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GuildWars 2 Environment Process

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Hello fellow Polycounters,

My name is Jason Stokes and I've been lurking around here for years. I wanted to share some of the work I've done on GuildWars 2 and also explain some of the process. I love the community here and I've learned quite a bit over the years so I figured I should probably start contributing :)

I was at ArenaNet for about 8 and a half years working mostly on environment art and prototyping some of the more ambitious areas in GuildWars2. Prototyping was our way of pitching big ideas to the game designers by actually having the environments working in the game engine. It was a lot easier to get buy off on these ideas once people saw them working. This process evolved into a weird hybrid of concepting and production and became an integral part of the development process. I worked closely with Daniel Dociu the art director and often times we would start blocking things in the level based from very loose sketches and then refine the concept simultaneously with the asset creation. Because of this paralleled approach the end result evolves quite a bit from the original idea and usually for the better.

I assembled all of the areas below in our editor and created a lot of the core assets. Many people helped and I'll try and give specific credit where appropriate. Also most of these areas have changed in the final game so if you go searching for any specific vistas you'll be out of luck.

Also most of this work is 3-5 years old so please forgive some of the outdated tech.


here is a video portfolio of some of the finished prototypes.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDbJPD00tH8&list=HL1348168461&feature=mh_lolz"]Jason Stokes GuildWars 2 Environment Art Portfolio - YouTube[/ame]

This first batch is an early process breakdown of the Charr architecture and city. Here is a Daniel Dociu concept accompanied by some of the photo ref he used for his piece. The photo reference is usually just as valuable as the concept itself and comes in handy when hes not around to answer questions.


CharrProcess01.jpg

A close up of the finished model. Most of the facade detail was created using layered alpha which is expensive because of the overdraw but is very versatile for creating new ornaments and details on other parts of the building.

CharrProcess02.jpg

a quick breakdown of the textures. Again built with modularity in mind so that the textures can be used throughout the city.

CharrProcess03Textures.jpg

once the materials are defined building variants are quick and easy. usually we would make 3-4 variants per structure.

CharrProcess03.jpg

Another shot of the structure in a test map. Always try and get your assets in the editor as soon as possible even if it's only a grey box for scale. If you're not actually running around and evaluating the prop up close you won't be able to prioritize the assignment correctly.

CharrProcess03b.jpg

Here is a quick city layout sketch that Levi Hopkins provided me. He used to be on the prototype team with me before he switched to concept artist so he understands the trenches.

CharrProcess04.jpg

A shot of the DeathSta... I mean Black Citadel :) Just rough enough to evaluate scale and silhouette.

CharrProcess04b.jpg

Blocking in the basic layout based on Levi's sketch

CharrProcess05.jpg

Here I'm just playing with the few buildings that we have and trying to get interesting clusters by intersecting them.

CharrProcess06.jpg

Here I took my current progress into photoshop and concepted where I'd like to take it. I find this process to be very important because it allows you to step away from the 3-D barriers and think of your environment as an illustration. This is the parallel tie between production and concepting that I mentioned earlier.

CharrProcess07.jpg

Now I start implementing some of the elements from the new concept.

CharrProcess08.jpg

more playing with the structures.

CharrProcess07b.jpg

Finished prototype ready to show design and get yelled out.

CharrProcess09.jpg

CharrProcess10.jpg

I have a bunch more break downs that I'll try and post throughout the week. Hope this is of some help.

Replies

  • acapulco
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    acapulco polycounter lvl 9
    Sorry to say, but I dont see a single picture. Just the video.
  • Swizzle
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    Swizzle polycounter lvl 15
    Your images are throwing a 403 error for me when I try to go to them. Maybe try either changing permissions or hosting somewhere other than Dropbox.

    EDIT: Hmm, looks like about half are showing up now.
  • futurepoly
    fixed the image problem. Thanks for the heads up!
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    I'm going to read into it once I have a minute, but I just wanted to say that this is soo awesome, Jason. Thank you so much for doing this.

    You all did stellar work on Guild Wards 2.

    Cheers.
  • Shanthosa
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    Shanthosa polycounter lvl 11
    Absolutely inspiring. Any way we can see more breakdowns? Seeing how you went about making these things is awesome. Can't get enough!
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    Great work, wanna see the rest, subscribed!
  • Vrav
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    Vrav polycounter lvl 11
    Hey Jason, awesome work. Lots of super cool looking environments in the game.

