Wargaming Seattle

At Wargaming Seattle, I was hired to develop the vegetation library. The goal for the game was to be AAA quality. I was able to start early in the project and for the studio.

I was hired on the environment art side to take care of vegetation while also working on assets and set decoration. For my work on vegetation, I had created documentations, worked with designers on how vegetation would be part of gameplay, vetted the creation process, communicated with our in-source studio, create resource packs and worked with other departments to establish our pipeline. My goal was to get our pipeline up and running while also working with our in-source studio to output the quality in our vegetation that we wanted.

Later on, my role got bigger as I helped develop other key systems. The premise was still the same: work to get our pipelines up with the other departments. From Terrain to our Water system, I was working with engineers, tech artists and designers to figure out how to get these tools to our liking. I tested out new features while providing feedback on what can be approved. I looked for feasibility and fidelity out of the pipelines. As much as possible, I provided updates to the team on how things were going.

Vegetation

Because of the importance for the level design and game design, a good portion of my work involved foliage.  I helped create and manage foliage that was conducive to gameplay while working well aesthetically.   For functionality, I worked with engineers and tech artists to figure out a pipeline for properly setting up these assets.  Parts of the documentation for vegetation was handled by me using Confluence. Vegetation was created with a combination of Speedtree and frond creation in 3DS Max.

Most of the assets were created from an in-source studio so I helped create feedback and approval as they were being made on a day to day basis with email. I researched the various trees needed for each map or biome. Details like scientific name, canopy size, dimensions, trunk diameter, and concept art was made and provided to make the development of these assets as smooth as possible. Whenever our in-source studio was done with an asset, I would be the one to check if things were done correctly and give any feedback. Because of the nature of the utility of vegetation, I had to be careful of what we got to ensure it fit with design and engineers.

Hero vegetation was mostly done by me. Hero assets usually comes from a special need that would require more attention to detail or lots of feedback with the other developers in the studio. For starting up new maps, I was the artist to go to for help in constructing whitebox vegetation.

Set Dressing

I worked with map leads to tackle various aspects like layout, building creation, special needs for vegetation, the usual set dressing and any natural set dressing like mountains and terrain editing.

Grass System

On the visual side, I helped establish how to create our grass. I worked to establish how we could work around the usual constraints of grass and capitalize on the optimization options that we had. I gave feedback to tech artists and engineers in improving lighting response and features.

I had my own map that I experimented in the construction of the look of our grass. I tested what grass models would hold best and how we could get a sense of lush density without sacrificing performance. I constructed large strips of “lawns” of each grass model I created to test density, size and mip response. I was very careful of the observation of how we fade in our grass, and where that fade was in relation to players “area of focus” when playing.

Terrain Pipeline

Water Development

Content Creation