Looking for some Advice – Prop Artist to Level Artist

JasonLavoie

Hey all, I've been wanting to get some advice from the talented greentooths for awhile now, so hopefully I can take a bit of your time to get some feedback

For the last 2+ years I've been working as a Prop Artist, and for the most part it has been a solid learning experience creating both big and small assets for some fun projects. Recently though, I've been wondering what it would take to make the next step into becoming a Level / Environment Artist.

Now we don't exactly have this position at Digital Extremes, so it's harder to get a good base grasp on what I need to work on. Generally the process is we (prop artists) will create each asset and our Layout Artists will handle the set dressing from there.

I'm very interested in hearing how you talented folks took the plunge, what aspects did you focus on to help hone your skill sets into focusing on more of the bigger picture when it comes to environments.

Honestly, I haven't done a lot of environment work during my free time as of late and that is something that will be changing soon enough. I've lost some of the drive that helped me get into this awesome industry, but I think focusing on a new challenge will help light that fire back under my ass. I miss that feeling, but more importantly, I'm craving it.

TLTR - I'm very interested in hearing how you talented folks worked your way up into Level / Environment Artist roles and what key aspects helped you get there? If that is too broad of a question, I have some more focused questions I can follow up with.

Thanks again everyone, any and all help is always and very much appreciated.

You can tell me to go to hell if you want, I can take it! :poly122:

Zepic

Being a layout artist is more about composition, lighting and budgets.
Can you make a test map at work, use their assets and make up a cool map in your spare time?

chrisradsby

We do the same pretty much, our prop artists plans and creates the props together with us level artist. We then take the props and dress the levels.

Basically you're in charge of everything visually in the level. You are also key to bringing the whole level together, which could be constantly talking to level designers about designs that need to change to make it look more believable. Talking to the vfx-artists to make sure you get the particles you need, speaking to the animation team so that all your animated triggered events look good.

Sure most companies have a producer, or project manager to help but in the end they usually don't know all that much about the actual art that needs to be done.

It's about composition, believable layouts for the environments and good use of props.
Making sure all your key-places gets framed beautifully and make sure each environment tell a story. Usually put a "theme" on each environment that makes sense with the narrative. You work with the lighting (unless you have a dedicated lighting artist, we don't so the level artist had control). It's also about reading and following the Art Direction.

You also need to manage the budget, that means you need to have long and cumbersome discussions with the level design team to make sure that you have proper occluding walls, that you make sure you kick textures out of memory when you cross certain zones. You need to have texture memory in check, make sure your tri-count isn't through the roof and make sure that you don't go to high on drawcalls so the frame-rate is steady.

Which can be tricky if you have a situation where 16+ players or something runs around with rockets launchers and blast everything to bits. xD

It's very rewarding work. It's very stressful though, the bug-count usually is sky high when you have a level or 3 to take care of. =P

But yeah, keep asking questions!

Andreas

Modularity and planning is the big difference between both jobs.

McGreed

Also one of the differences is that you often don't make unique textures, but need to make modular/tiling textures, which can be slapped on to lot of different objects.

JasonLavoie

Is it more valuable to create a game space that the player can run through (such as an MP map)? or is better to do what I've done in the past, create an environment from scratch (as in do the concept, mesh work, texture work, lighting etc.)?

I'm not necessarily interested in creating the game space itself, more so interested in using grey box from LD and art it up from there. I figure each studio has their own way of approaching this, just checking

Thanks all for the awesome answers so far! Really appreciate it.

nathdevlin

With your skill level Jason Level art should be something you can take in your stride.

My experience of level art has been interesting to say the least. So far I've only worked on the Motorstorm series of games. The approach at Evolution was the environment artists created the initial level design (grey box), then iteratively worked up the art through the course of production.

Each artist was responsible for an environment and worked with other team members or outsourcers to get props made or we made them ourselves.

In general the artists were responsible for level design, asset creation, lighting and gameplay, optimisation, bug fixing the works. A very tough load at times to carry for a production but awesome experience to get a good feel for the whole process.

I hope this sheds some light on the role for you. As you mentioned each company has their own approach.

PS. we worked off a mix of concept art, reference and our own ideas.

ae.

Really awesome stuff, what i would really like to know is how much you guys work with designers while putting these levels together?

It seems to me most of the time whenever i have interacted with designers is that there more concerned with the "flow" and "fun" of the level and less about setting up nice shots and all around composition.

does this change depending on the type of game your making and if so why?

chrisradsby

We didn't always work directly with the designers, they handed us a greybox but something that needs to be realistic also need some artistic touch to make it happen and that was something that was usually lacking when LevelArt and LevelDesign didn't design the maps together from the start. Ended up with lots of "flat-ground designs" for easy placement of props which feels like a relic from "paper-designing" and ended up flat.

Basically you need to convince the Level designers to trust your designs as well. Make them realize that a beautiful and cool environment makes the gameplay more fun as well. This also means that you have to think vertically instead of just horizontally.

Considering flow and fun is very important ofcourse but people need to know that it's the whole package that gives the total experience. Gameplay might be king but we all now how boring it is to play games with super-generic awful looking environments. ^^