings of the modern 3D artist, prop art is making somewhat of a resurgence online separating itself from the environment, material and character crowds alike. I suspect that Clinton and the team at Dekogon have a large influence in this movement. It seems there’s something very special about a well-executed object. As a result, I met up with Hannah Watts, Senior Prop Artist at Ubisoft Reflections, at a greasy cafe in a Northern toon to find out more.
PROP UP YOUR PORTFOLIO
There seems to be a resurgent popularity of high-quality props and it's not everyday you see someone with the job title "Senior Prop Artist". As a specialist, what do you pay attention to that your average 3D artist might miss?
“So I guess I would preface by saying that, although my position is Senior Props Artist, I do have extensive experience in other areas of the game development pipeline and processes too which are integral to working day-to-day in the industry. This includes level building and set-dressing, setting up pipelines, and working with or managing teams (and all the milestones, documentation and task management that comes with it).
I think it's important to specify that my job isn't just high fidelity making props all day, and that people wanting to break into the industry should still have a cursory knowledge of general pipelines.
But going back to props in particular, I think having a sharp eye for details and knowing where and how to find quality reference is key. It's important to understand the backstory and context of your piece/scene/project, and use that knowledge to inform the decisions you make in the artistic processes. A lot of story can be told in the wear of something, for example, and I'd advise caution against using smart masks or generators out of the box as no two items age the same. One of my favourite examples is a pillar I saw in a temple in Japan; it was painted in red lacquer, but around the base the paint had all worn off from tourists running their hands along it. You have to answer a lot of questions with your materials - Where is the thing? Has it been exposed to the elements? The materials it's made of, how do they decay over time? I do a lot of reading up on things, mostly out of genuine interest, before I even start a big personal piece.
With that in mind, are there principles in prop art that are transferable to environment art?
“Absolutely. I think there's transferable skills in ALL art. I did fine art in college and trained in traditional media before studying game art at Uni, and I still paint digitally today. Having an artistic eye is integral in everything we do - composition, colours, how lighting interacts with surfaces. Environment artists should be absorbing as much influence from all walks of life as we can.”
While her time at Ubisoft (and previously Coatsink), Hannah has freelanced for Dekogon in her spare time, been consistently churning out personal work in her spare-spare time and recently delivered a Modelling and Texturing Props course on Flipped Normals in her spare-spare-spare time. Going the extra mile has certainly paid off as she received an honourable mention in the MCV/Develop’s 30 Under 30 list. The question is:
How (on earth) do you balance in-house work, freelance work and personal work all at the same time?!
“It's a tough one - I did have to give up some things. I used to train at my dance studio 4-5 times a week but I decided to spend 2019 prioritising my portfolio and career instead, so I dropped down to only once. This gave me evenings to pursue personal and freelance work. I'd finish Coatsink at 5, home by 6, and then start 'second' work.
Since moving to Ubisoft I've given up freelance jobs, though I'm still considering asset packs as a way of generating passive income. It's actually nice to have some time to play games again (!!!) and carry on chipping away at assets for my personal project.”
So what advice do you have for those already in the industry looking to progress to the next level?
“This is always a difficult one for me to answer because I still feel like I'm learning all the time, so who am I to give advice right?
But I'm always an advocate for keeping a personal project on at all times. Take an active interest in the 3D community/industry as a whole, follow the latest news and stay passionate. Do a lot of studies as well. Most of my props on ArtStation I consider as studies of the real things, and I do the same with my painting too. They can be small - a small diorama for a level artist, a hard-surface study of a specific weird shape for a modeller, recreating a weird material you saw in the street in Substance Designer.
But mostly just remember that while we all love making beautiful props, the game and its consumers are the most important thing. Things like optimisation, appreciation of design constraints, budgets and deadlines are all aspects of game development that prop artists should be adhering to as well.”
Going the extra mile. Keep scope sensible. Remember the budgets. That last part is absolutely crucial and is worth talking about.
