Creating level layout

Chase

I'm playing some halo 4 and am analyzing each room I've come across and its made me think. What's the normal process behind creating the floors of levels when you have walls bending and curving all around? You cant just make a square floor while having the walls angle in diagonally. The ground floor in halo seems constructed out of modular planes so do you just extrude edges to make different floor shapes?

passerby

if halo 4 was made with the same in house engine as the previous halo games, the maps were actually all made in maya, so pretty much got all modeling tools available for building the layout.

to get the wall shapes and curves and stuff, they mostly just did a lot of lofting with curves.

Chase

What about the shape of the floors? Do you just use a square shape floor and put the walls on top even with the wastes geo laying underneath?

passerby

They could do that to save verts, or the could just add more geo, and snap the outer edge verts to the walls.

passerby

They could do that to save verts, or the could just add more geo, and snap the outer edge verts to the walls.
Or maybe floors were done first with extrusions and spline modeling and walls were extruded up, or there was just large modular wall set.

There are many ways to go about such a eniveriment.

Also for the metal floors and walls there are most likely just mapped to the uv space onto pre existing tilling mats and trims.

Angry Beaver

You'd be surprised how much "wasted geo" there is in games. Games usually build things as modular pieces then abuse the crap outta them hoping you wont notice the horrible penetration errors and the like. It's why things like dynamic self AO are huge in games because they help hide the mashing together of random props. If you pay attention it's hilariously obvious in some places in games like Borderlands 2 where you get round back of a house or look under a platform. Still I'll hold borderlands 1&2 as excellent examples of modular design.

joeriv

if you have UDK (or just download it, it isn't that much work), have a look at the maps that come with it, and just take some things apart, and start moving stuff around.
Like the 2 above me said, it quickly becomes very obvious how "interesting" everything is put together to create new/interesting stuff.

ScribbleHead

I've been studying Halo 4 as well, its interesting to see how they've achieved at heavy industrial look - with pretty much the same amount of geo as Reach. The integrated pipes in the assets are especially nice touches (Forward unto dawn interiors rocked my socks).

Chase

That all makes sense guys. I'll check out the assets in UDK. I have it downloaded but never really viewed the meshes. There's way to many ways to go about something when you're trying to learn the ropes haha. You only learn by practicing though