Environment Art in the Game Industry

A Guide to Rich and Realistic Environments Using Substance Designer

Henry Kelly

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000471991
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

This book explains the fundamentals of being a talented games Environment Artist by outlining the key considerations that most Environment Artists tend to forget. Focusing on the use of Substance Designer to create rich, colourful and realistic environments, the book shows how to improve storytelling and how to think outside the box.

Following a step-by-step process to create realistic, state-of-the-art materials that help bring game narratives and worlds to life, this book provides a new perspective on Environment Art by covering the latest, most creative industry techniques using Substance Designer.

This book should appeal to new and aspiring games Environment Artists, as well as those looking to increase their knowledge of Substance Designer. The final stages of this book give a sneak peek into creating foliage in the game industry.

Henry Kelly is the Lead Artist at REWIND, a VR and AR studio with the vision of a better future for VR and AR.

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.1201/9781003147497-1

1.1 My Professional Climb

I set myself one goal in life, to work in the game industry; over the years, I have developed and learned new skills regarding game development and art. I started out 3D modelling when I was just 14 years old for a virtual chat room/game called There (www.there.com). I then moved my skills over to another virtual chat room after around a year called Second Life, www.secondlife.com (which is still very booming). Over the years, I developed my ability to create 3D models and textures, it also helped that I sold my assets in Several Games and Websites. After a few years, whilst I was in the British Army, I decided to keep honing my skills as a 3D artist utilizing any chance that I had. I started Developing and Producing assets to sell on websites such as www.turbosquid.com and www.cgtrader.com.

I started freelancing for Small Indie studios around the age of 18, freelancing for a small team creating a game called Dinosaur Battlegrounds, which was quite fun. I then started working side by side with a Lead Producer at a Microsoft studio; whilst this was not directly involved with Microsoft, we were developing new techniques for creating 3D foliage and assets with Photogrammetry. (This was before Photogrammetry was as big in the industry.) Because I worked heavily on Photogrammetry with Andrew, I eventually started building my portfolio, which gained my foot into the game industry where I started at my first AA Studio at Gymcraft where I worked on the VR Title, FreeDriverVR, which was a VR fitness game now used across gyms all over China and Japan.

I then moved into AAA studio work at Rebellion Developments (www.rebellion.com).

I worked on multiple titles and techniques whilst I was working at Rebellion; I also improved my foliage production abilities quite a lot here. My responsibilities were to assist the Strange Brigade team towards the end of production by creating assets for cut scenes (a parachute and a giant door).

Some of my foliage was used on this project too.

During my course of working on Strange Brigade, I also worked on the final DLC for Sniper Elite 4 where I created small assets for gameplay purposes and other assets too.

I started working on the pre-production team for Zombie Army 4 and had my own level to work on; during this time, I was also working closely with the rest of my art team to develop new techniques with both Photogrammetry and Substance Designer/Painter.

After finding out that my mother-in-law had only a few months left to live after being diagnosed with cancer, I had to leave the studio which was one of my biggest regrets. I was approached by a studio called Offworld Industries where they offered me a job as a Senior Environment Artist working on games such as Squad and Post Scriptum.

Before starting this position, I was told that the Lead Artist was fired and the Lead Producer stepped down, and so the position was no longer available, but I was offered a lead role instead. I moved to Canada, because I could not do this, but I worked for a year on Squad and helped produce and finalize maps for AAA release.

After working a year, I decided to take a hiatus from the game industry and started teaching at a university in London at BA and MA levels. Here, I really improved my skills and learned quite a lot whilst also teaching students how to improve their artistic abilities and pay attention to the smaller details that make artists within this industry harder to come by.

Now, upon finishing this book, I am currently the Lead Artist at REWIND, a VR & AR Studio with the vision of a better future for VR & AR.

1.2 What Is an Environment Artist?

As an Environment Artist in the game industry, we face challenges daily. The reasons why we face these challenges are that there is not one area that is specific to an Environment Artist, and we usually have a ‘specific skill’ or an ‘area’ that we are specialized in. In my case, I am a ‘Principal Foliage Artist’, which means that although I am a Lead Environment Artist, I also specialize in foliage. Any principal artists usually have the most amount of knowledge of their speciality within that specific area.