LET THERE BE LIGHT ... THEN ALBEDO, AND THEN ROUGHNESS
Putting a prop under the microscope and recreating it is one thing, but how does attention to detail translate into an entire environment when under production-like time constraints. By answering this. What do you get when you cross 530 environment artists with a King Arthur brief. Crippling impostor syndrome? Yes, you get that. But the answer is Lea Kronenberger!
In your last Experience Points article, you mentioned that it was a good idea to analyse the lighting first, followed by tackling the albedo and roughness of your props at the very start. Why is it particularly important to pay attention to these maps? Most artists might be tempted to jump straight into environment production.”
“I think one of the most important and rewarding things is to capture the mood you want to achieve early on, and lighting is simply a big part of that. It’s very helpful to analyse the lighting from the concept or references you use at an early stage of the project. It's important for me to be able to break down what exactly makes up the mood and lighting of the image.
For example, where it has high contrast, warm and cold light colors, what the nature of the light sources are (natural sunlight, artificial light) and how soft they are (i.e. think of the difference between shadows from neon tubes vs. flashlight), but also what material properties objects have in relation to the lighting.
For example, a very rough surface such as dry dirt reacts completely differently to bright sunlight than a very shiny surface like water, which adds bright highlights and thus can increase the contrast, shift the focus and so on. There’s a lot to consider, so it’s a good idea to write it all down as a guide for implementation in the 3D scene.
In this context it’s also important to consider the brightness values of the albedo and roughness textures. The most common mistakes I have made and seen with others was that the albedo was too dark or saturated, very little roughness detail or simply objects that were way too glossy.
It’s best to keep in mind that the light’s colors get added on top of your base colors and become more saturated as the brightness increases. So, if you already have a very saturated green for your grass, it will probably look fake in a bright warm sunlight. Of course, colors will also get much darker in the shade, so if your object is very dark even in medium light, most of the detail in darker areas will be completely lost.
All this plays a huge part for the final composition and in making the scene look believable and detailed. I always try to have a lot of roughness information in my textures to bring in fine details and generally make the albedo a little brighter and less saturated than I think it should look.
It’s much more painful to figure out what went wrong the further the project is in production and then to optimize a lot of textures, so good to plan and test early to see what the problems could be.’
Clinton, Hannah and Lea’s work are living, breathing examples of what you can be thinking about when exercising your core skills - modelling, texturing and even a bit of lighting. (More about the latter two in parts II and III of the series). Lea highlights nicely that these skills are in general aid of an atmosphere or composition. That’s where we’re headed next. But first, what makes the good stuff good?
THE QUALITY BAR OF AAA
The benchmark of quality in game art is always shifting. In January, I dropped an article on this very topic at the entry-level - Job Winning Environment Art of 2019. Now I want to know what game art looks like at the highest levels. Who better to ask than a AAA Senior Environment Artist and host of the last 5 ArtStation challenges - Karen Stanley.
Aside from being a decorated AAA Senior Environment Artist, you’ve also been a host of the last 5 ArtStation challenges. With this insight, what do you look for in an environment that screams AAA quality, storytelling and thoughtfulness to design?
“I've always found the "what makes AAA quality" quite subjective – because good quality doesn’t necessarily mean big budget, hundreds of thousands of hours and mega scenes in every single piece of personal work. Although you should still be putting in time and effort of course! Just maybe not years into one scene... Be smart and manage your time well. To be honest a lot of people tend to tie AAA to a hyper realistic style when we’ve had people hired with hand-painted stylised scenes all the way to the hyperreal scan data people, and everything in between.
For environment / level art, the major thing is being able to put a scene together and tell a clear story with no words. It doesn’t matter which style you choose if you execute it beautifully! I encourage all environment artists to focus but at least give different styles of art a try occasionally, even if it’s not for your portfolio but just for the sake of learning the technicality. For instance, a hand-painted style artist may be used to using 1 unique UV map for their assets, whilst a realistic artist will lean more towards multiple UV sets and masking.
