Optimizing artistic process: Exploring efficient environment creation workflows in gaming industry

Abstract

Although there is no specific data about when researchers demand to study video games, it is understandable to experience an industry which reach 200B in just two decades and making 400 million in just 24 hours with a single title. The technological innovations and hardware improvements in early twenty-first century bring huge productions which eventually made consoles, computers and games more affordable and increase number of players in all groups, ages and genders. Game industry growing fast which pressure academicians and studios make more research about every aspect of developing, marketing, player and experience. Despite many research focusing why, only few of them describe how. This is most likely video game industry is relatively young and to develop certain tools, software and plugins for production; it is required to make research about why we need it, why we develop it. But asking why in many research raise another question which is how. Demand for comprehensive research becomes evident, not only to understand the underlay motivations of development but also explore practical methodologies and how to do. This need for practicality is mirrored to environment art realm where artist and designers are tasked to crating virtual worlds that all digital stories drive. Game development is consisting of four main disciplines. The first discipline is programming where developers create codes and blueprints to drive gameplay and mechanics like elements. The second discipline is design where designers craft gameplay and create room for interactions and mechanics that fit player experience. The third discipline is technical art and design where first two disciplines connect in a way to make overall gameplay, mechanics, player experience and interactions flow as expected. The fourth discipline is art which is visual representation of all other disciplines on top of story and narrative that pull the player into game world. Art in video games involves of concept art, prop art, texture art, lighting art and more. Environment art can be defined as combination of all art disciplines in a video game. Each environment is a synthesis of location, culture, history, theme, lifestyle and atmosphere like elements and has a purpose of answering questions like where gameplay located, who lives there and how they live, what is their culture and lifestyle or what happened there. Overall, an environment is all visual elements of digital world that game characters and player live and interact. Environment artist are specialized artists responsible to make environment scenes. These artist uses various techniques and methods to create desired looking that pull player into game world. In this creation process, they follow various environment art creation steps. These steps are initial planning and referencing, conceptualization, blackout and proxy meshing, modeling and sculpting, texturing, set dress, lighting and finalization. Environment artists use various methods, strategies and approaches as their workflow to create an environment. Workflow as a term means a repeatable pattern or series of steps to produce an activity. Workflows in game context means the sequence of steps from initial planning and concepting to final game art creation process. The purpose of a workflow provides a repeatable process from beginning to end; therefore, the process can apply to multiple projects in multiple time frame. It is essential to note that while environment art creation involves steps to the medium or underly technology, these steps are distinct to be considered as a workflow or a base. Conversely, a workflow in environment art means an optimized or refined variations of art creation steps. Therefore, the creation of an workflows mainly refers to a need, to refine one or more environment art creation stage to possibly reduce time, cost or increase art quality and efficiently. The purpose of this thesis was to understand how game environment art workflows are being used, improved, and developed by artists with a focus on well-organized, optimized and high-quality work to create narratives that enhance player experience. By analyzing approaches and methods used by artists and literature, this study identifying efficient practices and strategies for the creation of video game environment arts. The final purpose of this thesis is presenting finding in a format that is accessible to artists, studios, and educators working in the video game industry whom aims to implement these practices and strategies into their environment art production pipeline. In the introduction part of this research, we discussed the purpose of our work and significance of thesis following by our research questions and scope, we finished this part by defining research method. The second section of this research paper started with literature overview. In literature section we discussed two main questions. These questions were what is environment art in video games and what workflows actually mean. We discussed these two main terminologies Following by detail clarification of workflows stages specialized to environment art, these were important because a workflow mainly refers to a need, to refine, optimize, shorten, increase one or more environment creation stage in terms of time, cost or quality. This section of research continued with background research, particularly previous works and history of environment art in video games from very first two-dimensional(2D) graphics to this moment. This part included examples of environment art and industry developments. We finished this section with current environment art workflows trends and previous studies made for this topic. In the third part, we introduced core part of this work where we explain our methodology for this thesis. We adopted grounded research method for our research. This method has been used in many areas including sociology, psychology and business and become very effective for its ability to generate new insight and theories that based on real world data. This method is especially suitable for