Environment Art is one of the best areas to work in the game industry (from a biased perspective) because of the simple fact that as an Environment Artist, there are multiple areas covered on a daily basis. For example, working on Zombie Army 4, I was in charge of set dressing a specific level. I was also in charge of creating all of the textures/materials and the majority of assets for that level, and so to break it down, Environment Artists should have a great understanding of material workflow, set dressing and storytelling and should have an artistic eye for detail.

Before we go deeper into the role of an Environment Artist, I would like to clarify a few ‘words’ used.

1.3 What Is Set Dressing?

Set dressing is what an Environment Artist’s main duty within any studio; once a Level Designer has ‘blocked out’ a level, they will then pass it across to an Environment Artist who will take the blocking out and add details, adding furniture, foliage, props and other elements to the environment and finalizing it into a full-fledged, detailed world.

Here, I will be using Rebellions images of Strange Brigade:

In the image below, you can see a White-boxed level; this is a level that is just metrically blocked out by a Level Designer to test gameplay techniques and ensure smooth transitions throughout the entire level.

After a Level Designer has gone through this process, it is handed off to an Environment Artist who will be solely (for the most part) responsible for creating the final looking scene.

In the image below, you can see how the process will develop over time: the first point of call to an Environment Artist is to add all of the scenery elements, buildings, trees, grass, bushes, cliffs, rock faces, water, etc. Then the Level Designer will come back in and add more information and details into the scene (the green areas represent areas where the player can ‘climb’ or ‘vault’).

After a while of working on materials and textures, adding more details and changing areas to look good, you will eventually end up with something that looks like the image below. This is how the majority of the set dressing is completed.

Another very nice feature from the White box to finish is this series of images below.

As you can see, throughout the process, different elements and also assets will change, but the majority of what you see in a level is created by an Environment Artist.

In other game studios such as Ubisoft, you will often find that the Environment Artist’s role is broken down into a ‘World Builder’ role, whereas most of the work you will do is just simply set dressing scenes; this means that you do not have to create assets or materials. However, this can sometimes become dull and limit your artistic abilities.

CHAPTER 2 What Is PBR?

DOI: 10.1201/9781003147497-2

2.1 What Is PBR (Physically-Based Rendering)?

Just before we jump into breaking down what a material is, it is important to understand some of the words and context. So we need to understand more about PBR, ‘physically-based rendering’.

PBR is an approach in computer graphics that more accurately lights and renders materials and objects as they would appear in the real world.

PBR was created to react in better lighting circumstances by eliminating shadows and highlights from textures, and instead, drawing/rendering these eliminations through computer software. Previously, the older technique involved had a ‘diffuse’ texture that would hold colour and shadow/highlight information for display/render.

See the image below:

As you can see, the image on the left is a diffuse texture, an older method to rendering without PBR software; this technique holds the shadow and highlights information on the texture; you can see the shadows in the cavity and the brick highlights from the sun. However, on the right side you can see that all we have is colour information, which allows us to change the direction of the sun within the game engine, thus changing the shadow and highlight direction on the surface.

Let us take a look at the more technical side of this process, so that we can deeply understand what we are doing before we dive into Substance Designer.

The following is adapted from the ‘Basic Theory of Physically-Based Rendering’ by Jeff Russell (https://marmoset.co/posts/basic-theory-of-physically-based-rendering/) (used with permission).

2.2 Diffusion and Reflection

Diffusion and reflection – also known as ‘diffuse’ and ‘specular’ light, respectively – are two terms describing the most basic separation of surface/light interactions. Most people will be familiar with these ideas on a practical level but may not know how they are physically distinct.

When light hits a surface boundary, some of it will reflect – that is, bounce off – from the surface and leave heading in a direction on the opposing side of the surface normal. This behaviour is very similar to a ball thrown against the ground or a wall – it will bounce off at the opposite angle. On a smooth surface, this will result in a mirror-like appearance. The word ‘specular’, often used to describe the effect, is derived from the Latin for ‘mirror’ (it seems that ‘specularit...