Blizzard environment competition (U70)
At the end of September we were tasked with entering a competition held by Blizzard Entertainment to design an environment that could be seen in World of Warcraft (WoW).
I'm looking at this as an opportunity to improve my texturing skills when designing models, this is because the assets in WoW aren't poly heavy, and most of the detail comes from the textures. I've installed the Student version of Substance Painter to help me with this, which is a valuable asset to have because it is software very widely used in the industry.
Where to start
WoW has such a diverse set of locations and environments, all incredibly designed and all unique to fit the cultures and characters that they represent. A lot of the environments in WoW are interpretations of real world locations or represent pantheons from ancient history. The two pantheons represented in WoW being Norse and Egyptian.
Because I had already created a Nordic environment in the form of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Asgard, I decided to try my hand at the Egyptian environment. The environment won't resemble anything from WoW too strongly, I'm wanting to add a technological aspect to the design, more futuristic without breaking the design.
Phase 1- Research
In developing my environment I borrowed inspiration from the real world counterpart to ancient ruins I'd be building.In addition to the obvious choice of inspiration being the Pyramids of Giza, I looked at the ruins of temples like that of Sobek and Hatshepsut.
I appreciated the scale of the Temple of Sobek, It looked very imposing compared to other buildings in crocodilopolis. On the other hand the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut had a lot of its structure embedded in the surrounding environment after centuries of neglect.
I had planned on incorporating both of these elements into my environment design without directly creating either of these well known temples.
Phase 2- Production
For this project I felt it unnecessary to create any concept art to help convey my ideas, there was enough research that did that for me, whether that be the actual environments I'd be trying to emulate, or the ancient structures that inspired them. So, I've decided to move straight into the production phase. I'm starting with a Pyramid with some of its edges illuminated to give off the idea that this is an ancient technological marvel.
With the Pyramid done I'm working on the surrounding structures, but having the pyramid as the centre piece, so it should feel like all the surrounding structures converge on the Pyramid, highlighting its importance.
I've added a HDRI into the scene to improve the lighting in the scene, I've experimented with a couple of different light simulations, mainly to see how they reflect off of the structures, and to see if the illuminated sections of the structures. So far I've liked how the structures have looked, although in dark lighting conditions it's hard to make out the silhouettes of the structures and any detail is difficult to see. I got the HDRI from the website HDRI Haven which I've used numerous times for different projects.
While applying the temporary textures to the models to help with lighting I applied a texture to the pyramid which ended up inspiring the final aesthetic for the structure. The texture was a height-map for the environment that I used to create the terrain.
I started to experiment with texturing the pyramid structure in substance painter. This was my first experience with the software and took some getting used to but for the pyramid I only needed some simple functions to fit with the theme I wanted for the structure. For my scene I wanted to hint at the advanced technology that had allowed the structures to last thousands of years. With the pyramid as the centre of this power.