    One thing I've been curious about since the early betas is how exactly all these unique looking rocks are done shader-wise. They're all over and the lighting on them looks great. (example) Is there some sort of low-res normal map for the overall shape of the stone, overlayed with the tiling detail textures? Or is there some other sort of shader magic at work to get the lighting on all these unique looking rock formations looking accurate?
  • futurepoly
    Vrav wrote: »
    Hey Jason, awesome work. Lots of super cool looking environments in the game.

    One thing I've been curious about since the early betas is how exactly all these unique looking rocks are done shader-wise. They're all over and the lighting on them looks great. (example) Is there some sort of low-res normal map for the overall shape of the stone, overlayed with the tiling detail textures? Or is there some other sort of shader magic at work to get the lighting on all these unique looking rock formations looking accurate?

    yes, that's correct except the normal map is usually a 1024 per rock formation. These rocks are generally sculpted in Z-brush and the decimated down to a few thousand tris. If you use Udk, the example Foliage map has a giant rock prop that has a similar material set up.
  • Vrav
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    Vrav polycounter lvl 11
    futurepoly wrote: »
    yes, that's correct except the normal map is usually a 1024 per rock formation. These rocks are generally sculpted in Z-brush and the decimated down to a few thousand tris. If you use Udk, the example Foliage map has a giant rock prop that has a similar material set up.
    Awesome, and yeah I've always really liked that sample rock in the UDK foliage demo. I show it (and GW2 environments) to programmers in hope of persuading them to use such cool shaders. :)

    I've noticed GW2 is very shader heavy. Another example that comes to mind are the plank bridges in Lion's Arch. They seem to have the base tiling planks texture, then on some the blue paint mask, as well as the barnacles here and there, and what appear to be decals (those flat planks, broken boards and such). You guys get lots of variety out of your environment art, though I wonder just how many things use a generic parametric env shader for stuff like that, or if there are a lot of unique shaders for different surfaces. You don't have to spoil what you guys have done if it's tmi, but it is quite fun to observe in the game!
  • kylehorne3d
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    kylehorne3d polycounter lvl 9
    Thanks for the post and the Maya screenshot this a a dream come true for me.
  • Notes
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    Notes polycounter lvl 4
    that's pretty awesome...I love these development threads...Is GuildWars 2 using its own proprietary game engine or is it one of the major engines like udk?
  • Anuxinamoon
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    Anuxinamoon polycounter lvl 14
    Awesome! Cheers for the breakdown. :D
  • kylehorne3d
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    kylehorne3d polycounter lvl 9
    Notes wrote: »
    that's pretty awesome...I love these development threads...Is GuildWars 2 using its own proprietary game engine or is it one of the major engines like udk?

    Off Wikipedia

    "Guild Wars 2 uses a heavily modified version of the proprietary game engine developed for Guild Wars by ArenaNet"
  • Jessica Dinh
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    Jessica Dinh polycounter lvl 10
    Neat, thanks!! I like how organic the process is.
  • Andrew Mackie
    Thanks for the art dump and process insight <3
    [I still need to get my ass out to Seattle and go to FuturePoly. One of these days!]
  • Lord McMutton
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    Lord McMutton polycounter lvl 17
    You mention that the facades use planes early on in the write-up. Did that carry through to the end product?
  • DavidBrumbley
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    DavidBrumbley polycounter lvl 8
    I don't see any wavy normals which I think could really help. Do some cloud render filters in photershop and then max the intensity in crazybump to get thhose big shapes. Word it up.
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Great work! I have a thousand inspiration shots from the game in my inspiration folder. Gooooooood stuff! :D
  • DavidBrumbley
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    DavidBrumbley polycounter lvl 8
  • iniside
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    iniside polycounter lvl 6
    Nicely done. But i have a question.

    You guys photosourced textures or sculpted them or both. I mean for enviroments of course.
    As I've been running around, most of texture looks like they were taken from photos (some of them might be even in my library, but I have no intrest investigating it that much :D).

    Just curious, how you guys apporched it.
  • benji
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    benji polycounter lvl 7
    Inspiration levels fully recharged :) thanks Jason, this was an amazing insight!
  • guhhh
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    guhhh polycounter lvl 9
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Really great job documenting the process. Nice to see more in depth posts like this on game releases.
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    Wow, just this morning I was thinking about cold messaging any Anet environment artists I could find, just to ask nicely if thy should share any insights into the workflow on GuildWars2!

    Now I don't even need to! :D ha!

