The Arena.Net team has updated the Guild Wars 2 blog with a new post by Environment Artist Peter Fries. Previously working on Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North, Fries brings a lot of experience creating the lands and cities our characters roam around in. In this piece, Fries talks about what exactly it is that environment is and how the artists create the look of the Guild Wars 2 universe.
The list of considerations that an environment artist has is very long. Building a game environment involves technical concerns, like the impact of polygon density on display frame rates, collision mistakes that unintentionally trap players, and the idea that even the darkest place needs to look good in variable lighting. Our amazing internal technology and tool developers continually deepen the parameters available, from the motion of particle fields to perturbation patterns in the surfaces of water bodies. As the technology of the game improves, prop and map artists are constantly revisiting older assets to improve those as well.
I can think of no greater challenge our environment artists have than trying to live up to the vision of the studio’s amazing concept art team. Imagine being expected to actually build the incredible things that our art director Daniel Dociu comes up with, while he stands right behind you watching. Daniel doesn’t want to hear about your technical limitations, he wants to know why stray sprigs of grass aren’t breaking up the harsh line where a building’s façade meets the ground, or why rust hasn’t stained the masonry underneath that downspout. You know you’re in for it when Daniel starts furiously sketching on a stray napkin from your desk to illustrate his point!
Read more on the Guild Wars 2 blog.
