Artcraft - Level Design Part 3

[chaud]

Artcraft - Level Design Part 2, Oct 28 Hotfixes, Anti-Exploit Mechanic, Ashran Event

Artcraft - Level Design Part 3

Hi again, I’m senior art director Chris Robinson. In this third installment, senior level designer Ely Cannon explains a bit more of the level designer’s role in bringing the landscape to life and how this role may be a bit different at Blizzard than what players, and even other level designers in the industry, might expect the role to encompass.

Hi, I’m Ely Cannon, a senior member of the Level Design team for World of Warcraft. I wanted to talk a little about the important role that our level designers play in developing the visual style for the zones. In a traditional level design role, you wouldn’t historically find artists; but we’re not what most people know as traditional level designers on the World of Warcraft team. We go out of our way to hire artists with design experience, or designers with art skills, for our level design team. This is essential to our process since each level designer is ultimately the gate keeper for the visual style and tone of the zone he/she is working on.

This process starts with the preproduction work for a zone. Working with an environment artist, the level designer will help to guide and define the scope of environment assets needed. These assets include terrain textures, trees, bushes, accent plants, rocks, etc. The range of models and textures needed must address not only the main zone look, but the sub environment types needed to break up the zone, all the while bringing the concept to life while remaining within the capabilities of our game engine. It can be a challenge, and often is.

Take for example the new Nagrand. Not only do we have the environment that you know of as the Nagrand from Outland, but new areas, like a wetlands, and a higher elevation arid region. The visual clash of these disparate environmental themes could be quite jarring if not handled with care. There is a constant conversation between the level designer and the environment artist about shape language, color, diversity, scale, mood, model usage, and ultimately the visual tone of the zone as a whole that keeps the zone development moving in the right direction.

While the environment artists make the models and textures, it is the level designer who sculpts and paints the terrain, places the trees, rocks, and bushes, all the while considering gameplay and the art/design direction. We approach the whole process in a very considered and intentional way, balancing visual style and gameplay all the while. A typical day for our level designers will include big decisions about the overall look and feel of a zone as well as small decisions about how one plant looks when placed next to another plant in the scene.

Nagrand in Warlords of Draenor is a good example of the color relationships between textures. The vast sweeping savannahs of verdant green which make up a large portion of Nagrand presented a challenge for our level designers. How can we get color depth into massive green fields while staying true to the concept? At first glance the fields and rolling hills seem to be simply green grass – and lots of it. On closer inspection there is a carefully selected range of green tones used to render the savannahs of Nagrand. Each of the green tones is a unique grass texture which is carefully blended with the others in the set to create the effect seen in-game. Likewise, the subzones in Nagrand diverge from the main zone color scheme in very specific ways that were defined early by level design to ensure that players would experience a diversity of environment types while playing through the zone, and ultimately when they return for max level content.

Having capable and talented artists and designers sitting behind our level editing tool allows for fast iteration, and ensures that we can create huge play areas with a consistent level of visual quality. In the last segment of this Artcraft series you’ll meet five more of these designers: Victor Chong, Ian Gerdes, Ed Hanes, Damarcus Holbrook, and Kevin Lee.

[Hollowness]

bunch of boring stuff...

[Redroniksre]

bunch of boring stuff...

Speak for yourself, I love to do level design and i find this stuff very interesting, especially their editor.

[Nakotsu]

Youd like to do level design then go download unity. you can make either levels or enviorments with ease in this programming tool. Then you need a artist or to buy textures which is what a artist is for. This is the way its been since the dawn of time back in 1996 when the first game company IDsoftware came out with a amazing game called quake. You used a program to design the levels and then you textured your stuff. The fact that blizzard highers people who can do both doesnt matter. Technically they could higher a modeller and that person could use adobe photoshop and texture there own junk but hey.

[Deleted]

bunch of boring stuff...

Thank you for your very intelligent post.

=-=-

Nice to see these small insights into the creation process and the tools they use, wonder how long they tweak for before deciding a zone is done.
I'm still slightly concerned about the actual landmass for the expansion, I have visited pretty much everywhere, and whilst the design is nice, it's not that big but let's see how it is in after launch, maybe there will be less players.

[Kuja]

They showed the level editor during WOTLK in a video. Called wowedit or something. :3

[taylor20k]

Are they going to be talking about Nagrand in every one of these artcrafts?

uh yeah..if you read the first one they said it will use nagrand as the example zone.

[LanceDH]

that ui on, the editor looks ancient, like the warcraft 3 editor

[ihyln]

uh yeah..if you read the first one they said it will use nagrand as the example zone.

it's rather interesting they ONLY want to talk about nagrand, because that was the most eye pleasing zone in all of tbc.

I wonder how much CTRL+C/CTRL+V they had to use too

[Nakotsu]

They showed the level editor during WOTLK in a video. Called wowedit or something. :3

If I remember correctly Wow edit was used only for encounter design aka the monsters or raid bosses and what they do. Not for actual level design. Thou I could be wrong maybe you should google it. Unity on the other hand lets you do the level design the texturing the coding the model animation/AI and essentially make your entire game.

[Deleted]

Ely Cannon is a fantastic name.

[elvor0]

that ui on, the editor looks ancient, like the warcraft 3 editor

It's likely they've just hidden most of the UI in order to show what they've got. Plus with lot of artists I find they tend to make the UI as graphically UN-intensive as possible to shave off as much resource usage as they can. UI on editors should be about function, not flashiness.

I love these artcrafts, I really hope we get more of them, though it was a shame they cut the player models one down a bit, I liked seeing the texture maps, wireframes etc

[Loreish]

I like these posts from devs. Thumbs up!

[DeleteThisUser]

I like them as well. Its great to see how the zones are crafted. That said, its great to see how any type of artwork is created and brought to life, by any type of artist.

[MrExcelion]

Ely Cannon is a fantastic name.

Ikr? If I ever get a stage name, I should consider this

[LanceDH]

It's likely they've just hidden most of the UI in order to show what they've got. Plus with lot of artists I find they tend to make the UI as graphically UN-intensive as possible to shave off as much resource usage as they can. UI on editors should be about function, not flashiness.

I love these artcrafts, I really hope we get more of them, though it was a shame they cut the player models one down a bit, I liked seeing the texture maps, wireframes etc

Yea you have a point, the more I look at it the more logical it looks

[Jazz015]

I like how it's reserved a plot for Garrison. Shame we never got to choose where our Garrison would be placed

[kjj92]

Booooo
Boring
BOOOO
Wendy Testaburger
BOOOO

[Deleted]

that ui on, the editor looks ancient, like the warcraft 3 editor

Never change a running system. Might look ancient but it does the job as we can see.

[Deleted]

Wish they would focus on developing their game rather than showing us how they create the world, it looks shite anyway for 2014 game standards.

Same with that Ashran stream yesterday, they have simply shown me how god-awful it is, PVP zone for more PVE bollocks.