My Approach To Level Design

"BUILDING EXPERIENCES."

My process has been a result of learning from other amazing level designers and their approaches, and my experiences working alone as well as collaborating with others. I love building worlds more than almost anything, and each step in creating maps, levels, worlds or environments is something that I have really worked hard on to ensure that each step is enjoyable and shows progression from ideation to finished product.

01 THE BEGINNING

The very first step is always about pre-vis, and there's multiple approaches to the beginning. I usually begin every stage with a question, to push myself far from the blank canvas fear into trying to solve a problem.

What are we building?

[A] Reference Pre-Visualization

Sometimes the process begins with a building up of visual references that inspire an idea. I find this more useful for larger worlds, as landscapes, mountains, major buildings, environmental pictures such as a snow covered city or an overgrown temple have landmarks that define their origin. And conveying these ideas often require a larger amount of work in detailing stage, so reference is a must for larger worlds, especially when I start trying to gather more geological data about an area. Why is this temple overgrown? How would moss or vines creep on the temple? Would rain play a larger effect on this temple's state, and how would that rain create erosion on the surrounding environment? These questions will pop up into my mind while I gather reference, and really start to help me identify the world I'm going to build.

Sample mood board.

[B] Pure Design Aesthetics Approach

Other times I want to take a firmer hand in building the world. I remove all aspects of reference, environments, usable props, assets or art and simply think about the player. Where will the player go? How do I create a journey for the player? The aesthetic I'm trying to build up is purely focused on the player's journey, their movement through the world, and how that alone can create a fantastic level to play through.

[C] The Hybrid Approach

More often than not, I'll usually go for a design approach first, and as I design out the world on paper, I'll try and find key areas that will create an environment unto themselves. Snaking paths can create the image of eroded cliffs in an arid desert with sun-cracked dirt and sand. Hyper extended vertical movement can give the illusion of climbing a mountain pass. Rounded structures in the design lead to some human element, a castle tower, or maybe a futuristic sci-fi city made up of cylindrical economy homes.

The design can inform the art, and the art can inform the design. There is no structured way to approach the first stage of the world, and leaning too far to either side has pitfalls of its' own. A purely designed approach leaves little room to improvise, and a world without structured design often ends up being an eclectic mix of ideas with no movement or grounding.

02 PAPER PROTOTYPING

After I've gathered my reference, come up with a design in mind, or both, it's time to get to paper. Usually I try to avoid jumping straight into the editor, initial pushes to get right to work end up, in my experience, with maps full of props, assets and textures, but no clear idea, goal, or structured environment. Another pitfall I've experienced and learned well from is creating a rigid design on paper. What you can't see as a designer is how those lines and shapes on paper can translate to the actual map, and strict adherence to replicating the paper design to the actual world ends up with no wiggle room to innovate, or to be creative. And that never makes a good map.

How will the player move through the world?

[A] Drawing Out The Map

Paper, chalkboard, dry-erase board, a napkin, Legos, Photoshop, MSPaint, whatever it is doesn't matter as long as what's in my head gets a place to be realized in some way. I stay loose with the idea as it comes to fruition, trying to convey pathways over blockers. Pathways are the player's movable, explorable space, and blockers define the world space the player can not move through. Pathways push the player through the world, and I always remove elements of movement that “feel” too long, or too tight, or too “boring”. Unnecessary paths of unbroken, straight lines are critical to remove, but an uneven mess of turns, angles and elevation create confusion, lending itself to a mess from the start, with no structure to ground the world and guide the player. I also create a small legend to draw from, such as dotted lines to show the player's expected path of travel, simple circles to note key areas, small “X” marks to note doorways, or multiple lines close to one another to display stairs. Sometimes, a side view is needed to showcase my ideas on elevation through the world, to drive sections that might need to be built to sustain elevation, such as modular cliff wall assets for high vertical sections. I typically start with a focal point or central significant area and map outwards, looping pathways back in to the central area with key landmarks dispersed around to break up the pathing.