But the things a good artist in both styles have in common is the knowledge of colour theory, lighting, composition and, again, storytelling in a 360 space! They will both also know that they are making art for games which means it needs to run at LEAST 30FPS on modern spec hardware, so the scenes are built smart with a good understanding of efficient use of assets. Get to know your editor’s capabilities well!”
So no matter the style, it seems that top tier work comes down to the fundamentals - composition, lighting, colours and everyone’s favourite buzzword:
STORYTELLING
All sounds good, in theory. I guess that’s because it is theory. But what does this actually look like during production though. Otto Ostera is a seasoned Level Artist at DICE who I’ve admired since I started environment art. I asked him to comb through the principles he uses in his personal work and on one of EA’s biggest titles, Battlefield V.
Yir'Daman and Assault on Pyongyang scream storytelling at the top of their lungs. How do you approach storytelling in your work?
“Telling stories is what makes me engage with art, and I’m highly passionate about this specific element of it. Generally speaking I don’t have a precise workflow I follow when approaching storytelling in real-time environments. I tend to use it as a way to ground the world and make all elements have sense and feel like they have purpose. A military checkpoint would have a chair for the guard to rest, footprints all around, maybe a box of cigarettes and a water bottle. A makeshift wooden structure in a fantasy setting would be uneven, with ropes hanging and debris everywhere. Even in nature we see storytelling, since grass doesn’t tend to grow as tall under the shade of big trees.
And in games it’s also a great element to increase detail in the world and add to the exploration value. Maybe some footprints in the snow lead the player to a small hideout in the woods where some soldiers were sneaking off to have a drink around a bonfire. Or an empty office searched by military forces where you can see signs of violence, papers everywhere and open drawers.
Storytelling doesn’t just push the boundaries of the visuals, it also adds a dimension of communication to the art or level that has the potential to stick with the audience beyond just the visual stimuli, since we tend to remember stories way better than we do images.”
I think Otto nailed it on the head here. It’s a similar sentiment to this. You won’t always remember what you did or where you were but you’ll always remember how you felt. Good storytelling, to me at least, has been about trying to stimulate the unconscious with every tool and technique we have. The fundamentals. The psychology of the player.
In your blog you describe composition as “the process of forcing the observer to see what we want them to see, in what order, and how”. Which techniques do you like to use and how do you use them?
“The right word would be ‘guide’, if I can correct myself. Composition is all about perception and how it works on us humans. The very origin of composition in any visual art comes down to the way we perceive it in the first place. Humans have a very specific way of perceiving things visually and using this information for communication and social life in general. It’s rather a key factor in the very evolution of our species. We evolved because we learned to stay away from sharp objects like predator’s fangs and sharp rocks, and because there is green in nature, life prospers and we thrive. And all these things are embedded in our brains for they have been passed from generation to generation.
All this pattern recognition stayed with us to this day, and very smart people dedicated their life’s work to figure it out and theorize it for everyone’s knowledge. Rudolf Arnheim was a psychologist that studied the human brain, and he started recognizing elements that repeated themselves in the perception of humans around the world.
Contrast, shape, color, balance, definition, knowledge, social meaning... these are some of the many patterns that he and his team recognized in decades of study. Understanding why we are almost instinctively drawn to the color green over brown, and why a human face is more likely to pick up our attention over any everyday object (to list a couple of examples), will give you as an artist very powerful tools that you can apply to your work. Using this knowledge to your advantage when planning out your art is what you would call “composition”.
I would recommend giving a read to what I call the Bible of composition, called Art and Visual Perception. Understanding the psychology of why we perceive things the way we do is key to make art with visual meaning and optimized for perception.”
You've produced some gorgeous professional and personal work. Where do you find that professional work and personal portfolio work differ?
