timothy dries - the environment artist’s blog

You all know his blog work, but what you may not know is how it started and why. In this article we talk with Timothy Dries about his Environment Artist’s Blog and how he gives back to the community that helped him grow as an Artist. Various topics covered include project scoping, texel density, advice for portfolios and environment art breakdowns.

Introduction

I'm Timothy Dries, Environment/Prop artist from Belgium and currently working for Ubisoft Berlin and coming up to my 5th year in the games industry. I've worked on games such as Planet Coaster, Jurassic World: Evolution and Planet Zoo.

I always had a love for creating my own worlds and scenes and this drove me to draw a lot so I always thought that the natural switch would be to start put as a concept artist and that's what I thought going into school too. But I started exploring 3D in university first and really loved getting that one step closer of creating worlds and actually bring able to walk into it yourself.

The first game ever I can't really remember, I do remember playing my own imagined RPG's with friends in a small forest before I ever had my own game console. But what I do remember is my mum teaching me how to play Quake 2 and inputting a lot of cheats to give me infinite ammo and weapons and that's probably where it sort of began. I also got into the MMO genre with a game called Tibia, which is to date still the game I remember the most from this period, because it worked so well together with all the times I was playing my own RPG's in the forest with friends. Plus it also remains the most hardcore experience in my gaming career with heavy penalties on death and an open world PVP system that really tests your nerves, especially as your first online experience, so that helps it make more memorable too!

Environment Art Blog

It started as a way to record my progress and to put some extra pressure on myself to keep a more focused and regular schedule. I liked this idea of having this public diary of all the things that I was doing. Another thing that came a bit later was the addition of the tips and inspiration section to share some of my knowledge and inspirational pieces and attract people.

As for changing my workflow, you bet it did, there are so many things that I learned when doing these things that I keep going into thing thinking I knew a fair bit about it and then being pushed into a new way of thinking when doing some research about that topic.

And for keeping this up every week? That's definitely an interesting question right there because there are moments when it takes more time then usual just because of the topic and a determination to only add and condense the info given to its most useful form (which is also why I rarely deviate from the 4 steps because that forces me to think within those boundaries). So there have been times when I was caught off guard, didn't properly prepare and then had a last minute rush to get it done.

There are moments when I feel less motivated to work on this blog for sure, but then I think back to the few interactions I have with people that say that it really helped them out and I keep going. Also because I have been doing it for so long, it has become a habit too.

The last thing that really helped is optimising the way that I work on these by always thinking of new ideas when I commute and put them in a large backlog on my Notion (which allows me to work offline while I commute to and from work) so at this point I can just look at that list and pick the next topic I want to tackle and start systematically filling it up.

Difficult Topics

The hardest topics are the more technical ones that require me to really be careful about specifics and with the format that I choose being so limited (on purpose), it’s sometimes super hard to cram all that information into the little sections. It’s also because these technical topics are more tricky to explain in general and I want to be as clear as possible with as few mistakes as possible.

So for instance I have a backlog of 6 to 7 different tip sections on Baking alone, but I just keep fact checking with people just to get it absolutely right because this was one of those things for me personally that really slowed my progression because I overcomplicated baking for myself when I was starting out and I had to go through it multiple times before I really got to grips with it.

One of the ones that I have posted and was tricky to get right for me was one about texel density, as I knew how it worked in my mind, but then explaining it technically and in way that other people could clearly understand it. So this again meant doing a lot of research and looking at some other tutorials and doing some experiments for myself before cramming all that information into one small blogpost with just 4 steps.

One thing I also learned by doing all of these blogpost is seeing these topics with fresh eyes again and trying to deliver them in a way that is more deliverable to beginners and not just people in the industry themselves.

Common Mistakes in Young Artists Portfolios

The quality bar is climbing so rapidly for students especially from the school that I have been keeping somewhat track of, I can't believe what students are making these days, quality wise. It feels like the programs are way more easy to get into (as they should be!) and getting to grips with all the more technical stuff is becoming less of a burden for most people and levels the playing field when it comes to the technical side of things. This allows the focus to be more on the artistic side again.

This means is that I'm personally looking for storytelling within the environments, small little details that hint at there being more than just this environment or asset being here. This can range from small personal inscriptions on individual assets to how the scene is constructed or how props are laid out to convey a story. Another point that I will be looking out for is how the composition is constructed and how that person has trained his or her artistic insight.