dynamic research fields that has fewer existing resources and has a need to construct ideas based on evidence itself, as research field has low literature references, it was essential to benefit from real world data and external contributors. Our methodology consists of three data set and study type; preliminary study, experimental study and main study. These studies created and used data sets, preliminary data, experimental data and semi-structured interview data which later on called as main data. Environment art field evolve rapidly whereas due to dynamic nature of research topic, some of literature finding may already replace with new methods while some of them may completely obsolete over time. This created a problem, because investigating replaced or unused methods were be unpractical for research goals. Therefore, a study for ensuring literature being reviewed is relevant data was needed. This study was preliminary study which only examined recent literature. In this study, we further detail recent literature and observations to identify active literature while eliminate obsoleted part of it. This study only focuses each environment art creation stages because workflows mainly refer to a need, to refine one or more environment art creation stage. Therefore, only focusing environment art creation stages was a logical method for such purpose since any changes on environment art creation stages would dictate workflow and method itself. Also, this approach would be efficient and practical to ensure literature being reviewed was relevant and up to date. This approach allowed us pinpoint areas where refinement, change or obsoleted happened. The study in general showed us; 2 dimensional, manual and time-consuming methods are greatly replaced while more automated, algorithm or AI based workflows has a trend. Furthermore, this study provided strategies and methods for efficient practices visible in literature for each environment art creation stages. The end result of this study created preliminary data. The dynamic nature of research topic created yet another problem. As the research topic was extremely dynamic, some of preliminary study data may be too new and only have theorical background without practical base. Experimental study was a practical study for this need. Therefore, we created an experimental project based on preliminary data. In this study, we created a dedicated environment art project named ''Living in the Bubble of Love''. This study focused preliminary data and measured the practical base of it. Therefore, some of preliminary study findings like procedural workflows and modular workflows has a practical base while AI based workflows may need further definition, tool, learning resources and most importantly regulations for copyright. This study created our second data set which is experimental data. Preliminary study and experiment project study created two data type, these were preliminary data and experimental data. These two data sets used as a base for preparing a semi structured interview. Therefore, based on previous studies we prepared a semi structured interview framework which included an extensive survey along with minimum 4 industry artists and compare their approach for each step of environment art creation pipelines. The end result of this interview created last data set which is main data. This data, preliminary data and experimental data used for final main study. The main study was final analyzing and writing of all data sets using grounded research method to generate theories for literature, research goals and environment art field. The main study started with our goals and scope following a detailed explanation about our data collection and analysis methods. We used Grounded Theory as both analysis methods data collection method. This section of study started with semi structured interview framework, including participant selection criteria like relevant field and experience; recruitments methods like professional networks and referral methods. Semi structured framework setup continued with confidentiality procedures, data sets, final interview layout and interview questions. The section ended with main study analysis and findings. The analyzing used open coding, axial coding, selective coding, theorical sampling, theorical saturation and memo writing to analyze all three data sets. This analysis and finding included discussion about methods and workflows we interviewed and experimented during this research. The final theoretical sampling and memo writing groups created various theories as follows. 1-Base workflows, 2-Tools and compatibility, 3- Prototyping, 4-Feedback and collaboration, 5-Importance of planning stage, 6- Artist Role, 7- AI workflows and 8-Automated workflows. In the last part, we concluded with contribution of this research and future prediction. The thesis specially focused artistic process of game environment and it presented in a format that is accessible to artists, studios and educators working in video game industry, this thesis filled an important gap in literature and proving a valuable insight for those looking to improve their environment art workflows. Furthermore, this research analyzed approaches and methods used by artists working in game industry, identified efficient practices and strategies for creation of game worlds and aid to advance in game environment art workflows. The presentation on this study could be used to inform best practices and aid new developments in industry. Meanwhile, this study brought a deeper understanding of game art in video game and highlight the importance of art in game development and the needs for a greater focus on creative side of game development. This could lead to a greater appreciation for the role of artists in game development and encourage researchers to study artistic perspectives in game development. Research topic has bright feature in computer graphics. Finding can be used for related research or an upper education level like PhD project. These projects could be like Workflows Developments and managements various AI implementation projects and AI training projects for environment creation purposes.