Hi I’m Krzysztof Dolas (‘Hatred’), an Environment Artist here at People Can Fly. I work with Level Artists from the Art Pit on all the things you see around our characters. This can be any object from a rock to a bridge.
If you’ve read some of the previous blog posts, you might be asking yourself how much effort does it take to make a single level? Let me give you an example from Bulletstorm’s pipeline; creating a simple “Office Chair”. Sounds easy right? Well read on….
When you google for an Office Chair you might get something like this:
Obviously we can’t copy that! We have to make our own design
Since we know we need office space assets, the task lands on one of our Concept Artists. This time, it was Maciek Wojtala. After searching lots of references he propose an idea:
Simple office chair, tadaaa!
But wait! Isn’t it too simple? It sure is. On his weekly meeting with Creative Director Adrian Chmielarz he receives a ton of feedback like:
- You’re sure it isn’t too old school?
- Where is the Sci-Fi feeling?
- WTF, man?
- I think it needs a bit of uhum and pftham… You know what I mean. 
So our Maciek goes back to the drawing board and produces loads of new cool ideas for kick-ass sci-fi chair designs:
Kick-ass
After one meeting more and a bit of idea bouncing, loads of sketches and sweat later we reached the final design of our “simple” office chair:
Office chair
Next Maciek does a quick sketch of the surrounding office combined with couple of other assets as well:
There they are!
Yeah! Finally the design phase ended and the sketch came to me. My task was to recreate a concept in 3D, fully colored and ready to use in the game. Always when I get something cooler than another rock/wall/roof/toilet I think “F#$& yeah”!
First thing that I do is blocking out rough 3D shapes to find a balance.
Base
Now I can start the real work – a high polygon model. It comes with loads of iteration, figuring out what isn’t covered in concept, what works well what’s not. It’s the time when the “intense mouse clicking hours” start, but it’s also the most fun. Sometimes when I get a concept that I like from the first glance, I’m catching myself spending some extra hours on fun details that 90% people won’t even notice. But I enjoy it so what the heck! (When you play our game, try to guess which keyboard button was pissing most of us off so much that one of my fellow 3D artists said: “You must get rid of it so it’ll look more real!”)
Details
At the end some Z-brush love and voila; we got a high poly version!
Z-brushed
Now it’s time for a low poly one (with correct number of faces that won’t kill the performance in the game) and some time to read news on forums while doing some “mindless” things like UV layouting, smooth groups setup and finally baking geometry information from a high polygonal model to a low polygonal with use of 2D Map textures.
Texturing, etc.
Now I have time to play with color. Since I spent a lot of time on painting textures during our previous project I just love this part!
Finally we got THE ASSET Office_Chair_01.
Office_Chair_01
We are nearly at the end.
The last step is exporting it to our engine, creating a material and connecting everything inside the editor so it’ll be ready to use. This time this “simple chair” was cool enough to attract Mithos (Piotrek Arendarski’s) attention who had some extra time and helped me with a funky material pass that brought the monitors to life!
Magic
Life
In-game
When you come to play the game, from time to time try to think about us sitting in our fallout shelter- WORKING OUR DICKS OFF sculpting each rock/wall/toilet for specifically for YOUR and our OWN pleasure.
If you enjoyed reading this, you may also like:
Most people does not realize how much work a good level design requires. Thank you for all the work you all are doing. Hope it pay off.
wow, that’s amazing
never thought so much thought is put even in a simple office chair!
thanks for showing this!
P.S. the bulletstorm demo rocked, can’t wait for the full game!!
You got rid of the windows/apple command key didn’t you? At least that’s what it looks like in the image titled ‘Magic’. That looks bad ass though. I want one of those chairs in my office. Maybe I’ll try to make one.
yeah, if you zoom in you can see a blank spot in the lower left. normally it goes, ctrl, win, alt, space, this looks exactly like it’s missing the windows key and that is definitely an annoying key to accidentally hit while busy with fullscreen programs
correct! that key drive us made! especially while playing fps games on office computers hehhe
*mad
this time no one correct me here 
sry
Looks amazing! You guys use modo? If so… i’m getting more and more pumped to apply there! I’m actually going to Warsaw in april, would it be possible to make a visit to your office? Wink wink hehe
I hope this game kicks ass!!
we use mainly Maya, but from time to time we test new programs that can speed up our work, personally Ive found modo a lot more efficient in modeling
How much time i will need to acheive this level of awesomeness? Year, two? I haven’t acheive HP modelling yet :/
Anyway. I should stop writting and start looking for my jaw under desk
this is some of the kind of info i’m willing to pay extra to read. i’m used to having to buy special editions and such to get a glimpse into what kind of work was put into a game. i find this stuff fascinating in so many ways and i LOVE reading about “behind the scenes” type stuff like this. it just goes to show you how much time and effort goes into any game and makes you appreciate it more. can’t wait for the full game. i’ve already got a preorder. now if only i could play the game on that office chair setup…
Where can I order those? I’d like one for the office and a pair for home!
@Terry http://www.novelquest.com/emperor.html
That looks awesome! I love how your definition of simple doesn’t match that of the rest of the world. I agree with you. Modeling details that 90% won’t even see is fun as hell.
So it turns out that it is actually easier to create a high-polygon model than a lower- one? So liek, next generation of consoles would, let’s say, run that hi-poly one ingame- then wouldn’t it be easier to make stuff for ingame use, because there wouldn’t be any need for making a low-poly variant of a given object…?
Nope. I don’t think that will happen in the near future. Because when making the hipoly you don’t have any sort of restrictions when it comes to polygon counts, since it’s something that is only used to bake down normal maps. And since it has no restrictions.. I doubt it would work in any pipeline.. Because a hipoly can go from 20k polies to like 12million if not more, so where would you draw the line?
Where can I buy one of those chairs?
Well, It’s nice to read about chairs, because are very comfortable and you have pleasure on them…. nice very nice, especially for you, because you made them for people…I have got hard chair and it is’t so much comfortable than yours, maybe I ‘ll buy them…
Hi,
I was curious if you had any tips for an aspiring Level Designer? I have map ideas, but I’m not sure what i should be responsible for other than building the actual level or even how to start. Thanks for your time,
Nick
You should give the Unreal Development Kit a look. It’s the Enreal Engine and totally free to use and there’s a million tutorial (both text and videos) out there to teach you everything about everything. Also, the community is awesome so they can always help you out.
Check out UDK.com
Sick post, my goal is to become an environment architect or level designer
Is there any chance to see a bigger version of this picture: http://www.peoplecanfly.com/blog/files/2011/02/05.gif ?
Also those chair concepts are sick
LOL – I hate the windows key as well. I popped that key and the Caps Lock key off of my work keyboard. I used to hit both by accident, all the time when I model. Now they just sit in a storage drawer.
Great write up on showing what we Enviro-guys do. You missed the part where they(higher ups) come back and change the design/purpose for the asset. Then three months later they change it again.
Efect
Efekt
Much excellent information can be found on this blog and as things advance, then is seems the seating world does too.I found that really useful.
Maybe I missed it but did he credit the company that made the chair he “conceptualized” ?
http://www.novelquest.com/emperor_200.html
Can you guys produce this in real life =P. I be down to buy it
What an idea he sir gi? I can’t Believe it. Astonish decoration. Really wonderful.
http://www.offique.com/en ” rel=”nofollow”> Computer Office Chairs