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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Environment Polish

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
in News & Features Discussion

The Star Wars: The Old Republic site has been updated with the next in a series of articles showing off the 'behind the scenes' work accomplished by the development team. This time,Senior Environment Artist Robby Lamb shows how the team creates and polishes the environments in SWTOR. At the end of the description, there's a community Q&A about the same topic.

Apart from working on environment items like walls, another polish task is the re-lighting and adding of props to an area to help tell the visual story better. Appropriate lighting and props can quickly and visually tell you that an area is, for example, seedy as opposed to crime-free.

This is important to the environment artists as well as the writers and designers whose story we are telling through art. Often we are given a description of an area that needs to be built out; let’s take a computer lab as an example. With a few NPCs placed inside, we might start with a computer lab in the simplest terms. However later in development a more detailed description may evolve – describing this area as a computer lab, locked from the outside, with a hacker trapped inside who is enslaved to the Empire. Based on this description we will go back into an area and address it by either building new or reusing more appropriate assets to fit the scene, relighting the area, as well as adjusting the environment settings such as fog depth or color.

Read more on the Star Wars: The Old Republic site.

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


Comments

  • Mr_HalloweenMr_Halloween Member Posts: 18

    Hmm the graphics have improved since last time I looked at the game, makes me a little more tempted to buy it when its released.

  • Unknown

    Originally posted by SBFord

    The Star Wars: The Old Republic site has been updated with the next in a series of articles showing off the 'behind the scenes' work accomplished by the development team. This time,Senior Environment Artist Robby Lamb shows how the team creates and polishes the environments in SWTOR. At the end of the description, there's a community Q&A about the same topic.

    Apart from working on environment items like walls, another polish task is the re-lighting and adding of props to an area to help tell the visual story better. Appropriate lighting and props can quickly and visually tell you that an area is, for example, seedy as opposed to crime-free.

    This is important to the environment artists as well as the writers and designers whose story we are telling through art. Often we are given a description of an area that needs to be built out; let’s take a computer lab as an example. With a few NPCs placed inside, we might start with a computer lab in the simplest terms. However later in development a more detailed description may evolve – describing this area as a computer lab, locked from the outside, with a hacker trapped inside who is enslaved to the Empire. Based on this description we will go back into an area and address it by either building new or reusing more appropriate assets to fit the scene, relighting the area, as well as adjusting the environment settings such as fog depth or color.

    Read more on the Star Wars: The Old Republic site.

    image

    The Q&A this month is about classes, not environment stuff.  They are taking questions for next month about the games art.

  • VoletekVoletek Member Posts: 13

    We are all waiting, is there a release date set ?

  • whilanwhilan Member UncommonPosts: 3,472

    Originally posted by Voletek

    We are all waiting, is there a release date set ?

    Not yet, i'm sure you will know when it comes out by the sheer amount of publication it gets from gamespot to G4 to MMORPG.COM to me.:P

    Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.

    Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.

    image

  • ShodanasShodanas Member RarePosts: 1,933

    Q: Is it possible, as a Jedi Guardian skilled in tanking, to wear at least a cape above his armor or does it have to be armor all the way? – JemmrikKevrae

    A: We have a large number of armor appearances for all classes, including robes and capes, so it will be possible to achieve many different looks even for heavily armored classes. Some might even look not that heavily armored at all.

    It's not a major issue but it's nice to learn that the heavily armored Jedi classes won't necessarily look like Robocob or the Iron man.

  • DarkPonyDarkPony Member Posts: 5,566

    Hehe, I predicted this friday's update to be about "grass", turned out it was about "walls" afterall. Still pretty close.

    image
    My brand new bloggity blog.

  • bakabrödbakabröd Member Posts: 129

    just release the game. you can polish something forever..

  • ElikalElikal Member UncommonPosts: 7,912

    Originally posted by DarkPony

    Hehe, I predicted this friday's update to be about "grass", turned out it was about "walls" afterall. Still pretty close.

    Lol. XD

    People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert

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