Today we open the Icewind Dale wing of the Hall of Wonders. These sketches and paintings display some of the stages in designing the tree-nestled town of Kuldahar, with commentary provided by Chris Parker, Producer.
Kuldahar: A Concept Takes Shape
The way that we do these things goes like this:
The designers and artists discuss the overall goal for the area, and what the art feel is going to be.
The concept artist gets a map from the designer as well as a written description and does a concept in pencil.
If necessary, the pencil concept will be taken a step further with colors after approval, as in this case.
The modeler takes the concept and builds the model, the sample of a finished one being the wireframe.
The model is then passed to a texture artist who works in tandem with a 2D artist to texture the level.
In the case of Kuldahar, the lighting was then applied by the texture artist.
There are approvals at each stage to make sure that the art is being generated in a way that is in sync with the design and not violating any of the rules that we have set up (for things like walkable area, clipping issues, etc).
In the case of major areas, such as Kuldahar, paintings are created for 'chapter break' narration entry points, similar to the ones that were seen in BG.
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