“They differ substantially from one another. Professional work is all about the product and the player, optimizing composition for the player and gameplay above all. Many technical restrictions and guidelines for each specific genre of games also play a big part on the execution of real-time art for games.
In games like Battlefield, maybe your composition has to be optimized to show the player safe paths out of combat, or maybe you have to adjust it to add cover or break lines of sight. Artists play a huge part in gameplay as well, whether they are aware of it or not, and knowing how to recognize the elements that affect the perception of players instead of throwing them in at random (like negative spaces, color palettes and other composition patterns) can make a huge difference in how the game or level plays.
In personal art, most of these factors don’t play a big role in production. I find myself focusing more on things like the overall visual composition, lighting, storytelling, instead of factors that would mainly affect gameplay. So there is more freedom to explore the artsy side of things and tell your own stories, which is what I enjoy most about this craft.”
Definitely not on your own there Otto. As Hannah mentioned earlier, there’s a time and a place to worry about optimisation and budgets and that’s during production. In your free time, don’t let that stuff hinder your creativity unless you want to show off those skills. In fact, the freedom to explore and tell stories was something that appealed to Ivanna Liittschwager, Environment Artist at Sony Santa Monica. One of the most personal, story driven environments you can go for is a bedroom scene. As these are quite common to see, particularly amongst student portfolios, I wanted to know the secret sauce.
A successful bedroom scene seems to be about creating that lived-in feel, pockets of intimacy and an overall personality. How did you achieve this in ‘Bedroom in Orbit’?
“To create a lived-in space, you have to think about the type of person who lives there. Think about the life of that character and what kind of personality they have and develop a story for them. For example in my scene Bedroom in Orbit, I initially had a story thought out before I created the scene in order to create the type of look that I wanted. The story for that environment is quite simple.
I was thinking of a small spaceship that is lived in by a family with a teenage boy. Earth is no longer accessible to them, so they have been orbiting space in that ship for quite some time. The bedroom is of the teenage son, trying to keep parts of his life on earth close to him by decorating his spaceship bedroom in stuff that is comforting to him, that reminds him of his life on earth. His bed isn't made, there are posters on the wall, stickers on his drawers, etc.
With that short but sweet story, it gives the environment life and personality. No matter what environment you are creating, there needs to be a story behind it, even if it's as basic as a bedroom.”
The job of the environment artists ends at that, the environment. You collab with the designer and concept artist, create the scene and tell your environmental stories. That’s a day done. Seldom do we get the opportunity to hear about how a game is directed. How the responsibility of tying different department’s work together feels like. Assistant Art Director and general badass artist Lincoln Hughes weighed in on what his role entails and what challenges he faces.
What is it like to have the “bigger picture” perspective as an Assistant Art Director?
“Have you ever seen somebody do a portrait drawing where the eye looks exquisitely detailed and realistic, but the proportions of the face are lop-sided, the head is too big, and the drawing as a whole just feels off? Yeah... We all have. We've all been guilty of being the artist that drew it as well.
I've talked alot about this in previous interviews but I think regulating detail is actually a hugely overlooked part of developing art for games. Artists are obsessive, in that they want every corner of every mesh in every pixel to be flooded with excess detail. We've all seen the individual 1k triangle bolts modelled onto a metal girder and thought, hmmmm, do we really need that?
I think that simplicity is under-rated in most art corners of the game industry. A big part of my job is to keep that mind-set in check, and pull our artists / designers back when they're going a bit too far down the detail rabbit-hole. By directing them to strategically remove unneeded clutter and detail, we can allow our compositions to breathe, be readable, which will in turn laser focus the player's eye towards specific areas of importance (i.e. game-play areas, landmarks, etc).”
What are the main challenges you face as an Assistant Art Director?
“As an Assistant Art Director, you're one of the go-between people for most of the different departments that contribute to the overall game-play experience (i.e. Art, VFX, Lighting, Design, etc). Facilitating the smooth blending of every department's contributions to the experience can be hugely rewarding, but also daunting, because sometimes they naturally prioritize the needs of their department above all else.
