Environment Development Blog

-Week 1 -

Team collaboration setups

For this week's blog we will be covering a few different areas of theory before beginning the design phase of the project. With the brief now released, our group is tasked with creating an environment with one of more characters in the art style and theme of the Polygon Treehouse game Röki. With this in mind we will have to research the theory of how Polygon Treehouse achievers their art style for our respective roles. Before beginning the research phase we have set up a number of different planning tools to help streamline the project, those of which are listed below:

Miro acts as a collaborative mind map and mood board for the team to paste and link images with notes and ideas that is updated in real time meaning we can all work on it at the same time and see what each other are doing. The board is broken down into different sections with each section covering a part of the development process (Environment, Props and Characters).

As seen in the multiple images above, The environment takes from a few different idea pipelines with initial ideas starting with cabins made of wood and portals in closets (Narnia inspiration) to more Norse themed halls with almost runic portals. No finalization was made for the portal as it might need changed after the pitch if Polygon Treehouse isn't happy with the initial idea of a closet.

In addition to Miro the team is also using a website called Codecks. This site allows us to upload all kinds of media like images and files which are isolated into designated cards which can be traded with other users. This is where we are keeping finalized elements of the production from the verbal planning to the conceptual designs and finalized renders. In addition we have a section for backing up the project files being used in the production which can be downloaded at any time,

As shown in the image above, the cards are customizable and are able to contain the relevant content which ranges from images and text to compressed files. With Codecks we are able to upload things like backups and images of progress in a condensed manner that easy to navigate and can be accessed by the whole team.

-Week 2-

Game mythos and art style research

Now that the team has means to communicate and develop their ideas in a single environment, we can now move on to the research and development phase. In this phase I collected information on things like how Polygon Treehouse achieves their unique art style for Roki, how they design environments for ply and what inspirations and themes they use in their story. Below are my findings:

Art Style

Polygon Treehouse have one of the most unorthodox kind of art style as it prides itself on not using ANY source of lighting in the scene but instead artificially creating lighting through a process I call "Geometry Based Cell Shading". GBCS in short is the process of using multiple materials on different parts of the geometry of a mesh to texture it without the need for a texture map in a cell shading style without the need for light. Below is an image which better illustrates what I mean:

In addition to GBSC, Polygon Treehouse uses a low polygon style in their modelling due to the fact that there is no detailed face shading so it's not easy to see. This also follows the intended outcome of the GBCS which is to keep rendering costs to a minimum. Below are a few references from the game which outline some details gathered about how rooms and scenes are composed for gameplay which I can use in the design of my environment:

Rooms are composed based on two things, Player Movement and Camera angle. In roki most scenes follow one of two different uses of negative space (unused space), leaving space in the middle of the room for the player to be able explore from corner to corner or using props to create gaps that guide the player to specific spots you want them to have access to without ruining the rest of the scenes composition. Its clear that polygon treehouse have a huge focus on their environments which themselves carry their own little stories. Environments also leave key areas for items and interactable and are layed out in a way that makes them visible to the player if they look hard enough.

To Summarize, the key details I have to keep in mind when designing the environment are as follows:

Do not use lighting
Use Geometry Based Cell Shading for all texturing
Either leave plenty of negative space from the middle of the room for the player's exploration
Make the environment tell its own story
Leave room for key items and props to be displayed to the player
Encourage the player to want to explore

One last key detail is that Roki is strongly based on Norse Mythology so that should take a huge priority when designing the environment.

Narrative Planning

Before drawing anything solid I first had to establish a narrative for both characters to allow me to be able to create a narrative for the environment that could tie in with the characters. These narratives were written on a card on Codex s seen below:

To make the breakdown of the narrative easy we are structuring it completely on the personality of the wolf character as they are a main focus of the environment to begin with. In short the character is a short tempered demi-god that is tasked with guarding the portal to Valhalla. The environment itself was once the grand hall of a mighty Jarl that was obsessed with getting to Valhalla. One day the Jarl was approached by Loki (The God of Chaos/ Mischief) with an offer to create a portal to Valhalla in exchange for the lives of his Dynasty. What he wasn't told was that he was included in that deal so when he agreed the portal was created but no soul was left to witness it but Loki and the Hall was left abandoned. Many year later the third son of Fenrir, Sigmundr (Wolf Character) is tasked by Odin to protect the portal from mortals which entails moving into the old grand hall. Over the years nature has overcome the hall and it has become more damaged due to fits of rage from Sigmundr.

