Need advice: building level design / lighting artist portfolio from scratch.
polycounter lvl 9
Hi, not sure if Polycount is the best place to ask this kind of question, but I am going to give it a shot anyways 
A little backstory: I've been doing maps and mods since I was little, maybe 10 years old or even younger. Did a lot of levels using editors for games like C&C, Warcraft, Starcraft... At the age of 18 my first job was designing levels for fairly big MMO, where I was working for 2 years 'till the project was frozen. By one reason or another I had drifted away from level design. Next 6 years (I'm 26 now) I was working as 3d generalist, doing rigging, animation, mocap, 3d models, etc. When I was starting with art, I liked the idea of doing it, but wasn't really enjoying the process. I thought it is because I was doing crap art, so I kept pushing and became good enough to make a living with it. Now when I am decent artist, I have to admit that I hate doing art, heh. Each new asset I have to do makes me miserable. I have decided to do what I liked as a kid.
Long story short, I want to get back to the roots, as they say. I have 3 things in mind which I can probably combine into one profession. That is:
1) level design itself
2) quest writing / design
3) (optional) lighting
To clarify what I am talking about, by level design I mean:
- creating a plan in Photoshop, design gameplay related elements of the level, etc. In other words, it is somewhat like game design on local scale,
- communicating with the team in order to make it possible to create this level,
- making quests and story if needed, participate in narrative design to some extend,
- doing placeholder assets if required,
- decorating environments with assets provided by 3d artists,
- sculpting and texturing landscapes,
- and my primary interest is RPGs and MMOs. Never had experience doing shooters, and anyways they usually need environment artists, not level designers per se.
Now, finally, here are my concerns I wish to address.
1) First of all, is what I have described can be a good choice for a profession? I mean, do game studios still need this kind of level designers, or environment 3d modellers is the thing now?
2) Guess the best way to update my portfolio is to join an indie team, probably one that is going to kickstarter? I am no longer into maps and mods and prefer working with industry tools like Unity or UDK, probably. It doesn't worth the effort, I believe, to learn some editor like the one that ships with Starcraft II.
3) Third concern: will it make me more valuable as a level designer to be able to do work of a lighting artist? I like doing it and my extensive knowledge of 3d graphics gives me good technical background. But does it really worth learning lighting in depth as a level designer?
4) And last one: how should my lighting portfolio look? Lets say I am not in a team and don't have beautiful textured level to do my lighting magic and therefore can't show it in my portfolio. What other things I can do that will make decent lighting portfolio?
Thanks for reading and for any input!
A little backstory: I've been doing maps and mods since I was little, maybe 10 years old or even younger. Did a lot of levels using editors for games like C&C, Warcraft, Starcraft... At the age of 18 my first job was designing levels for fairly big MMO, where I was working for 2 years 'till the project was frozen. By one reason or another I had drifted away from level design. Next 6 years (I'm 26 now) I was working as 3d generalist, doing rigging, animation, mocap, 3d models, etc. When I was starting with art, I liked the idea of doing it, but wasn't really enjoying the process. I thought it is because I was doing crap art, so I kept pushing and became good enough to make a living with it. Now when I am decent artist, I have to admit that I hate doing art, heh. Each new asset I have to do makes me miserable. I have decided to do what I liked as a kid.
Long story short, I want to get back to the roots, as they say. I have 3 things in mind which I can probably combine into one profession. That is:
1) level design itself
2) quest writing / design
3) (optional) lighting
To clarify what I am talking about, by level design I mean:
- creating a plan in Photoshop, design gameplay related elements of the level, etc. In other words, it is somewhat like game design on local scale,
- communicating with the team in order to make it possible to create this level,
- making quests and story if needed, participate in narrative design to some extend,
- doing placeholder assets if required,
- decorating environments with assets provided by 3d artists,
- sculpting and texturing landscapes,
- and my primary interest is RPGs and MMOs. Never had experience doing shooters, and anyways they usually need environment artists, not level designers per se.
Now, finally, here are my concerns I wish to address.
1) First of all, is what I have described can be a good choice for a profession? I mean, do game studios still need this kind of level designers, or environment 3d modellers is the thing now?
2) Guess the best way to update my portfolio is to join an indie team, probably one that is going to kickstarter? I am no longer into maps and mods and prefer working with industry tools like Unity or UDK, probably. It doesn't worth the effort, I believe, to learn some editor like the one that ships with Starcraft II.
3) Third concern: will it make me more valuable as a level designer to be able to do work of a lighting artist? I like doing it and my extensive knowledge of 3d graphics gives me good technical background. But does it really worth learning lighting in depth as a level designer?
4) And last one: how should my lighting portfolio look? Lets say I am not in a team and don't have beautiful textured level to do my lighting magic and therefore can't show it in my portfolio. What other things I can do that will make decent lighting portfolio?
Thanks for reading and for any input!
Replies
Usually level designers are managed by the design department in a studio, not the art department. It's hard to get hired as a designer unless you have a lot of experience, or show a bunch of excellent work.
In my experience, junior designers are usually promoted from within, from QA or interns or environment artists or producers or technical artists, someone who shows an aptitude for it. I've seen people get into Design by volunteering to help out, or designing things in their extra time, and getting their work noticed by one of the Leads.
It would be great if you did some level design with UDK or Unity. Use the existing assets, and show off your game flow skills.
Lighting is an excellent skill to add to your portfolio. Lighting is often a storyteller and an aid in moving gameplay through a level. So it's a valuable skill for designers.
I don't understand the last question. If you're designing levels for an existing game, you're using existing assets. So you can concentrate on layout and lighting. Lighting has a huge impact on the visual quality of a level, and can make even mediocre models look teh awesome.
I have some before/afters on my MMO portfolio page, might give you something to reference. When I started there I was just hired to paint terrains and arrange meshes in them. But I took the initiative to learn the lighting system inside and out, talking with the graphics programmers who worked on it, and helping them improve the toolset so I could make things look better. I ended up touching all the lighting in the game, because the Leads saw what I could do with it.