MMO - World Building
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From 2010 to 2011 I worked with Tencent Boston as a Senior World Builder doing level design, terrains, and lighting for an unannounced MMO project.
Hand-sculpted & hand-painted terrains using a proprietary engine & toolset.
Set the standard for terrain look and feel, fine-tuned all the lighting in the game.
Mentored and trained all worldbuilders, domestic and international teams.
Worked closely with graphics programmers to tune toolsets for terrain, water, foliage, lighting, and skies.
Tree Village
I did terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, asset & grass placement, lighting, polish:
A comparison of my work vs. what was there before, same locale as above:
Volcanic Beach
In this level I created an animated volcano & sky, the water, and the lighting.
The volcano "reveal" from the player's perspective.
A closeup made into an animated GIF.
The layers I created for the volcano:
Wireframe of the smoke & lava layer:
Wireframe of the lightning layer:
How I created the ocean waves:
Mountain Peak
I did level design, terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, assets & grass placement, lighting, polish. To the right is the "before" shot.
Mountain Valley
I did terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, assets & grass placement, lighting, polish. To the right is what I was given.
Ghost Valley
I did terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, assets & grass placement, lighting, polish. To the right is what it used to look like.
Here I did terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, assets & grass placement, lighting, water, polish. Before image is to the right.
Jungle Coast
This was a small area I did to finished quality, what we called an "alpha pocket". This was done as a proof of concept towards finishing of the rest of the level. On the right is how the terrain used to look beforehand.
A video of the layers I used to make the terrain:
Wild Forest
This is another "alpha pocket", a small section to show the team what direction to go in. I did terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, assets & grass placement, lighting, water, polish.
A larger view of the same area. Below it is the initial state before I started.
Jungle Valley
I did terrain sculpting, terrain paint & vertex color, assets & grass placement, lighting, water, polish:
This is part of a tutorial I made for the team, showing how vertex color can soften the transition between meshes and terrain. Left (with) vs. right (without):