Level Designer
Adventure - Block Mesh
​From mood board concept to playable level, this block mesh project allowed me to flex my skills leading the player with strong leading lines and visuals.
Prompt
From my medieval mood board create a 3-stage adventure level with guiding visual features and increasingly difficult traversal challenges and gate puzzles.
What Went Right
Visual Diversity
First, I invisioning three distinct biomes from a country farm, castle ruins, and mountain-side jungle. Blocking out the main features and structures using contrasting shapes and colors promoted a feeling of player progression advancing through each level stage into new settings. I created unique looking trees to flush out areas overun by nature and used them as well to frame distant points of interest.
Interior Lighting
During the blockout stage of production I tested lighting techniques between different areas of my castle ruins in order to make sure guiding elements were placed towards the golden path and optinal areas of exploration. In the lower dungeon I enjoyed placing lights throughout the cells for the player to find collectables, as well as above in uppder floors that the player could see from below to guide them deeper into the castle.
What Went Wrong
Brush Tool Challenges
In order to make my castle appear destroyed and dilapidated I used the brush boxes to create negative spaces between the floors and walls. While the look turned out as I wanted, the blocks themselves were so unique that replicating the holes and decay with other assets was nearly impossible. Going forward I plan to explore the modeling and fracture tools to create more authentic-looking structures during the blocking out phase and with finished assets.
Overloaded Scenes
To flush out my level I created my own trees, fences, and structures, however early on I did not merge them into a single mesh actor to lower the Level of Detail processing in each scene. Once I merged these objects into a new meshes I was able to increase the Frames Per Second in my trouble areas. This also allowed me to work faster having the content ready to throw into any scene to make my level aesthetic feel consitent.