[B] Design Flow

Another hard learned lesson is implementing a simple design flow. A set of circles connected by lines showcase each area I create, defining what spaces will be. The overgrown temple has to have connected parts to define the whole world. A decayed and broken fountain could be a key element to focus on as the player explores the area. This helps me get a sense of what each major landmark in the world will contain as the player gets to the temple, and how the player can transition from one area to another.

[C] Notes For Design

At this time, I'll start writing things down that I feel are important. “This hall could be a cave”, or simple sketches of a possible underpass that wraps around the temple. Even simple unit measurements to define the length, height and width of an area that creates a room that prevents issues in under/overscaling. These notes become important in building out the world, and continue to be developed and lined through as progress is made in the level. I think of it as my own personal progress report, completing each segment helps me visualize and achieve results without needing to even look at the world.

Design notes, player flow chart and initial drawing of the map.

03 ROUGH SHAPES

With a design in mind and a paper prototype, it's time to jump into the editor to start 'roughing out' the map. I try to stay on grid in the editor, creating rigid boxes and cubes through BSP or simple meshes created externally. In modern editors, it's easy enough to jump off the grid and not have to worry about any issues, and I will eventually do so. But early on, it's about trying to roughly replicate my initial drawings into three dimensions. Once those pathways and blockers are formed, I'll start to add some initial off grid assets, to start creating areas into something more defined. It's easy enough to group assets and remove them as needed, or hide them to see if the pathing makes sense, or if visibility becomes a problem that needs to be addressed. This helps when I might need to break off from the paper prototype, where a section of drawing creates an unbroken sight line that could create major problems for rendering or performance inside the editor.

What does this world look like?

Level overview with BSP / simple meshes.

[A] Player Flow

A player's movement through the world has to be tracked well to create something that is enjoyable to run around in. As I build, I always ensure that the player can move through the world with clearly defined paths, and movements between key landmarks have to be enjoyable and contain variation of height and length. A room that leads to a blocked path is frustrating, or a blocker that negates player movement from one area to another. Sometimes it's necessary, specifically in multiplayer maps, that the player be able to move continuously from one landmark to the other without any stops. Areas containing larger landmarks need to be given more space to be actualized, otherwise that impressive fountain becomes obscured by a low hanging wall or a path too short in width. This tends to create hang-ups in player movement as they move, unable to progress due to a path's narrow placement, or apprehension about what is and is not a place they can progress.

[B] Player Control

The player also needs a somewhat firm hand in guidance. I specifically want the player to move a certain direction to see something specifically. If they are able to bypass areas entirely, or if they have no guidance, they may become confused as to what to do or where to go, missing all that hard work I've put into that alcove with a beautiful view to the objective.

[C] Interior With Exterior Emphasis Break Up

I believe that no interior is complete without an exterior and no exterior should miss an interior section of a map. This creates great performance options, allowing for area portals or mesh culling as the player transitions from one area to another. It also grounds the world and offers opportunities to create believable, interesting environments that aren't simple one note areas, but afford complexities in landmarks that will be clearly identifiable and harmonizing to the world space. Caves, interior castles, hovels, and homes help the player relate to the space and understand just how fantastical or unique an area is.

04 REFINEMENT AND ITERATION

As the initial block out is completed, I immediately run through the world several times. From the apex or central area, I'll run my character from one end to the other, all the way around the world and back again to the central structure. I'll complete this step multiple times, often with a stopwatch to keep track of the travel time between landmarks. My immediate concern is player flow with concerns to engagement time. If the player needs to be able to get from objective to objective within 15 seconds, I am able to quickly iterate at this stage and make changes to accommodate those requirements. Later on, these changes require a range of changes not so easily done, especially when assets are added by the hundreds and the editor starts to lag. Nothing is complete by any means at this point, but the meat and potatoes are there. This world can be run through, and in the case of multiplayer maps, it can be playtested easily.

