Do level designers in the industry use CAD or alternatives when designing levels? Or do they typically just graph paper? I'm trying to figure out if learning CAD would be beneficial or a waste of time. Thank you.
If you're designing something that complex and spatially critical without at least putting pencil to paper first for a quick scribble to get your thoughts organized, you're burning time and money and I question your process. I used to just start designing from the hip, or modeling for the sake of modeling, and it can be…
So there are no initial designs on graph paper? I thought you generally would come up with layout ideas on paper, and then block them out for game-testing after.
Autocad costs thousands per year. There is no game studio that will pay that much for a tool that can easily be replaced with photoshop or illustrator. I've heard of designers using google sketchup for doing 3D work. However most people would just use a game engine as others have mentioned.
Yea from what I've seen designers tend to do a quick sketch of the general idea of the map from top down and then build it in engine. (This is for multiplayer games) At the end of the day, the goal seems to be to get a playable version in engine as quickly as possible so the team can playtest the map, give feedback, and…
- Clarity over hand drawings (can draft clearer in a shorter amount of time) - Grid of dots can be set as snapping points - Grid spacing size can be changed - Allow drawn lines and shapes to be copied, stored, and modified in various ways so that designers can edit quickly without redrawing things by hand
CAD seems like an unnecessary stage added to the process. Sketching ideas down on paper is a commonly used pre-production strategy, as developers usually create a top down map of levels anyway for art and gameplay elements. This allows us to get a visualization of where things will go, what artist/designer is working on…
Sketching on a piece of paper is super fast: - you're not as concerned with throwing something away if it's a drawing versus an actual 3D work - less likely to get bogged down on the details - can do it literally anywhere and bring it anywhere - can jot down ideas and notes - etc. Sure you can do all of that on a computer,…