Elderwood - Fantasy Inspired POI
Reimagining | Unity Level Design
Summary:
This was a project done in my free time, separately from college classes and homework. I was inspired to create a Skyrim town in a Warcraft style. The level uses pre-rendered/textured assets and materials from the Unity asset store.
Elderwood's main purpose is to act as a player biome for a Medieval Fantasy MMO/RPG.
Responsibilities:
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Level concepting/blockout
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Asset Placement
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Lighting/Post Processing
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Particle FX/Particle Placement
Project Breakdown
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Created in a few months
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Developed in spare time
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Created in Unity
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Asset Store/Plugins used:
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Modular Fantasy Village - EpicForge3d
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Standard Assets 2018.4 - Unity Technologies
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Overview
Top Down
Design Techniques
Open Town Hub
The focus of this town, and one of the main reasons I chose to reimagine it for Warcraft, was it's naturally open design to be approached in multiple angles.
Just like in WoW towns, you can enter north, south, east, west, or above!
Direct Path
The focus of this town, inspired by Whiterun, was was a town that lead the player directly to the Keep to turn in quests.
The town is primarily entered through one way. Although there are multiple pathways for it to be a living & breathing town, ultimately it guides & funnels the player down one pathway.
WoW Inspired Terrain
To give the terrain that WoW feeling, I opted for a vast & open area. Staying true to the stylized, vibrant art style with colorful landscapes and exaggerated features that contribute to WoW's memorable and timeless look.
Avoiding the "ice cream scoop" mountains was a main priority when developing the terrain. Using real world and Warcraft references helped building a believable world.
It was important for me to connect the zones with a smooth transition points that felt that it naturally fit into the world.
Pre-production
Early Stages
The beginning process consisted of molding the terrain and then blocking out with the provided assets.
Thanks to the use of reference images, the conception of the map stayed consistent throughout the building process.
Progression
Process
After blocking out the town further assets would be placed to detail the world such as foliage, cluttered, etc.
Next I would begin texturing the assets that needed it.
Then I proceeded with lighting, post processing, and particle FX.
Gathering References
The first thing I did when creating the level was to gather a big amount of references.
The references inspired the layout and were used as architectural guidelines to make the space believable.
Reflection
The main components that I gathered from creating this map was environmental storytelling, terrain, and readability.
Riverwood is a perfect town to begin a player's journey. It's lushes, busy, and full of life. It makes for a good starting area when beginning a new adventure in a game. Elements such as the movement within the townscape make the place feel alive even without NPCs such as the water wheel or windmill. But it wasn't until I added little elements like barrels, crates, and misc. items that added clutter to bring the world to life.
One of my biggest struggles was mastering the terrain tool. It's one thing adding landscape, it's another to make terrain fit naturally with the environment. Skyrim's towns are contain a lot of foliage taking up the world space, on the other hand Warcraft leaves more positive space in it's games. World of Warcraft needs this for readability through a sea of players, and the old RTS games need this to see the units through the play-spaces.
In the end, Riverwood felt like a perfect fit in Warcraft. It's open, full of storytelling opportunities, and leaves plenty of room for exaggerated features.