What needs to be changed?

[A] Feedback, Testing

Now is the time I sit back and begin to introduce others to the world. I usually try for a wide range of individuals from level designers to artists and programmers. One on one, I take a back seat and let them explore the world. Typically, what I first look for is confusion from the tester. Are they getting lost? Do they understand the objective if there is one? Do they appear to enjoy going through this world? I usually let them explore quietly for about 15 minutes, only speaking if they have questions about the environment itself: Will something be here outside the map? Is this gap supposed to be here? Does this kill you if you fall off here? Most of these questions are irrelevant for the time being, but more often than not, those questions can inspire ideas and inform the next iterative cycle. After testing, I try to get the most direct feedback possible.

“Ignore the art as it is, ignore z-fighting issues, lack of textures, blocky buildings or walls... ignore everything but the journey, just your impression of movement through this world.”

With this, each tester can give an overwhelming amount of feedback; some tough, critical observations, some irrelevant curiosities, many conflicting ideas, and a few lack of opinions... mostly something like “I like it...” This happens, mostly through inexperience with the process, or lack of design knowledge. Often it's hard to articulate why a tester, coworker or friend might not be able to share that inner logic of “I like it...”, and trying to extrapolate further is more akin to sociology than design theory. Some people haven't experienced 'art critique', and often times tough criticism can feel like a punch to the gut to a friend. My way around this is to always focus the tester on the work itself.

“I want to make this the best it can possibly be.”

[B] Iteration And Clean Up

Now that I have a consensus from testing, I organize all of the data and begin to assess their critique for a cycle of iterative changes, from the most critical design woes to more nuanced issues, such as filling in smaller holes in the world or re-orienting a path. Major changes are usually due to travel time between areas, so alternate pathing is the first change. Adding a cut in a level to move from one landmark to the other in multiple ways is an easy task at this early stage, as assets are usually added, rather than subtracted from the world. I'm still attached to the grid at this stage, so clean up is pretty straightforward. I'll clean up any exterior or test meshes out of the playable space, tweak some lights that were too bright, scale down some areas that felt a bit too large and open up some areas that were seen through testing as being a bit underscaled. Additionally, I'll start highlighting areas that need to be combined together, such as a grass area that was initially 5 or 6 meshes, will be combined into a single mesh, so that it can be 'art'ed up' later.

[A] and [B] are often repeated, especially in multiplayer maps. A good community or in-house team will process each cycle through testing until the criticism stops with design and focuses on art instead. I aim for about 4 cycles, taking in critique through playtesting, making layout changes, and testing again. After 4 cycles, this process can become redundant, and can create divergent ideas moving forward.

Earliest prototype of the level using simple meshes and BSP.

[C] Focal Point Mapping (Finding Theme and Mood)

Now I'll start mapping out the focal points around the map. Though I already have my key landmarks set up, changes in the design process can change the theme and mood of each area. Alternate paths or additional areas also need a theme and mood, and the map in its' entirety now has more focal points to focus on. I keep my landmarks mostly the same, only tweaking within the constraints I have to make the theme and mood more appropriate in the space given. In the temple map, I found that the space for the graveyard was a bit smaller, and opening it up would create a very open, boring area. The boundaries of this area fit well with a mausoleum visual design, with ramps moving around the area to different grave plots (out of the player's movable space) more advisable, visually interesting, and easily integrated.

From a purely designed approach, I'll begin to look at my formations of the world itself. My pre-vis. meshes will create a world unto themselves. Walls in specific orders can look like churches, or a blocker can appear as a large canyon that the player navigates between. Stairs in sets of different elevations might look like an ancient Roman senate building, or rows of columns like a Greek temple, and so on. With no visual guide, I focus inwards to repeating patterns in the world, or pathways that create movement, blocks that impose a feeling of power or might, sections of walls or blockers that undulate oddly, giving a sense of weakness or decay. Whatever is seen in the world, I can impose those aesthetic feelings by observation of the level, and have that world develop my imagination into a composed format to draw from and seek out references to guide me further.

