Environment and texture design for games

According to Statista, in 2022 the number of gamers exceeded 3.24 billion people worldwide. This is a huge and attractive market for investment, since video game lovers are always open to new mechanics, actively follow the release of fresh projects and share their impressions online with pleasure, providing a powerful social factor.

The universe of video games is replenished with new products almost daily, but in the end, only a few of them win the attention of millions of gamers. The key to success is often in the details. Therefore, during development, it is important to pay sufficient attention to the design of the environment that immerses the player in the virtual world and the textures that this environment consists of. In this article, we will talk in more detail about these stages of production and how to achieve an impeccable result in your project.

The design of the game environment includes the design of all objects, views and scenery that the user sees during the game. He can interact with some of them, while others, on the contrary, are purely decorative in nature and exist only to create the right atmosphere.

The process of creating a game environment depends on several important factors:

• game genre;

• platforms — smartphone, consoles, PC;
• development budget;
• view inside the gameplay – from the first person, from above, from the side, etc.

However, there are some principles that in most cases remain unchanged. Let’s consider the main ones in more detail.

Regardless of how exactly the action takes place within the game, the environment must comply with the basic principles of composition. For example, such as the “rule of thirds”, when the main object is placed in the left or right third of the image on the screen, and the remaining two thirds remain free. A good example here are third-person AAA games. Please note that the main character in them is never in the center of the screen, but is slightly shifted to the side.

There are other composition rules that not only make the game more beautiful, but also help the gamer navigate the virtual space:

• direction;
• movement in the frame;
• static composition;
• use of diagonals;
• leading lines and others.

The gamer must feel the depth of the space in which the game takes place. Even if it’s a 2D project.

One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to divide the environment into foreground, middle ground, and background.

You can also use the repeating elements method. By watching how their size changes, the player can navigate the size of the location and the location of his character.

In the course of human evolution, certain forms of the environment began to evoke certain emotions in a person. For example, roundness and wavy lines subconsciously evoke a sense of security and calmness, while sharp corners and fragments, on the contrary, are anxiety triggers, and non-verbally speak of an upcoming battle.

In the hands of an experienced designer, the shape of the environment is a powerful tool with which he controls the in-game atmosphere.

In most modern games. especially if we talk about large AAA projects, the gamer decides on his own where to go. However, by using various markers, such as lighting, object size, etc., the environment designer can point the person in the right direction, making the process of exploring the world around them easier and more fun.

One of the most popular ways to get the player’s attention is to use a so-called “magnet” – a large eye-catching object that is easy to spot from afar. It acts as a guide and tells a person in which direction to move. It is interesting that such a tool is used not only in game development, but also in real life – in shopping centers, amusement parks, and so on.

Each element in the environment is just a 3D object, which is a collection of vertices, edges, and polygons superimposed on a mesh. Initially, such objects can hardly be called part of the game space, since they do not have either color or any kind of relief. And to give them a complete look, experts apply textures.

There are a huge number of texture maps, but the most popular is PBR (Physically Based Rendering) – “physically correct rendering”. This rendering accurately simulates the surfaces of materials and how they react to light, allowing for incredibly realistic textures.

There are ten types of maps used in PBR:

• Albedo maps are a single-color or flat light image of a pattern that determines the basis of the material used.
• Normal maps – give depth to textures.
• Roughness/Gloss Maps – determines how light is scattered over the surface of the model.

• Metallicity Maps – A grayscale texture that determines how metallic an object is.
• Specular maps – determine the degree of gloss of the object and its reflectivity.
• Heightmaps – increase the number of polygons to add fine details to the base mesh.
• Opacity maps – allows you to make an object or part of it transparent.
• Ambient Occlusion Map – Determines how an object responds to light.
• Refraction maps are often a constant value that represents how much light is bent as it passes through an object.
• Self-illumination maps – determine the level of light emitted by an object.

The environment in the game is a virtual universe in which gamers will spend hours of their personal time, so it must be thought out to the smallest detail. If you want to invest in creating your own game project, please contact AVADA MEDIA. Our experts have all the technical skills and experience to bring your idea to life.