General steps for procedural environment

mobpapst

Hello guys,

iam on it to create a very cool and military /sci-fi indoor enviroment. Iam knowing the techniques of creating this stuff but iam quite not sure how to start and plan an enviromental piece.

I wanted to create something in this style type:





I know that there are some experienced enviromental artist in here. Do you guys have sth like a 10 steps plan how to start, plan and work for an enviroment like this? Tipps and tricks would help me a lot.

Thanks to all

neoshaman

Well you must conduct an analysis of objects/feature/material placements along boundaries/areas. With that analysis you describe your scene from general concepts to details by specifying the parameter you need and their range (how small/big the hangar can be). Then you define how parameters interact with each other (for exemple small room don't spawn hole in the center because hole must be this big).

Basically You must go through the same process in which you study an image to reproduce it how create a style guide. It's the same process you do to create modular asset with the extra encoding of the style guide to the machine. It's great to do hierarchically from general aspect to details (stressing this point again).

Procedural generation is generally two kind of functions:

1. The description function
It describe an object and how it is assemble (think create a character in game like the sims or skyrim for example), basically it holds archetype of objects. Think of things like Css or html, they are basically procedural description, except with hard coded data.

2. The generation function
Basically it's the function that have the logic in which it feed the description function that manipulate the parameter of the archetypes instead of using hard data. That's where most people fumble as they use pure randomness on parameters, which lead to chaotic and formless composition. This the key to great procedural generation and where the artist add her "touches", it tell the system how to compose and assemble objects to create meaning or emotions.

Eric Chadwick

Great post neoshaman.


http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentModularity

Try starting with this link:
Visually Appealing Building Guide - by Christopher Albeluhn

mobpapst

Thanks for this great replys. It helped me a lot how to start

Greetz