Ben Matthews - Environment Artist. Asset Development.

A very important part of designing a level and making it feel realistic is asset development. Assets are objects in the game which flesh out the environment, they tend to be everything apart from the roof, walls and floor of the level.

Want to Know What Game Assets Are? Click Here - http://conceptdevelopmentbendavis.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/what-are-game-assets.html

The most obvious place to start when designing assets for a library would be the bookshelves themselves. Since they are likely to be the most common asset within the game. I wish to design a variety of shelves to create a sense of variety and choice for the Game Designer. I constantly referred back to the mood board I had created for inspiration.

After looking through My mood boards and doing some further research I settled upon this design for the book shelf. I modeled half of the shelf then using the 'Mirror Geometry' tool I duplicated it and mirrored it down the +X axis. I then combined it to the original half and merged the vertices together. This created one whole object. Once I had created the main bookshelf I duplicated it to experiment with multiple shelf configurations. I also made a variation of the shelf with an open cupboard at the bottom. Allowing the game designer to create puzzles using the shelves themselves.

Here You can see the variations I created.

After I finished modelling the bookshelves I created a variety of other assets for use in game. I used previous research to create assets that would work in this time period.

I created set piece that I thought would work well in a library environment. A large desk with an opening draw.

A wooden chair.

I also modeled a variety of open and closed books. These will be dotted around the level.

I also created a wall safe hidden behind a painting.

I modeled an old style wooden table. Along with a broken bookshelf.

I also made a book stand.

And lastly I put all of this together to create a small example scene to demonstrate to My group what the game may look like.

I added new assets to this as I went along, such as a tankard, an ink pot complete with a quill, a plate with traditional Germanic food. And a candle holder, this gave Me the idea that it could be an object the player could choose to pick up to help them light their way.

I started to play about with the assets I had created and took some renders using turtle. Just to try and get a feel for what the final game may look like.