-Week 3-

Environment design

Week 3 was short week that was focused solely on drawing up the design of the environment using a line art style that would help better visualize the final product without the application of the props.

I decided to have the final environment be set in a Norse hall instead of a cabin as it makes more sense for the story and gives more room to change things later down the line like with the portal. In addition to that it also gives me more freedom to add new elements to the environment like platforms etc. The basic design concept in play aims to use the pillars to break up the negative space and the raised platforms on the sides to create a focus in the centre where the portal will be located in the back. The building itself will be in a T shape with the roof being higher at the back and windows behind the portal to shine gleams of light down, creating hard focus on the portal itself, The line art above does not include the props that will be used in the scene as its purpose is simply to give the layout of the scene along with the environmental details.

-Week 4-

Environment Blockout

Now that the planning phase is out of the way for the most part , its time to start production of the environment. To start the production phase I began with building the environment from the ground up using simple primitives to form the basis of the scene. Below is the process used to build up the room dimensions along with some images to show the final product:

Room Mesh

First I created a plane with a 1x1 subdivision to give only one face;
Using Edge Mode I then extruded the appropriate edges out to create a T shape;
Using the "Edge Loop" tool I then added 2 new edge loops for the platforms and extruded their top faces up;
For the walls I grabbed the outside edges bar the ones on the far right and extruded them up;
Finally the roof was made by making some additional extrusions up from the walls then moving the edges towards the centre of the room to create a slant.

Environmental Elements

The pillars and beams were made using cubes with pillars having extruded bases to create that block on the bottom. With the pillars in the negative space could be worked with. The pillars on the right have a pure black shader to give a "background" sort of effect.
The portal was made by creating a primitive cube and applying the "Smooth" tool to turn it into a soft cube. I then used a 20 sided cylinder as a guideline and duplicated a rock for each side, making sure to light each on up so they followed the circle shape of the cylinder. The portal blockout was then placed in the middle of the room.
For the tables I took a primitive cube and scaled it to the right size for the top of the table. Using the "Multi-cut" too I then marked out the areas for the bases and legs then extruded them out until they made the right shape. This is the only "Prop" being used as a stand-in for composition purposes only.
For the platform I used a number of stretched cubes using the scale gizmo. There isn't much more to this as its being used for the general shape for the minute.
The final images shows how the windows were made. Using a primitive cylinder, I used a technique called "Difference Boolean". A difference Boolean is a tool that takes the initial cylinder and cuts out the geometry of the wall in the shape and depth of the cylinder for as far as they overlap. This is not a permanent solution as the windows are to be modelled in full.

With all that done the environment is blocked out and we are now at a stage to begin the full production of models for the environment starting with the focus of the scene, the portal.

-Week 5-

Portal Modelling

The portal was a weird one to make as it involved new process I've never used before but for a first time I think it turned out alright. Below is a gallery of images along with a breakdown of the process:

To start off a copy of the blockout rocks were made. Once they were duplicated I then adjusted each one by moving different vertices to make each rock unique in shape. Once the shaping was done I then added the base colour, highlights and shadows to the models.
Once the rock circle was ready, I then created a new cylinder and extruded to the top to add faces for the shadows and portal glow, making sure to align the glow with the rocks.
Next another cylinder was made and everything but the top was removed. After that I add a number of quads and used the "Triangulate" tool to triangulate the model for the next step. Using the Shatter tool I divid the ,model into pieces which are automatically cut in random crack-like formations. I also extruded the bottom of all shards to give them some thickness. With that done I cleaned the line tropology by using the "Quadrangulate" tool to turn the triangles on the models into quads. To wrap up I used the "Target Wield" tool to link the vertices of each shard together to reduce the poly count.
With everything done I linked the models together with the "Combine" tool and moved the final mesh into place in the environment.

-Week 6-

Pillar Modelling

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-Week 7-

Floor Modelling

With a basic blockout of the room and some key elements worked on to further build its structure, the main focus for this week was making the floor assets and implementing them.

Having developed the base shape and colours for the texturing process , the next step as to make the different floor meshes. For this I make 6 different copies of the board with different patterns and colour orders and arrange them in a 2x4 arrangement with the left and right being arranged in a way to be layered from one to another seamlessly.

The final image shows the final outcome of combining the meshes together to form the floor. The only final touch that is needed is to move some random panels into different positions to make the floor appear more worn out and destroyed thought this will be completed towards the end once the final clean-ups are being made. Just to note as well, all faces on the bottom of the blockout mesh are removed sense it isn't needed anymore.