We've all heard the never-ending argument between Designers and Artists - which in a nutshell goes something like this:
“Design is more important to the overall game-play experience than art because if a game isn't fun, it sucks.”
-versus-
“Art is overall more important to the experience because if the game isn’t visually stunning, it won’t sell.”
In my experience, both departments are completely right. It takes a team to make a great game. When (in part because of all the bickering) you finally have a level that plays well, looks pretty, runs at a decent frame-rate, and sounds awesome, you realize how essential every contribution of every department actually is to the overall experience of the game, and how without those arguments / discussions, it wouldn't have worked. Who knew?”
As an Assistant Art Director you’re the shepherd of a herd. A herd that needs to be directed to a pen without them all biting each other. If the sheep don’t travel together they wouldn’t be a herd and they’d be vulnerable to getting abandoned, lost or eaten by the hungry wolf. Imagining development as a sheep herding game seems quite appealing to me.
Speaking of herding, I know a couple of Shepherds who have made a name for themselves guiding students, grads and game artists into positions all around the world.
GAME ART COMMUNITIES
At this point, learning online is a skill so ingrained into the modern game artist it’s like hieroglyphics on the walls of the pyramids. At the heart of independent learning is game art communities. Polycount, 80 Level, Twitter. What’s that? Do I hear a yawn in the crowd? Yes, you’ve heard it all before and now Discord groups are all the rage these days.
Why? What’s the need? You can make great art and learn a tonne without them so what’s so special about being involved in some convoluted industry group chat. Well that’s a cynical, but fair summary but I’m playing devil’s advocate here. We wouldn't keep hearing about them if there wasn’t something there worthy of attention. Kem Yaralioglu is a good friend and Founder of Experience Points and he dropped a line on what he thought the magic was.
What's so special about being involved with an online learning community, especially if artists can produce astonishing work without them?
“Online learning communities allow you to build connections and an actual relationship with other artists which is something you simply cannot do over a tutorial. A tutorial provides you with knowledge, and a skill to replicate something, but a community allows you to do that and more, you can have a voice, network, find jobs and build a name for yourself.”
Short but sweet. Just like the man himself. But seriously, that’s a series of points that deserves their own article. I can’t express enough how much these communities have done for me personally with my work, my portfolio and for the opportunities that have come as a result. I joined the Dinusty Empire discord back in November ‘18 because I saw some portfolio streams on YouTube. Without getting soppy the folks I’ve met online in these channels are like family to me now and I’ve got a lot of time for the people in there, hustling at every stage of their careers. Not too long ago the Dinusty Empire hit 5000 members and with that comes its own trials and tribulations. Cue, Jeremy Estrellado.
What are the challenges of running a learning community? What things do you have to keep in mind or do that are not immediately apparent?
“One of the biggest challenges is making sure that it continues to be a fun place to be while also being a serious place where everyone new or experienced can grow in skill. One of the biggest things I need to keep in mind is that it’s okay to let the community let loose occasionally, and that you can’t always expect people to be in the learning mood. Sometimes people are coming to the server just to relax and decompress from a day of art creation.
“If you are looking to start your own community make sure you see what is out there first. Communities are a great way to connect people and the best thing to do is to connect people together with a community that they have been wanting that currently doesn’t exist yet. It’s not about your own success, it's about the community and your ability to enable them to connect in ways they didn’t know they wanted or needed”.
MENTORSHIPS
Mentorships go hand-in-hand with online communities and is without shadow of a doubt the best alternative to formal education. The value of mentorships are demonstrable through testimonials - look at EXP or the Mentorship Coalition for example. But the flip side is just as interesting - I reached out to Chris Radsby, a Senior Environment Artist at Ubisoft Massive to talk teaching.
What have you learned from giving mentorships?
