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[md-shanto]

Mastering Environment Design for Games - Research

Blog 03 (Practice 1: Developing Skills)

Image Source: Google

Creating immersive, engaging, and visually stunning environments for games requires more than technical skills; it demands a deep understanding of the world you're building. Every plant, rock, and sky color contributes to the story and gameplay, making environment design an art form that is crucial to players' experiences. But where do I begin? Research.

I started searching YouTube for sources and found some of the best YouTubers who make tutorials specifically for game environments in game engines. I discovered a few YouTubers like:

MagnetVFX

Dallas Drapeau

Pwnisher

Leo Torres

Joe Garth

William Faucher

Unreal Sensei

All of them have different perspectives on creating environments for games, and each of them has a strong understanding of the principles of environment design. After following them for a few weeks, I realized I needed to do some reading on environmental design principles. I found a few books that were very helpful.

Here’s the list of books I read:

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell

The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects by Isaac V. Kerlow

I used to have the wrong idea that I didn’t need to be a good 3D artist to become a 3D environment artist. But after reading these books, here are some of the key points I took away:

Lighting and Colors in the Environment: Lighting is essential, and color choices greatly impact the environment’s atmosphere. For example, it’s better to use the 60-30-10 color theory in environments, where 10% is the dominant color and following 30% and 60% is the environment stablishment that should follow a LUT.

Understanding Culture and History: To build a believable environment, you must understand its culture and background. Without this knowledge, it’s hard to create a masterpiece. Additionally, understanding the biome is crucial—if you start placing trees randomly, it will look unnatural because our human perspective recognizes inconsistencies in nature.

Human Error and Realism: Real environments are rarely perfect; they contain misplaced and unorganized elements. This randomness, or “error,” makes an environment feel more alive. Including minor flaws in a 3D environment can add a realistic, lively quality.

After two weeks of research, I came to the conclusion that to become a proficient environment artist, I need to adopt a few essential practices:

Understanding the Project's Vision and Theme

Studying Real-World References

Analyzing Art History and Culture

Exploring Game References and Concept Art

Studying Natural Science and Ecosystems

Environment design is an iterative process. As you start creating, new challenges and questions will arise. Keep revisiting your research, adding new references as needed. Over time, this iterative process will refine your vision and reveal unique ideas that make your environment stand out.

This blog is just my findings on environment design and how I can become an expert in it. Some of this information might help you as well if you’re interested in taking the same route as an environment artist.

[md-shanto]

Project Places of Mind

Blog 02 (Practice 1: Developing Skills)

Sci-fi is what we dream of and where we wanna be. but what if the place you dream of is watching you for a long time. Well, For the project Places of Mind, I tried to contact living creatures with an object and I had an idea from all the sci-fi movies and series I love like Star Wars, Lost in Space, Guardians of the Galaxy, and so on.

So I settled down to a design of a spaceship with an eye on it.

For the Project, I have collected some references from Artstation and Pinterest and started working on the eye.

After a week I had this in front of me

The asset is not optimized. This model has around 96,793 faces and 196,398 triangles and it is a highly detailed prop made inside Blender.

I Have been reading a book: "Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter" by James Gurney. After reading that I understood Color and lighting are powerful tools in setting a game environment's mood, the same rule goes for props material as well. I tried to adapt that in the prop.

In the end, I made a render inside the blender by adding an HDRI of and space so I could have an idea of the depth of the design.

This is a final render. Did a little bit of color correction after exporting.

Can't wait to import it into Unreal Engine and test it out. but maybe I need to optimize the polygons a little bit before that.

[md-shanto]

Project Red Vs Blue

Blog 01 (Practice 1: Developing Skills)

I had the idea of making a cave in Unreal Engine. But after one week of working in Unreal, I realized I couldn't do it on the laptop I am using right now. I ended up planning to make a sci-fi futuristic environment where I planned to experiment with billboards, lights, and volumetric effects.

For the Project, I have collected some references from Artstation and Pinterest

-references

The project is not optimal for the game engine but I tried to maintain the composition and scale so that we can get a dash of realism and depth by seeing it.

-viewport render

Project details:

.Created in Blender 4.2 .Mostly made with third-party assets .Rendered using Cycles .Sample count: 100 .Post-processed in Photoshop after rendering

-Final Render

The story of the scene is open to interpretation, as the robot is standing on a box, and you can see "Monster" written there.