    Looking forward to more! can you tell us how big the prototype team was? was there multiple teams working on establishing different environments?
  • Justin DeVore
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    Justin DeVore polycounter lvl 4
    So inspiring! I really appreciate the effort you put into these breakdowns and can't wait to see more! I finally picked up a copy of GW this past weekend so it will be great to have these insights into what went into the scenes as I'm running around!
  • aobond
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    aobond polycounter lvl 7
    duude, brilliant stuff, thanks for sharing man
  • MephistonX
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    MephistonX polycounter lvl 9
    really inspiring - its great to see the work flow - thank you for sharing
  • Howl
    Incredible insight! Painting over your own block out is technique I have to try out.
  • nedwork
    Love it. Like to see more
  • futurepoly
    Thanks everyone for the kind words. I'll post more shots later today. Would you guys prefer it all added to the original post or should I just add it to the current page?
    You mention that the facades use planes early on in the write-up. Did that carry through to the end product?

    Yes, the end product is still the flat planes but they have a paralax map to give it a little more depth. The alpha planes hug the buildings geo really close so it still holds up when you stand next to it. If I was using Cryengine for this I would model most of the pieces out with the exception of the Ivy since it can handle a zillion tris on screen but for an MMO that was'nt really an option.

    @ DavidBrumbley- thanks for the tips :)
    iniside wrote: »
    Nicely done. But i have a question.

    You guys photosourced textures or sculpted them or both. I mean for enviroments of course.
    As I've been running around, most of texture looks like they were taken from photos (some of them might be even in my library, but I have no intrest investigating it that much :D).

    Just curious, how you guys apporched it.

    I do both depending on the needs. I always prefer to bake from geo and then overlay different photos for the micro details. Also when I start with a standard photo I'll usually throw an overlay layer on top and pump a little more color variation in there.

    @ fearian- Ha, you must have inceptioned me to do it :) I better spin my top.

    @ Howl- Yes! Let me know how it works out. Most of the time I've been able to add the paint-over details back into the model but I wouldn't have thought to do it if I stuck in 3-D town.
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    You can do both: add to the op and post at the end, because if you don't the thread won't bump up back to the top and many people will miss it.

    Once again thanks for doing this. I went through the text in the OP and it's a really great process you have. I love the idea of straying away from 3d to ideate in the middle of blockout.
    Btw, this soooo went to the wiki:
    http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryReferenceGameArt?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryReference%5Cb%29#Guild_Wars_2_.282012.29
    I hope you don't mind and looking forward to more stuff :D
  • JBarnett
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    JBarnett polycounter lvl 4
    Awesome work! I love seeing the process of different artists. Thanks for sharing.
  • punchface
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    punchface polycounter lvl 6
    Thank you for sharing, Jason. Everything looks wonderful. My memory might be failing, but things look noticeably more polished over and beyond the earlier versions that our class saw when we toured the studio.

    pf
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    god bless you good sir :)

    GW is my major inspiration, and its the 1st time i see actual 3d breakdown from it :)

    Great post! thanks a lot.
  • nedwork
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    I think it's safe to say, that we want MOAR. lol...if possible. Please. Pretty please. :]
  • Gannon
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    Gannon interpolator
    very cool, I definitely want to see more as well. I'd love to see more wires and texture flats of some of the large scale objects.
  • Darkmaster
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    Darkmaster polycounter lvl 11
  • futurepoly
    thanks everyone, here are a couple more breakdowns.

    This is another Daniel concept of a giant dragon carcass that players would be able to explore. He wanted the scale to be so large that you didn't even know what you were walking on until you saw it from a distance.

    DragonConcept.jpg

    The scale was obviously the biggest challenge so I wan'ted to block it in the map editor right away. This is mostly terrain and a few placeholder prop pieces.

    DragonProcess01.jpg

    an early close up of the wing with a player standing on it for scale.

    DragonProcess03.jpg

    Getting closer to deciding how many actual pieces I am going to need. Because of the scale and the distance in which the player will see this every piece will be treated like an individual prop. For instance this consists of the head, vertebrae, left wing, right wing, left arm and modular tunnel pieces for the throat, stomach and intestines.

    DragonProcess04.jpg

    Here is another close up of the wing area with more polish.

    DragonProcess05.jpg

    Ready to show design.

    DragonProcess06.jpg

    DragonProcess07.jpg



    This Daniel concept is of Fort Trinity. This area is meant to be where the races band together and organize before they take on the last area of the game. The architecture was meant to fuse elements from all the races together so it was a unique challenge

    FortTrinityConcept.jpg

    Here are some early prop block ins along with a defensive turret. By this point I had hired on Andrew Kreutzer from one of my Fp classes and he was a huge help on this area.

    FortTrinityProcess02.jpg

    playing around with the layout of the pieces and deciding how many props we needed to make.