“Mentoring people professionally is a somewhat scary experience. They fully rely on you to be able to help them level up, which is not an easy task. The biggest thing I've learned during this year doing mentorships is that everybody has a different way to learn and it's up to you as a mentor to try and figure out the best way to teach somebody.”
“It's a completely different skillset from being an artist though. You can go on about art this and that, but unless you find the way to communicate it properly it won't stick in the end. There are plenty of barriers that keep people from producing art- you’ve got to figure out which ones they are and help the person through them.”
How have giving mentorships developed your own skills?
“I think my social skills have developed most of all, learning to let go of my own worries and trying to focus on the other person is important. You're not only their mentor but you want to become their friend right? Someone they should be able to trust and rely on.”
“I think this is somewhat the most fun thing about mentorships. Not only do I get to see people grow and become better, I also hopefully get a new friend, which is awesome!
One of the most insightful mentorships I've ever done is to mentor someone that is in a completely different field (Illustration). It was like a mutual exchange of knowledge, they showed me a lot of stuff that was very inspiring from their world and it has made me a better artist I would say.”
Put me in touch Chris. If that illustrator can share with me the reason why Photoshop decided to change it’s hotkeys around in the latest version, that would be greatly appreciated.
What would be your advice to those looking to tutor other artists?
“My main advice would be to start slowly. Blog-posts, being helpful in your art community, gain people’s trust and respect and work from there. Eventually you'll become a mentor and when you do, try and only have a few mentees at the same time so you can give each person the proper attention they need. It will be appreciated, trust me!”
Speaking of blog posts, there’s a well-known pillar of the community known for doing exactly that.
BEYOND EXTENT
Not only a talented Environment Artist from Ubisoft Berlin, Timothy Dries is also in fact a blog machine. If you’ve been around in the environment art sphere then there’s no doubt you’ve seen his work. He’s recently launched Beyond Extent - a new home for his massive blog compilations of which will be reaching the 100 milestone mark very soon.
You're well known within the community for being a pillar of learning. You're always delivering valuable content, but what do you personally get out of publishing weekly blogs?
“There is a lot that I get out of them myself. The biggest thing is that I get to do a deep dive on the topic at hand and either get to freshen up my knowledge about it or learn something totally new. I also really enjoy writing them, even though it's stressful at times because they take quite a bit of time and there is a bit of planning involved there, but it's the enjoyment of helping other people out that makes it worth all the effort.”
AMEN to that!
“Another thing that this allows me to do is prepare for a way bigger goal that I have in mind and that is developing all the resources that people would need to take you from start to finish creating your own environments, really digging into all the surrounding topics instead of only the technical ones.”
Some learn best in an incubator environment like a learning community. Some learn best from 1-to-1 interaction with a mentor. If you’re like me, you might find tutorials and written content super useful. If you’re not familiar with Tim’s blogs and you’re looking for a place to start, I’ve got you covered:
Pick 5 of your articles and explain why those particular topics are most important for artists to understand.
“This is one of my personal passions so it was really important for me to do this somewhat early on and get my ideas out there, but it's also just important for people to consider narrative links between elements in their scene and how they can use all the fundamentals to really help them put interesting scenes together.”
“This is one of those ones that lifts the veil on the industry for a bit, a lot of artists focus on the technical aspects and just making things look pretty. Then they get completely surprised when they need to work together with other disciplines and limitations - metrics being one of them. It might be worth looking into this as most games will have this to some degree, but it's especially important for people trying to get into the First Person genre.”
“When it comes to technical stuff, baking still remains to be the biggest hurdle for artists, especially with a lot of really complex explanations out there that really dive into all the details but a lot of it can just be summarized really simply, especially when just focusing on artistic stuff. Baking is still a core component of prop creation and a necessary part of the game art pipeline”.