Identification of Focal Points in overview.

05 DENSITY OF DETAIL

With the design finalized, I start on the art pass. Again, since I created most meshes to fit within a specific grid size (in UE4, 400x400x50 is a typical wall size), I can easily begin the process of creating more detailed pieces. This is more focused on design than art (I'll leave that to the environment artists out there), but based on my pre-vis. meshes, I can pass this work off to others in the pipeline, or create smaller assets myself.

It's also important within a team environment for me to include the concept art team in the process at this point. Most editors have a simple camera asset I can drop in, allowing me to take snaps of the level. Passing these off, concepts artists can create paint overs for the environments and I can single out objects for props and assets. And because I have the scale parameters, the environment artists will be able to identify the exact measurements of those props for building.

When I do get the final assets, I begin to structure the assets into the world, starting from the most defining areas, the landmarks. Buildings are usually snap and rotate, and key assets at eye level are almost always to a set grid size, allowing for a drag and drop approach. As more 'flavor' meshes or props come in, the density of detailing becomes an issue.

Though modern systems across the board are way more powerful than before, I still find that less is more, and that I will always convey an idea more efficiently through smart placement and key lighting rather than over-use of detailed assets. This allows me to spend more assets on breakup and silhouette of the level itself.

What art will get my point across?

[A] Unique Flavor Props

Unique props, hero assets or key assets are used as sparingly as possible, and I tend to regard them as 'one-trick ponies'. Once they are used, they rarely see the light of day again. However, with clever placement, materials or scale changes, these props can find themselves into other areas. The poly expense of these assets is often high, so within a given level, I try to position them the furthest distance apart, or utilize an interior/exterior switch so that prop culling can take place and offset the rendering cost. In lower end specification systems, this can also be an issue, as exteriors always contain a higher density of detail with vegetation, draw calls on VFX and other transparencies, and just making the space believable requires more assets to be used outside. Total visible distance on these assets is another consideration I make, as well as observation time. In a tense combat scenario, these hero assets won't receive any long looks of admiration. Located far away on an inaccessible mountain top, the asset cost doesn't correspond to the details viewed at the player's viewpoint. With vegetation (trees and such) at range, LOD changes to billboards work with fog and post-process effects, but high poly unique assets only add to rendering costs. When the action or movement slows is where I'll place these assets, as the player can take them in, admire them, and let the art show through.

Sample of some unique assets.

[B] Unifying Worldspace Assets

Most assets fall into these Unifying Worldspace Assets (UWA). They are everyday objects, such as rocks, cliff sections, grass, stone paths, columns, doors, wood walls, tree stumps, and so on. These assets are the level artist's bread and butter. I can overcome that 'samey' feeling with material swaps, vertex painting different materials together, scale changes and rotations to make every single UWA feel like something new and interesting. These props simply bind the world together to make it feel unified, blending different moods and themes together with harmonizing arrangements.

Sample of some common assets.

[C] Out Of Bounds Detailing

I believe that the world doesn't end within the playable area. Outside of this tightly controlled engagement, there is another world that the player can only look at. This grounds the player in understanding that this game world is more than a collection of corridors and ruins, but is of something larger, more grandiose, and awe inspiring. I've been somewhat obsessed with World Machine, building massive mountains and cliffs to complement the level. With a tiny resource cost and simplified textures, I can convey that sense of the larger world with ease. I'll add in billboarded treelines and simple quad box homes or temples way out of the player space to add some flavor to the scenery. I then layer this inwards, adding points of distance reference with slightly more complicated assets, merging at the playable space in three to four layers, and adding in “blocking” assets to prevent the player from climbing out of the world. This allows me to break up that 'boxed in' feeling, where the player can feel the unnatural and off-putting boundaries that make up the playable space from the background scenery.