    FortTrinityProcess01.jpg

    The main wall is starting to take shape.

    FortTrinityProcess04.jpg

    A concept paint-over to figure out what I wanted to do with the coast.

    FortTrinityProcess04Concept.jpg

    Implementing some of the elements from the paintover. Also blocked in a docking station for an airship that Andrew made.

    FortTrinityProcess05.jpg

    close up of the same area. Ready to show design.

    FortTrinityProcess05CU.jpg


    I'll try and track down some more shots throughout the week and post them as well.
  • carlobarley
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    carlobarley polycounter lvl 9
    thank you sir, i am now experiencing tears of joy
  • JasonDC
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    JasonDC null
    Thank you for sharing all these fantastic pieces of art, and for sharing your process!
  • stoofoo
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    stoofoo polycounter lvl 18
    Great post, Jason! Glad to see you crackin' a little egg'a knowledge up in here. More pretties!
  • divi
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    divi polycounter lvl 12
  • futurepoly
    thanks everyone, here are a couple more breakdowns.

    This Daniel concept was one of the first big props I worked on in GW2. In the first GuildWars we couldn't really have giant props that you could explore because of pathing limitations so this was an opportunity to push the envelope early in the project. Basically it's a city on an iceberg.

    IceBergConcepts.jpg

    Here are some sketches that Richard Anderson gave me. These deal with the individual structures more clearly.

    IceBergConcepts02.jpg

    Here is the initial block in. Again trying to decide the best way to break down this assignment into modular chunks. It's always hard to move forward when it looks this bad in the beginning but sometimes you just need to keep making progress.

    IceBergProcess01.jpg

    At this stage I've broken things down into a few separate props that can be placed individually in the editor. The tower, wall, the arched wall, basic buildings, walk way pieces, and an entrance.

    IceBergProcess02.jpg

    the front of the boat with some sails and rigging blocked in.

    IceBergProcess03.jpg

    Horia Dociu did a paintover early on to add some setdressing and polish ideas.

    IceBergProcess04.jpg

    With some of Horia's suggestions added in. Nathan Lange and Jason Hammon helped out with a lot of these set dressing props and did a great job.

    IceBergProcess05.jpg

    IceBergProcess06.jpg

    Here are a series of concepts that Matthew Barrett and Levi Hopkins did for the Divinities reach garden. Barrett did the top one and Levi the bottom three.

    GardenConcepts.jpg

    Here is the early block in. Mostly trying to get the glass dome and placement figured out.

    GardenProcess01.jpg

    Originally we we're playing with the idea of a giant chunk of carved marble that twisted and flowed throughout the garden. It never really took traction and ended up looking like some crazy skate park.

    GardenProcess02.jpg

    Still trying to salvage the marble idea. Daniel mentioned maybe having bridges of stacked rocks throughout the garden but again it seemed a little bit out of place.

    GardenProcess03.jpg

    I went back to the drawing board and implemented some props from Barrett's and Levi's initial concepts.

    GardenProcess04.jpg

    Added some final celestial details and this is pretty close to the final version. EricWiley helped with the scene and created the epic Queens castle in the background.

    GardenProcess04b.jpg
  • urgaffel
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    urgaffel polycounter lvl 17
    This is fantastic, thank you so much for posting this. The environments in GW2 are amazing :)
  • stoofoo
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    stoofoo polycounter lvl 18
    That last one came a long way through iteration! I hadn't seen some of the progress shots. Too bad you scrapped the marble--we could have been doing so much quaggan kick flips. =)
  • Tomo009
    Love that you are posting this.

    Found the environments in Guild Wars 2 absolutely amazing and have been taking screenshots for my own reference later.

    Awesome to see the process and get some perspective on the environments themselves.

    My first actual post on Polycount, I have a long way to go.
  • d1ver
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    d1ver polycounter lvl 14
    You guys have an awesome process that allows your 3d artists to be more creative then they are usually allowed to be.
    Definitely a great place to work at) No wonder polycount gets swamped with your internship tests from time to time ;)

    Once again, thanks for sharing this and I hope you've got more.)
  • megalmn2000
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    megalmn2000 polycounter lvl 13
    I'm very curious to see this breakdown! Can you re-import the images please? I can only see thumbnails of broken images. :(
  • futurepoly
    I'm very curious to see this breakdown! Can you re-import the images please? I can only see thumbnails of broken images. :(

    It could be too many images loading. I have this problem when I'm using my older Ipad to check the thread. Any advice on preventing this without severely lowering the image quality\size?
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