So to improve on these points people should focus on making environments (preferably smaller more detailed ones than larger more generic ones) that showcase a strong focus on solid fundamentals such as composition, use of colour, light usage and storytelling to name a few. The other more technical aspects can be taught more easily.

Composition, Light & Colour

I made a bunch of annotations on the overpaint above which explains some of the design thinking that I do during the construction of the scene, however please keep in mind that I like the iteration of it and also why I like building my environments in a modular fashion. So for this scene I redid the entire scene about three times when I was building and iterating on the individual assets.

Colour and light are not something that I define from all the way at the beginning, which is something that would save me a lot of time but I like the creative freedom that Unreal Engine offers with iteration, the thing that I knew was that I wanted to construct the scene around the last place where survivors from something settled and are trying to survive.

For this I stayed away from making it all doom and gloom and going the more traditional route and going for more “you finally made it to this place and survived the trip”. This is why I eventually picked sunrise for this scene to give the feeling of hope that comes with the sunrise as well as creating a nice contrast with all the other colours in the scene too (the blues and more dull colours for example).

Restarting My Career

This might be the toughest question out of these because I genuinely don't really feel like there is anything that I would do differently because I tend to keep looking forward instead of looking back. I'm a firm believer that all those things and experiences, even the ones that aren't really relevant on the surface contribute to your personal development and the way you see things.

For example I spent the first couple of years in high school studying Electro-Mechanics and this gave me an interest in mechanics and how things work. In my later years of high school when I switched to focus more on art as that was something I was still spending a lot of time on, I took the leap to an Advertisement and Design School. That then gave me an interest in design, typography, photography and other things before I moved onto University to get into Concept Art which seemed like a natural continuation because I was always drawing in my little sketchbook, but I ended up falling in love with 3D instead.

So really I look at this from a really positive angle where even the things that weren't directly applicable to stuff I'm doing now, helped to shape me into the person that I am, even if it's not the most focused form and it made the journey towards the end result a bit longer.

Artistic Improvement

Currently I'm more focused on hard surface and design because this is something I really want to grow into, really learning how to design things and think about how they work more (this might be the culmination of the two things that I did in high school). Which is also why I'm also using this scene as a prelude to get into just that, really making me think about how these different systems interact with each other in a real functioning environment. Another thing I want to get into is doing some more world building and getting into some bigger stories to eventually start creating my own worlds, but this is definitely something I intend to do in the long run as I move more and more towards the creative and less towards the technical side of things.

The most recent addition to my personal skillset is Blender, which I'm really loving! But it might be time to settle down and refine other parts of the pipeline and workflow, because I started out with 4 years of 3ds max then another 3 with Maya and now Blender, so I think I'll stick with this one for a while. However I have been interested more and more in Houdini for the procedural side of things and just experiment and do crazy artsy stuff in it. I have dabbled in it a bit but nothing promising so far!

Another thing I really want to give a try is do more real-time rendered stuff inside of Blender's Eevee renderer which looks amazing, there is so much to do in so little time though!

Future of the Industry

Houdini is an amazing tool and has already changed the way Ubisoft handles terrain for multiple titles, you can find this in a nice GDC talk a while back which I'll just link here too.

I mean its already amazing with all the procedural tools that people have been using has opened up new ways of thinking about how people create in new ways and it's great to see people pushing it in different directions. As for Environment Artists, it totally depends on where you see yourself and what of studio you are aiming for for your own career, because smaller studio's might require a different skillset compared to your larger AAA studios, but I see those tools as new tools in the belt. Because it’s not what the program itself does, it's what you do with the program that matters. There are people that use Houdini for example and make stuff that might not be that good or useful but for other creatives it might unlock something that they have been looking for for a while.

What I am personally interested in for us Environment Artists is the convergence of film and games where films start to use Unreal Engine and with the growth of tools and resources for creating your own environments such as the new update to the Quixel assets. The future is looking awesome with all this innovation.

Seeking Feedback

There are times and places for feedback, I would suggest only to ask for feedback if you are feeling stuck. It's also okay to not ask for feedback as for some people it will even worsen the position they are in because the information they get from people might be overwhelming too.