Green area out of bounds detailing.

06 CRITICAL LOOKS

Where am I at?

Now that most of the meshes are in place, I start to take a good look at the overall scene with the details. Now I'm no longer concerned with the flow and pathing, but focus in on the overall details, and dive into concentrated observations of the macro scale of the level, and the micro details. I usually ask myself a series of questions and make concise answers to fulfill my desire to finish the work. At this stage, most of the next phases blend together. Each addition, from lighting to visual effects, requires a critical observation and may change the density of detail in one area to another.

[A] What Is Working?

If I feel confident about an area's visuals, I make a note to try and maintain that integrity. Even lighting and post-process take into account how an area is currently observed if it fits within my observation of an area that 'works'. By this, I mean an area of a level that maintains a solid framerate, is observable from multiple angles, and is unique and identifiable on its' own. These 'working' areas could be whole levels unto themselves, and that confidence is something I believe should be harnessed, rather than adapting to other areas of the design process.

[B] What Is Realized, And What Is Not?

Sometimes, an area works, but is not fully realized. An area can be visually interesting, unique, and flows well, but is inconsistent with the aesthetic of the overall environment. To fix this, I bring in unique props or assets that can be utilized again to unify two areas together. A statue, brick wall section, or tree can police the inconsistency between key landmarks into something that maintains its' own unique identity, but harmonizes the overall environment. I try to maintain an equality of prop structure, making additive changes and removing elements to ensure that rendering costs don't sway too heavily to one key landmark. It's a give and take that I act on, ensuring that assets with higher poly counts or materials are offset by adapting its' key area to fit the additional cost.

[C] Am I Over-Detailing?

Sometimes, weaker areas require more attention. And in realizing landmarks and creating workable spaces, a generous amount of assets are needed to initially bring an area into focus. This creates its' own small problem, as landmarks will be slathered with foliage, props and assets that will cause rendering issues off the back end. Foliage culling usually solves many of those woes, but additional assets outside the playable area will find themselves in the crosshairs. I typically try to limit overexposure in detailing, mostly by keeping smart groups together with a specific structured name list of assets. This is a little more taxing for me, as I will 'find' my space and unify it with the world, and then run over my work to group it together, knowing later on that lighting, post-process or visual effects may obstruct visuals later on, requiring an additional allocation of time to remove these parts that are no longer observable in any way.

Earlier iteration had exterior foliage on the boundaries of the map. Later on however, these were not viewable by the player in any way.

07 LIGHTING FOR MOOD

How is this world lit?

Now is the time for lighting the scene. I always try and make lighting simple as possible. Lighting requires a heavy investment of understanding of world lighting, driven by a standard directional light, man-made lighting, usually through point lights and spot lights, and complementary lighting. Complementary lighting is an addition of lights to assist in selling both types of lighting scenarios, and typically will cast no shadows. These lights 'warm' or 'cool' a scene, adding color contrast, and are infused with a man-made light to boost brightness without casting additional shadows. I start with the most dominant light, usually the primary directional light, to set the initial time of day, contrasting this light against visual effects such as fog. An orange lit scene fits an evening scenario, but heavier fog presents a more 'mystical' evening scene, thus infusing a sense of mood to the world's lighting.

[A] Lighting Reference

To capture a scene's lighting, I always start from reference. Google images has a plethora of natural photography around, so that's usually the very beginning of lighting. I look for multiple images that feel complementary to one another, as many people tend to create over-saturated coloration of their photos in post. Any collection of different photographers and artists that tends to be consistent usually makes for a more accurate representation of lighting for specific times of the day. I also try to match lighting scenarios with their environment. A lighting scenario in the mountains won't match a city skyline, typically due to the range of fog, smog, density and surrounding materials.

Sample lighting board.

