Go on a ride of visual stimulation as you are awakened to the work that goes into creating the visuals for a video game in the 21st Century in this article, written for Polycount.com by the artists at 343 Industries. Be sure and click the images to see them in more detail.
Posted at Polycount.com by adam on November 20, 2012:
Do we ever have a treat for you. Some members of the amazingly talented environment art team over at 343 Industries have put together an article on creating the environment art for one of the largest releases in video game history – Halo 4. This article was written by the artists at 343 Industries – not us – specifically for Polycount. So, without further ado, may you have your inspiration folders open and your minds ready as Halo 4 Senior Art Director Kenneth Scott takes it away on this multi-page article, ‘The Environment Art of Halo 4′.
THE ENVIRONMENT ART OF HALO 4
What you’re about to read is a very generous peek into the work of some of the Game Industry’s strongest Environment Creators doing what they do best: Dropping Jaws and Melting Faces. Some protective gear is recommended. Please observe all emergency exits. We cannot be responsible for any messes that occur, or any injuries sustained through wild head turns and furious image saving.
We had some enormous challenges; Building a new team from nothing, charging through the growing pains of a new studio, wrestling with unfamiliar and unsupported technology, learning to work together for the first time, and taking over a beloved universe and all the world wide scrutiny that came with it. Any one of these things would have crippled a normal studio. Not us. We took our share of bruises, but we stepped over the finish line ‘better, faster, stronger’ than a decade of normal development would have awarded us.
The environment team, on top of simply making great imagery, also took on the role of storytellers. It doesn’t just show, it feels. Engaging the goopy, sloppiest part of the players parietal lobes and making the universe a reality, immersing the player in a deep felt experience. The art is emotional, it resonates with story and imagination, it silently speaks to you.
This is art focused, but salutes need to be thrown at the talented teams who fought dragons and the laws of physics to squeeze out more polygons and pixels, who gave us every technical advantage possible, who held our hair back when it was too much. The Xbox didn’t know what hit it.
This team is not made of Steel. It’s made of the crazy strong shit you hire to hunt Steel when Steel messes up and needs to be returned to Steel Justice.
You can probably tell – I’m very proud of this team.
Kenneth Scott, Senior Art Director
UNSC – A FUNCTIONAL AESTHETIC
For the first mission of the game the general theme of the industrial design was “space submarine.” We wanted to achieve a functional aesthetic for the UNSC environments. After the catastrophic damage sustained to the Forward Unto Dawn at the end of Halo 3, and after floating in outer space for over three years, the majority of the remains of the ship were left a frozen, shattered hulk. For the mission itself we wanted it to be cold and claustrophobic; piles of frost have accumulated in the cryogenics section of the ship; ceilings have caved in and some areas of the ship have lost atmospheric pressure. The environments would also get progressively more damaged as the ship was sucked into the forerunner planet Requiem. The cool color palette would give way to warmer tones as the events of the mission increased in intensity, culminating in an exciting start to the rest of the campaign.
Paul Pepera, Lead Mission Artist
We put a big emphasis on a high poly workflow for the hard surface assets. Artists would model or sculpt out the high resolution meshes and rip the normal map and ambient occlusion information from them. The normal tangent space of the engine was synced to that of Maya which allowed the environment team to construct less expensive game res models while preserving a clean normal map bake in the final result.
Paul Pepera, Lead Mission Artist
See more stunning images and read the rest of the article at polycount.com >>
See Halo Diehards collection of Halo 4 concept art >>