Creating the Environmental Artwork for Coastal Thailand (By Patrick Sirk)

From my Backyard to Bangkok:
Creating the Environment Artwork for “Coastal Thailand”, Tomb Raider Underworld

Patrick Sirk Friday, October 17th, 2008

Hello readers! I was recently asked to write a brief article describing my experience as the Environment Art Director for Underworld. The timing is good because with the intensity of production finally at an end, I have had time to relax and reflect upon the past two years.

With the release of our downloadable demo, “Coastal Thailand”, I thought I’d share our philosophy, goals, experience and adventures while creating the artwork for this beautiful level.

At the outset, I wanted the environments to have a foundation of visual realism. All the details needed to be believable. This meant the architecture, the lighting, the texturing; even the species of plants had to be chosen for their realism. My philosophy is that since many fantastical things are portrayed in Tomb Raider and if those elements of fantasy are represented against a backdrop of realism; then the player’s experience will be more engrossing; the fantasy becomes real.

So, what did this mean for production? An incredible pain in the neck, but well worth it.

I jumped on a plane, digital camera and tripod in hand and off I went. I know what you’re thinking, “this guy has one of the best jobs in the world”. Well that trip turned out to be one of the most grueling 7 days in my life.

The trip started with a malfunctioning computer chip on the plane out of San Francisco. This caused a 6 hour delay in taking off and they had to switch planes with a layover in Tokyo instead of Bangkok. Finally I arrive in Cambodia (where the best ruins are) and with only 3 hours sleep, I meet my guide and off we drive to the fist site. I step out of the air conditioned car into the 105 degree incredibly humid climate and unpack the camera. Of course, heavy condensation immediately forms over the camera body and lens and my heart sinks.

I thought that I had just fried the electronics because the condensation was so extreme. But with some lens wipes, I’m good to go. FYI: trick to preventing this from happening is to keep the camera in a zip lock bag. When the temperature equalizes, unzip the bag and you’ll be fine.

The next 5 days are productive, about 1000 shots a day centered in and around the Angkor Wat complex. But I experienced really bad problems with the heat. I could not drink enough water and I was constantly exhausted. It didn’t help that my internal clock never had a chance to adjust to the 12 hour time difference. But overall, I would do another trip like this in a heartbeat. The results we got from high end photography are evident in the Thailand level. Not only did the artists have excellent reference for the architecture but they created virtually every texture directly from the photographs.

It must be said that all of my effort pales in comparison to the skill and talent of the two primary artists on the Thailand Level; Matt Abbott and Jacob Tai. It was these two that really brought the level to life. I just supplied some ingredients.

After a few months of hard work, the artists had built their geometry and applied the textures and things were looking quite nice, except one primary element was missing: the foliage.

We had always planned on the Thailand level as our deep, lush exotic jungle experience. The artists had built many beautiful plants and we began to populate the environment with literally thousands of plants. And then the frame rate plummeted. This was one of the most frustrating problems encountered while developing Tomb Raider: Underworld.

Were we drawing too many polygons? Were the materials too complex? Were the textures too large? Was our draw distance too far? The engineers could not identify a singular issue that was causing the massive hit in frame rate. We ran tests with a million poly’s and our frame rate was fine. We experimented with overloading the scene with complex materials and still the frame rate was ok. It seemed that a combination of everything was the culprit.

So this meant that we would have to reduce everything and that was not acceptable for me. We wanted hundreds of plants and we could only afford a few. After some experimentation, I found a trick to better use shadow casting. Our performance shot back up and we could include everything I wanted in the scene. That we found a way to keep everything the artists had worked so long and hard on was a huge win and a massive relief.

I hope you enjoy playing Underworld as much as we enjoyed making it.

Cheers for now,
Patrick