[B] World Lighting / The Natural Environment

The dominant light is always the natural light. Even in the dead of night, light cast from the moon still creates the most dominant light. Even in overcast evenings with heavy rain and fog, the natural light will still be emphasized. I tend to focus on making this light aim towards less saturated colors. In the case of evening light, the saturation levels are slightly skewed towards white, picking up a pale orange over dominant colors. In the case of fantasy environments with three moons or sci-fi colonies on some un-explored galaxy inhabited by four bright red suns, choosing dominant color saturations will wash out a scene, creating issues with visual effects that may be unlit (receives no light from the environment) or man-made lights, which always have higher saturation values. When this happens, the art suffers, and visual integrity (such as identification of landmarks, enemies, and objectives) becomes obscured.

An additional consideration is the projection of light through spot lights. I use these with a visual effect such as godrays to project light through windows or cave openings. These spot lights are strongly lit, containing shadow casting, and are typically dynamically lit, to occlude light as the player passes through them. Without this dynamic interaction, the effect feels arbitrary and fake. This dynamic light type is costly, and I always limit the use of these effects to prevent slowdowns.

Dominant directional light.

[C] Space Lighting / Man-Made Lighting

To break up the dominant light, additional lights are needed to pull the player's eye to specific areas. I call this 'lighting for emphasis'. These lights act as a beacon to guide the player around the world. Emissive materials complemented by a simple point light with no shadow cast brightens up an area that would otherwise be dark and harshly angular due to a contrast between the dominant directional light and the shadow cast on meshes or assets. A lamp projects an almost white hot glow, saturated by a coloration projected from the heat source. An illuminated bulb might be white and create bloom, but inside an old abandoned hospital, the bulb will be more yellow after days, months or years of environmental weathering. These lights overall contain a shorter radius of projection, and are more saturated against their material make up.

Man-made glowing crystal fixture.

08 ATMOSPHERE

What complements the mood?

Working with lighting goes hand in hand with developing the atmosphere of a level for me. Lighting presents a time of day, and atmosphere presents a dominant environmental effect across the level. From my perspective, visual effects are atmospherics when applied to the world, and set the stage for the personification of a level. Even with precise culling and optimization, visual effects applied to the world (world effects) have a heavy cost. With particle casting, frame update times, and material complexity, visual effects can bring even a monster system to its' knees. I always try to limit the number of visual effects that don't contribute the direct area a player inhabits, or don't create atmosphere in the world. Additionally, effects that cast shadows, are affected by lighting, cast high amounts of particles, or update at a high frame rate will destroy optimization in the player's engagement area. Less is more in practice, though this part of my process leans more towards implementation of finished effects in levels over actual development of visual effects. I'll leave that for the fantastic VFX artists out there.

[A] VFX Macro

On the macro scale, fog is the predominant effect. Cloud coverage, or materials on a simple plane mesh outside the playing field are solid choices. Cloud visual effects can be more robust and solid, even completely opaque, all the while updating at low frame rates. These clouds can also be set up to fake motion, or project from sprite sheets on a single texture. However, these larger assets can often be hindered by LoDs or texture streaming, as their size means they'll be seen from large distances away, and the transition between levels of detail or streaming will be noticeable and slightly jarring as the player moves towards them. World fog can mask many of those effects (such as UE4's Exponential Height Fog and Atmospheric Fog), though these can become a severe limitation in more competitive multiplayer games. In these games, world fog obscures clarity of player silhouette, including identification of enemy composition, utility, weapons and so on. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive suffered early on with this problem, and now the game features very few world effects and virtually no fog within the game world after numerous complaints. I always take in the core aspect of the game in consideration of world effects.

Extreme example of light shaft occlusion and bloom from the dominant light and beam projection material effect from mesh combined with glowing spark visual effects.

