Crash Course in Environmental Art?

Emiraly

I'm wanting to become a Environmental Artist and I know mostly how to use Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop works (no real formal training), but I've been training myself as well in UnrealEd3 copies of Gears and UT3 along with Source SDK. The one thing I get confused about is what I should worry about when modeling --

What I do understand is...

Zones, Antiportals, BSPs, Occlusion, Collision physics, Distance Fog, Dynamic vs. Static Lighting, Object/Tangent Normals, Smoothing Groups (Soften/Hardened Edges), DecalActors, DetailNormals, Tileable texturing, terrain, what the texture nodes do in UnrealEd3 Mat Editor... I'm sure there is more, just because I realize that I'll think I know a lot about something, but then miss something obvious.

Things like UV mapping (I seemed to have discovered a few weeks ago that cutting straight through a flat surface screws up the normals and causes a darkly lit side and a brightly lit side from some angles), textures vs. polycounts, or I guess what I'm asking is if there is stuff I left off the list tell me so I can look it up or check out some DVDs, websites or something.

I've looked through the list under this forum a bit and i'm still looking for stuff I don't know yet and it becomes a bit daunting, any help would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. Thanks to those who posted in the Rectangular UVs thread, it was immensely helpful!

P.P.S. What are the most popular game engines? I know UE3, Source SDK, Torque have been mentioned.

crazyfingers

Hmmm, no real crash course for this kind of stuff. You gotta just spend years practicing.

It's good that you have a firm start in UT3 though, a lot of artists lack that.

Just keep practicing, do tutorials, and do your own stuff too. It's important to do both. Also, enter contests like the upcoming unearthly challenge. Just being part of the community for that kind of thing really gets you into the spirit of level and art design.

Just don't expect to find any "crash courses". Level design is a lot more complex than some people give it credit. There are an immense number of things to consider. It's often times good to just look at what other have done and make that "your own" and put your own twist on it.

Any way you slice it, it's not easy. But try to pick a specialty. If you're kickin' arse at making assets, focus on that. If you're really good at putting levels together, have a techinical mind and are good at scripting in game events, join a team and make the levels for the artists.

There are many avenues to success, but they all take lots of hard work. Good luck though .

Oh and the UT3 editor is a great editor to know. There's another generation of it on the horizon so it will certainly remain viable.

The crisis engine is also good from what i hear.

Just learn one or two, and get really good with it. Once you know one, it's not hard to acclimate yourself to another.

Ark

Alot of the stuff you posted is more related to a Level Designer, than an Environment Artist.


There's no really crash courses like said above, but there are some great websites and DVD/Books that really help.


[ame]http://www.amazon.com/3D-Game-Environments-Create-Professional/dp/0240808959[/ame]

This book gives a good rundown on environmental art and the differences between an Env Artist and a Level Designer.


http://eat3d.com is a great start for modeling/texturing/workflow for props and set-peices.


Jeremy Birn as a great book on lighting that is a must have for any Env Artist imo:
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Lighting-Rendering-Jeremy-Birn/dp/0321316312/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251476460&sr=1-1[/ame]

Ryno

Yah, kind of what Ark said. Environment artists make buildings, trees, terrain, and props look pretty. Level designers try to make gameplay work well using knowledge of "fun-ness" and a variety of more technical tricks. They may have substantial influence on the look of things, or they might not.