“Another important one that is especially relevant for starting artists that tend to go way too big! Don't get me wrong there is nothing bad about trying to aim high and pushing your limits, but why don't you do it in a way where you build in some safety measures that will help you with still finishing your projects. As a lot of people tend to think way too big and then just get overwhelmed and just quit.”
“Last but not least, really important for personal growth is asking for feedback or asking questions in general. It's also important what you want out of the questions that you are asking too, so there is an art in how you formulate your questions and where to ask. Figuring this out will take time but if you do it well and people take the time to give you good feedback this can really propel you to the next level.”
DON’T LOSE SIGHT OF WHAT’S IMPORTANT
Now I saw it fitting to finish with Marcel Schaika’s interview because it left me with the hardest reality check that I think is important to raise. Marcel is a Lead Artist at Crytek and has been a member of the team since 2007. I wanted to ask him how workflows have changed during this time and what his perspective was on how the industry has changed since he started. He sent back some great insight reflecting on his 13 year long career but the sentiment changed when he emphasised this.
It’s easy to get distracted with the tools and techniques and lose sight of what’s important; the overarching vision for a project; creating a life-changing form of escapism for players around the world; even the simple notion of looking after ourselves.
Where do you think the industry has advanced the most?
“Back when we released Crysis, I imagined how games could be like 10 or 15 years from now. We live in that time now and to be honest, not much has changed, at least visually. Of course, there is PBR and ray tracing but it is pretty close I’d say.
What improved on the other hand is the accessibility of knowledge and technology. Everybody can make games quite easily now. This results in a great diversity of visual styles and game design ideas in general. Indie games have a lot of influence on AAA productions now. The quality of hobbyist projects became so much better than what it used to be. It’s very inspiring!
The introduction of procedural content generation and AI will shape the way we make games in the future even more. It’s hard to tell exactly how, but it will certainly allow us to create larger, richer, more immersive and fun worlds and it will also help individuals to tell their stories more easily.”
You’ve been at Crytek for more than 10 years. What have you learned about game dev culture in that time?
“In general, the games industry is a great place and I can’t imagine doing something else. I enjoy the explorative aspect, the creativity and the people around quite a lot. There’s nothing like shipping a game after years of development and seeing thousands and sometimes even millions of people enjoying it. It’s a very dynamic profession, everything is always changing and developers, especially artists, constantly have to adapt.
I started working at Crytek in 2006 and got into game art a few years earlier. Throughout that time, my workflow changed quite a bit.
In the beginning all color and lighting information was hand-painted into a single texture map. At a later point normal maps became a thing. It was pretty confusing. It took me a while to fully understand why and how those weird looking purple textures can make your models look better. Suddenly we were all sculpting rocks and added an insane amount of detail on surfaces in ZBrush. Nowadays we use scanned objects or create materials procedurally. Some skills you gain over the years are there to last; some are only relevant for a generation or two.”
Where do you think the industry can be improved?
“This ever changing environment can be quite a challenging situation, especially for more experienced people. Keeping up with the latest tools and workflows while taking care of mentoring and managing young talent is hard work.
In games, people climb up the ladder fairly quickly and are often not well prepared for the increase of responsibility.
I would appreciate it if we as an industry would take it a bit more easily. We’ve still got a few decades of work ahead of us and we should not forget to enjoy the ride every now and then.”
Outro
And with those words, this is the end of ‘Asking the Experts’ part I. I hope you enjoyed the journey and learned a thing or two from the crème de la crème. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone that took part in this article series. I’m once again blown away by the generosity of artists and the willingness to share a thing or two with those wanting to learn. It’s an honour to be a part of.
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“Scuse me bruv, you got a spare lighter?” Yes, finally an overheard-in-public question I can actually answer yes to. Join me in Part II where I interview the developers more baked than a Dutch coffeeshop - it’s the Lighting Artists. Until then, take care, stay safe and happy hand-washing!
Kieran Goodson - Junior Environment Artist at Rebellion | Portfolio | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn