When i was working at Stormfront on EA's The Two Towers game, we came up with a good deisgn system for the levels. First the level designer would make a blue print of the level on graph paper. He would indicate height of the terain, positions of buildings, and locations of characters. A lelv modeler would scan the drawing in and lay it over a flat 3d planne, then raise the emsh to the correct height and place in basic shapes to stand in for house and trees. The we owuld throw in soem basic lights. After that we would take 12 or so screen shots of various locatiosn in the level and then draw over them and if we had time color them as well. Then the set and props modelers would take these drawing and build the whole level as closely to the drawings as possible. It worked out pretty good. It was my job to makse sure the final level looked as close to the drawings and aintigns that EA approved as possible. It was fun but that project was very stressful.
it's cool how easy you explain the creation of a level with its shapes and stuff.
ReplyDeleteEspecially the last painting looks cool. It's the perfect visual comparison of 2 pictures comibined in one.
How long is the process of what you've told especially in that level?
Hey, Bill...I know we talked about this approach for Full Throttle 2. Didn't realize you successfully put it into practice. Very cool.
ReplyDeleteThe level designer spent 3-5 days on the map, then the 3d modeler spent two to three days making the level in 'gray box' form with the map as a texture. then the level designer would play the level in the game for a few days and make some tweaks with the 3d modeler. Then when the level designer was happy it would go to the level model team, made up of three guys. one would do terrain, the other two FX, props and sets like buildings. Then the level design would script in the enemies and triggers and the like. Took about 6-8 weeks form start to finish. it was a pretty intense assembly line kind of process because we were under an hard deadline to be out in time with the movie.
ReplyDeleteSo on Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine it was too top down in production, and too free form. Also the levels designer also made the level models and not all of them were good modelers- some were good designers and weak modelers and others were good at both, and other not good modelers so we had a very inconsistent feel from level to level. So i proposed this process in a postmortem and got some good feedback, and Larry and I never got a chance to implement it for FT Payback. But it became the de facto way to get TT done in time. Worked out well. We won awards for art direction and graphics.
ReplyDeleteKeep sharing such ideas in the future as well. I am glad to came here! Best of luck for the next! SEO Company in Pakistan
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