[B] VFX Micro

On the micro side of world effects, I aim towards keeping complex effects focused in singular usage, as distant from one another to save on rendering costs. The orbs made of glowing vines sit at the corners of the world, with the blue orb at the central apex of the level. These orbs have simple material swaps. Smaller effects, such as smoke and fire effects for torches that complement man-made lighting are usually set up in groups. These are prefabs for maintaining lighting and placement accuracy. For the temple scene, I used a grouped crystal fixture with a blank material slot for the crystal itself. After creating seven ranges of simple emissives, I could swap in the material to create the basis for the lighting, and tweak the attached point light to match the color values from the emissive material. Additionally, I added smoke puffs around the level to provide some movement in the playable space. To prevent slow down, these effects are not placed near one another, and are limited in usage. Since these are somewhat difficult to see while moving quickly, I placed them against lights in the level.

Example of fog puffs with lighting and without.

[C] Post-Process

The main workhorse for developing atmosphere is done in post-processing. Sometimes, this is a little outside of the level design wheelhouse with more predominant key artists involved in the process, but level design is a bit of everything these days. What I always aim for is a bit of saturation, emphasize clarity, and never nuke the shadows.

In the temple level, I decided early on to saturate the scene with more dominant reds, due to the evening sky and sun near the horizon. This creates some issues, as most of the playable space occludes the dominant light. To offset this, the skylight (projection of overall light from the sky) projects overall light that saturates the entirety of the map with a dominant color. I chose to saturate this a bit more, using more of a crimson orange with a green tinted ambient cubemap to pick up the foliage around the level. I also decided to add in a cell-shaded effect as part of a post-process material. These together darkened the level considerably, and 'cooled off' the evening scene. Luckily, UE4 has some great options to warm up the scene with overall White Balance options in 'Temp' and 'Tint'. However, these themselves blow out the greens of the level, requiring a Global edit to the scene color. Saturation bumps up the reds in the scene. Contrast cools off the dominant red coloration and allows the green back in, Gamma brightens up the overall evening light effect from the skylight, preventing the shadows from crushing the scene visibility, while still allowing for darker areas.

I also added in Global Illumination, mirroring the dominant directional light from the sun, and set up the Light Propagation Volume. There's plenty of information about UE4 specific post-process features, so I won't dive too deep here. All in all, I always try to match concept if I have it, or utilize reference for the sake of accuracy in lighting conditions. Additionally, I use LUTs in Photoshop, and export the result into engine and tweak the values to maintain the visuals of the time of day I'm looking for without creating over-saturation or darkening the level too much. It's a process of fractions, and a give and take to responsibly find a balance in clarity while being visually interesting.

Post process volume, directional light, exponential height fog and skylight.

09 TWEAKING AND FINISHING UP

Are there adjustments that need to be made?

Now that everything is finalized, I typically go around the level and repeat the steps for 06 CRITICAL LOOKS, though now I have finalized the lighting and atmospherics of the map. These two steps can sometimes create smaller issues that need to be adjusted, such as too saturated materials, props blocking lighting, or other various problems due to the addition of visual effects, lighting and post-processing.

[A] Static Views

I don't necessarily want to edit the level too heavily at this point, but I am cautious about how lighting and visual effects might affect the level. Setting up temporary cameras around the world helps me visualize the area and how the additions have affected key areas and landmarks. This will usually start a degree of changes, from lighting tweaks to movement / removal of props. However, these changes are never large in scale, as I'm only bringing in more light with these changes, or adjusted areas that need less light.

Static Camera in level for micro focus on a connector area.

10 FINAL WORDS

At this point, anything I do tends to become 'noodling', or just tweaks to existing ideas. It's time to let the project go. I remove myself from the equation, let the level rest on its' own, and tackle the next project. Mira's Temple was actually quite tough. This level was a simple process overview, though I had to develop many textures and assets myself. I'm a level designer, and while I enjoy creating props, textures and visual effects, I'm always more in love with the design. I love to build worlds, to create imaginative, explorable places, and place myself in the player's shoes to give someone else that great experience at the cost of countless hours and days for myself.

Click on image to cycle final shots.