Feb 9
Hello everyone! I'm Eleanore, the lead artist for The Witch's Garden.
Over the last week, I've been working on modeling and texturing props for the interior of the witch's house. Our goals for the inside of the house were to create a cozy space that players could easily use to interact with different mechanics of the game like brewing potions, fulfilling orders, selling items, and researching.
I began creating props by making simple block outs in Maya and importing them to Unity to test scale. After the scale was correct, I added more detail to them. My goal was to make each asset look handmade and worn to fit with the lore of the game. I accomplished this by creating an interesting silhouette for each prop by tilting or bending shapes. For example, some of the shelves are tilted to one side and not perfectly straight across the front. Most shapes taper towards the center and flare towards the base and the top. Perfectly straight horizontal or vertical lines is something I generally avoided.
(Shelves, books, and candles.)
After modeling the props, the next step was texturing. For texturing, I used Substance Painter. Substance Painter works well for our art pipeline because it's easy to see props in an unlit view by using the base color view and because it's easy to apply a gradient to props by using the 3D linear gradient generator. Additionally, by using masks, I can quickly adjust an asset's colors.
When developing an environment, I keep in mind how the environment can affect the gameplay happening in that space. In The Witch's Garden, players spend the day gardening outside. When their gardening is done, they can advance the day by entering the house. When they are finished with their tasks in the house, they can go to sleep and wake up for a new day of gardening. To make the passing of time clear to players, the garden and the house interior utilize different color palettes. In the garden, the colors are bright and saturated and there is a lot of green to signify an outdoors space on a sunny day. Inside the witch's house, the colors are darker and less saturated to show that it is night time. Most of the colors are deep blues, purples, and greens.
(The garden.)
One struggle I have encountered is balancing gameplay needs with aesthetics. For example, the books were initially too contrasting in color which became distracting when there were so many close together. After toning down their colors, the books stand out less which allows players to focus more on the areas in the house they can interact with like the cauldron, counter, chest, research book, and bed. Something we are still working on is keeping the layout of the props in the house interesting while making it easy for players to quickly interact with them. With more iterations, I'm sure we can make a beautiful space that streamlines gameplay.
(Top: Before correcting distracting book colors. Bottom: After correcting distracting colors and experimenting with a different layout.)
Thanks for reading our blog and be sure to check back in the future for more!
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