Orsinium City Process

Good friends suggested I show my process. Image 1 and 2 are pre-existing Orc assets from the game. 3 and 4 just quick sketches for vibe and shape. The main image was the one that the art director loved the vibe of.

At this point with a general look I start drilling down, figuring out how things fit together, how to make the least amount of parts do the most. I'm iterating on the individual parts heavily at this point, and at times having people run around in them.

The distilled down parts I used to concept the city.

And this was the mock city I made to test things out. At this point I'm heavily using instances in Max to modify a single part and have it propagate out to the city. Our engine was robust enough to just throw this whole thing in and run around.

This was a draw over of the 3d blockout where I'm quickly trying out more shape ideas and starting on some texture. It ain't super pretty, but it was damned useful.

Here I'm starting to do detailed paintings of the individual parts, keeping my materials and motifs as consistent as I can to help construction times.

More of the same. The textures visually tell the story of the city, with some being carved directly out of rock, and some levels being built of cut stone as the once destroyed city is repaired. Match the art to the fiction

Orc houses for the interior of the city.

A few close ups.

Took all the visual shape from the large scale architecture and mimicked the shape language in the personal props.

And along the way, lots of little sketches and photo refs to help out the people building the set.

I always loved this little throne. Used animals from the game lore to decorate it.

And here's the finish line. Background image the drawing that launched the city. The very functional breakdown, and an in game image. Thanks for coming to my Mat Talk.