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[Thread] How do you make a ship for a video game? Case study: The Artemis in The Expanse: A Telltale Series (2023) Lead Environment Artist Tommy Spampinato: "The first thing I did on day 1 of pre-production was to create a modular set of..." 1/21

"...corridor pieces that, in testing, we can mag boot walk all over. I also created a variety of tiling textures that I knew I would need like wall panels, floor tiles, and internal tech details for cavities like when we see missing panels on salvage missions." 2/21

Note: you can also read my original (and more complete) article here. 3/21 t.co/y00bmeG1NW

Tommy Spampinato: "The process of Artemis exterior design evolved quite a bit. The process started with our Art Director, Anthony Jones. Anthony made a very cool set of kit-bash 3D concepts for us. The team voted on which one we liked best." 4/21

"Anthony took the 3D concept further and did some early lighting exploration. Having a 3D concept saved us time making the game-ready version. We could import the 3D mesh into our chosen 3D app and model alongside it." 5/21

"Taking the 3D concept that Anthony made, Environment Artists James Campell and Jonathan Lauer worked on creating the exterior of the Artemis. We had a deadline with little time to get done: a video trailer made for the 2021 The Game Awards." 6/21

"Thankfully our hastily made Artemis ship looked pretty good in the video trailer." 7/21

"While the environment headed down to getting the VGA trailer ready for prime time, our Level Designer Alex Morton was using my modular corridors and Unreal primitives to create the layout of the interior for Artemis." 8/21

"The early version of the Artemis exterior was not meant to be viewed up close. Our Cinematic Director Alistair Ebinger sets up the cameras to shoot it from a specific angle for the Video Game Awards trailer. I planned to revisit the ship after the first playable was completed." 9/21

"Over time while prototyping other levels for ongoing mocap shoots, the environment team would revisit the Artemis to bring it to completion. Game Director Stephan Frost wanted us to be able to fly around the ship to look at various hotspots." 10/21

"I needed to clean up the rough spots in the model and there was an issue that bugged me, which was the ship looked too small for what was designed for the interior of the Artemis." 11/21

"I assigned the PDC bays to Environment Artist Timoty Taylor to complete. Timothy used references in the show as visual direction." 12/21

"I took on the task of reworking the Artemis ship to fit hotspots and to be larger in size. The challenge was to alter the ship without affecting any existing cinematic and gameplay work." 13/21 Artemis Med Bay Early Prototype/final level:

"Modeling for a Zero-G movement meant that assets had to have embedded collision geometry and volumes to prevent the player from penetrating the geometry." 14/21

"To avoid extra collision issues, I decided to block off areas with additional bulkier hull details, and additional framing so the player would not get stuck inside the scaffolding." 15/21

"This long before the rest of the crew seen in the game was its residents. We thought of the Artemis as having the bones of an old prospecting ship of an early earth design, but with added framing and additional weapons seen on Belter ships." 17/21

"Our corridors are wide because early plans for the game included walking on the walls and ceilings of the Artemis when not under thrust. Due to the production budget of this game, we chose to save mag booting and zero-G for the salvage environments." 18/21

"As for the length, I believe they were level-designed that way to cover the length of radio calls and to space out hotspots. There was also a concern with often having to use a ladder to access every area of the ship, which frustrated early playtesters." 19/21