The Main Platform

I first started to build my level by creating the main platforms in 3DS Max. I made 6 different kinds of planks that I could use to break up any repeated platforms as much as possible

At first I had created the planks with too many tris as I felt that because it was something that the player would see a lot of. However after play testing many times, I came to realise that it was something that I personally did not focus on very often and found that I was too generous with the tris as it really did not affect the silhouette or shape of the planks.

Another reason I had decided to lower that count was because it was repeated so many times throughout the stage that it ate up so much tris.

Along with the planks, I added the mountainous terrain to the main platform asset. I mainly did this because I considered that it would have been a pain down the line to accurately place them where I wanted them exactly to fit in as it did with my block out plan. I made the terrain blue to contrast with the brown of the wood.

I created stalactites to give the natural terrain more of an impact and pronounce them a little more.

Naturally, the inhabitants would have built around as well as use them as platforms in certain areas; for example placing planks atop them to create new paths.

With the seabed, I only created a plane for it. As vast as it is, it would be very much obscured for detail from the masking of water. For similar reasons I had also kept many of the background mountains low with the tri count because the fog of the stage would filter out the details of the silhouette.

I had used a multi-sub object to assign the planks, the support beams, the mountains and seabed.

The main problem I had was when I was creating the 2^nd UV channel for the light information. Because the asset was so big, it was extremely fiddly to fit everything accordingly into the UV space with ease. I had used the flatten mapping on certain objects such as the rectangular support beams, planks, etc. and had re arranged many of the mountains to optimise the shadow seams.