As for filtering for feedback, I would to look for people that have a piece that is finished and of good quality, showing that they know what they are talking about, especially at the beginning.

Once you start training your artistic eye and become familiar with your own work and the goals you have set for yourself that's when you can start to open up to more and more people because at this time you already know what to filter out and what not to.

But for most people these days it will probably boil down to hanging out in the Discord channels like the DiNusty Empire and asking feedback there. Of course there are still the more traditional ways of getting feedback through forums for example and the biggest one of these is probably still Polycount, which is what I was using in the couple of times that I was posting my stuff online in my "early days".

Personally Seeking Feedback

Actually this is really interesting, because I don't really seek feedback that much at all anymore, I like making my art in my way and in my bubble, the closest I come to getting feedback on my personal work is that from time to time I ask a person at work to give me quick notes of feedback, but these moment don't come that often.

I know this might sound so counter intuitive from my end but in my normal professional work day I already deal with going back and forth that I like to be in my own bubble for my personal work and just iterate in my own way.

These days I just like posting on there so I can spread my projects around and maybe get some new ideas but I feel it's different than posting looking for feedback. However there was a time when I was getting started that I went onto Polycount fairly often and got my feedback that way, but after a while I just forgot to keep up with it and noticed that the feedback wasn't all that useful anymore or just to be quite honest it was too late to implement for my personal taste too.

Project Scoping

This is a really good topic, I actually did a post about this one too, but there might still be more meat on that bone and would actually be really great to dive into more deeply.

Start small, don't over-complicate the scene for yourself and build fail-safes into your project. Fail-safes are stages in the project where you can basically call the project done, this meaning for example that if you want to make a detective bureau, like the interior for a room that you start with the desk, fully complete that and then make a chair that matches that style and so on. This means that you will be able to call the project done after finishing the desk, chair and lamp, and turn it into a simple diorama instead of starting with a big room and then getting overwhelmed with all the stuff you need to create.

Inspiration

Most of the time I find inspiration in real-life with travelling and photography, which I really love to do when we go on vacation too as that is the best time to really get out the camera and take a ton of photographs, especially recently when coming back from a trip from multiple cities in multiple countries, that’s where I really find my Inspiration and get time to recharge too.

Other sources include books, photography books and the work of other people, especially when looking around for people to share on my blogposts there is always something in that moment that's really inspiring to me.

Last little source of inspiration, which may sound weird is my own blog, because it sort of forces me to keep a lookout for awesome work and artists that I might want to feature on my blog too. There are a bunch of them that I have saved over a large period of time and keeps growing.

It all depends on the project that I'm working on, so for my current project I'm extremely wary of smaller design details such as panelling, bolts and other details that make hard-surface designs look interesting.

Future Work

More environment art, but I'm currently rethinking in what shape and form it will be. The reason for this is that more and more I start to think that my creative side is being buried by all the technical baggage and overthinking that I tend to do when it comes to this all my personal work, so in the future I want to move more and more towards being creative again.

This might mean that more and more I'll be looking for creative additions to my personal work and try to trim the fat on the pipeline as much as possible, but I cannot say for certain! So more on that in the future.

Advice and Tips

The main thing that I would love to add here is that a lot of people love to look for feedback and get help, there is also a lot of value in doing things in your own way too because it helps you to build your own way of seeing things and in the end art is and will always be something personal and you don't need to worry about all the people that don't like it, all the social media likes and anything of the sort. If you are true to yourself and your art there will always be people that love it!

Again, this might not be the perfect thing to say to people starting out and wanting to get into the AAA industry because there you need to.

Additionally there is a ton of other info that can be found on my blog, so if you are interested in getting more info you can always head on over to my blog, or get all the blog posts in one handy format through my Patreon and show some support if you want too, there are a ton of tips that I have written over the last couple of years and it keeps growing, so if you are looking for more then head on over there.

Outro

Thanks for having me for this article, in the meantime I have been busy pushing my own website for Environment Artists, that also includes all the blog content and more, so feel free to check out website https://www.beyondextent.com/ or our Patreon where you can find a compilation filled with tips and tricks really useful for people trying to get into or are getting to becoming an Environment Artist. Also, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. And again, thanks for having me!