Environment concept art?

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PhilZero
Concept Artist
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:04 am UTC

Environment concept art?

Post by PhilZero »

I need to do some environment concepts for my portfolio so I'm wondering if there are any that need doing for the game.
It could be grand exterior establishing shots or atmospheric interiors, designs for specific levels you have in mind or blue sky concepts for completely new ones.

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velociostrich
Dragoon
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Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:24 pm UTC

Re: Environment concept art?

Post by velociostrich »

We can always use environment concept art.

Right now, the game lacks a singleplayer mode, so we just have a (admittedly fairly disparate) selection of multiplayer maps. The multiplayer maps are disparate namely because they are made by different individuals (whose individuality, of course, shines through), which is good and bad, and because we do not yet have a library of modular components with which to build maps, which is entirely bad.

If you have anything in mind for what a complete map might look like, go ahead! That's a tall order, however, so if you have an idea of what a map might look like overall—for example, what a particular, random room in a research labratory might look like, which would provide something for a mapper to extrapolate from for the rest of a map—you could draw a few concepts for different areas. What would be really awesome (but not strictly speaking required) is if you could then draw detail views (i.e., isometric and/or front/side/top views) of different components of a room such as obviously reusable things like cabinets and tables, or less-obvious things like repeating wall and floor panels. Take a look at the tutorial I linked above and the components that the author broke their map down into to get an idea of what I am talking about.

I do totally understand if you have some sort of assignment to do and you'd like to focus on environments first, so you could just start with those.

Here's some generic ideas that haven't really been explored:

  • Scientific research laboratory

  • Some sort of futuristic hotel / casino / shopping center complex (think Rainbow Six: Vegas set in the future, I guess)

  • A military base, perhaps with hangars full of spacecraft or whatever

  • Any kind of map with a highly discernible geographic feature. Think of the dam level from the original Half-Life. (A base at the bottom of a gorge, for example?)

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kharnov
Granger
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Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:54 pm UTC
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Location: New York City

Re: Environment concept art?

Post by kharnov »

For reference, our current maps have the following themes:

  • Yocto is an abandoned research facility deep under an ocean.

  • Plat23 is a sort of landing platform on what is presumably an asteroid or a rocky planet lacking an atmosphere.

  • Thunder is a power station on a barren red world with a turbulent sky.

  • Parpax is a mix of themes, but has a sort of industrial feel to it with its systems of vents and large storage units.

As velociostrich said, civilian centers would certainly be interesting. The city center map that we have in development is just one take on it, and there are plenty of other potential designs for one. Pevel has stated that he'd like to re-texture his old maps Perseus (a prison complex) and Antares (also a power station), so there's that.

I myself would like to see different environmental conditions. After all, in the futuristic setting of Unvanquished, humanity is spread across many different worlds. Try to think of some astronomy documentaries you might have seen, with their computer-generated images of distant, rocky worlds orbiting gas giants, or ice planets covered in frost that is presumably not water-based, or even planets like Venus with vicious climactic and chemical activity. Then, try to think of how humans would survive in those conditions, and what their facilities would need to look like. Also, try to think of why they're there. Why is the area valuable? Do people live there? Is there a valuable research or military or resource purpose?

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Viech
Project Head
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Re: Environment concept art?

Post by Viech »

velociostrich wrote:

Right now, the game lacks a singleplayer mode, so we just have a (admittedly fairly disparate) selection of multiplayer maps. The multiplayer maps are disparate namely because they are made by different individuals (whose individuality, of course, shines through), which is good and bad, and because we do not yet have a library of modular components with which to build maps, which is entirely bad.

This is totally true, and it bothers me, too. I'd love to see some coherency in our maps, as far as that is (still) possible. The complete lack of props leads to quake-ish and surrealistic maps, so at least they all have in common that they do not resemble any form of even remotely realistic complex. (We have to be undeceived here: Calling our maps a research station or a storage facility is like saying Doom 1 looks fotorealistic.) This kind of map design is generally a good thing for gameplay (layout, wallwalking, clipping, movement, …) but a bad thing for atmosphere. I'd give gameplay top priority but I think there is still ways to improve atmosphere and coherence of our current and future maps:

  • Most importantly, we need props. Basic props. There's no use for futuristic machines and fancy display stands as long as we don't have at least four different kinds of storage crates and two different door frames. The reason is quite simple: If you put a detailed desk lamp in a Quake map, it will look totally out of place. If you want to see detailed props inside maps the basic level of detail for any generic room (read: four walls and three crates) has to be a lot higher than it is now. I consider Doom 3 a very good example of proper prop™ usage in a futuristic environment.

  • We should introduce recurring elements that link our default maps to each other. If it wasn't for the teams bases, it would be rather hard to tell wether a map belongs to our game. The most easy approach is a common logo decal. Let's say our lore is about a company and our battles will be fought inside the cooperations facilitys; Having the company's logo on each crate, display and on many walls will help a lot with coherency and atmosphere with no negative impact on gameplay. This is another reason why we shouldn't aim for map-specific, high-detail props but for the most basic ones.

  • We need a texture artist badly. We currently have four texture sets with sufficient quality: eX, which is the base set behind Thunder and Parpax, was designed with Quake-style maps in mind. pk01 and pk02 (one of them used heavily on plat) have the potential to be used in more realistic looking maps but lack a few basic textures such as trims and are hard to combine with eX. TraK5 is important because it allows us to build some crates inside the editor but it doesn't ship with specular maps and isn't varied enough to base a map on it.

  • I think mappers follow their individual styles a lot more than concept artists or modelers simply because there are no map creation rules at all. It is a mere coincidence that our maps look remotely like they could be part of the same univserse and century. I believe that we could make them a lot better if we enforced some simple rules such as: There should be doors that lead out of the complex. If the map isn't clearly located under the surface, there should be windows and a skybox visible. Maps should (not) make use of light flares, particle effects, doors, alien slime, blood spatters, restrooms, chairs, cables, dark spots, safety girders, secret granger torture rooms, etc.

Sorry for hijacking the thread. Map and room concepts are always nice inspiration but I'd prefer prop, logo and texture concepts for now.

Responsible for: Arch Linux package & torrent distribution, Parpax (map), Chameleon (map texture editor), Sloth (material file generator), gameplay design & programming, artistic direction

Iciban
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 5:19 pm UTC

Re: Environment concept art?

Post by Iciban »

I agree, for environments. Modular is the way to go. Saves a lot of time. Who doesn't like lego blocks? =D

As for texturing. I dont' mind giving a hand.

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