What Modern Interior Design Teaches Us About Environment Art

appar got to do it this way all right hi everybody um uh I'm Dan Cox I'm here to talk to you about what modern interior design teaches us about environment art I work at Ubisoft Toronto I'm a level artist there and recently I helped ship Splinter Cell Blacklist during the entirety of my career I have been teaching at senica College uh teaching environment art uh trying to get people like this to understand how to make interesting game spaces and one of the things that it really taught me was a lot about myself and a lot about my understandings and misunderstandings about how we may or may not want to actually build environments looking at their spaces I would often come up with cliche silly ideas as to what worked what didn't I would start to tell them make it more blue make it less blue add more details put in less details and and it didn't really make any sense I didn't have any

fundamental specifics that I could work with to deal with these kinds of things and during this time I was actually watching a lot of HGTV with my wife uh she was watching these shows and I was starting to watch them as well and finding them incredibly entertaining shows like Sarah 101 and another show pure design ended up dealing with a lot of really really interesting things and and developing spaces and taking something like this and turning it into something like this and even better than that they would start to explain why this room doesn't actually look any good the dark cabinets ends up making the room feel smaller the position of the sink next to the stove ends up making for a flow that doesn't actually work the way that you'd want on top of that the doors in the room being a significantly darker color than the walls ends up really exaggerating them not that's not something you want for the room they're not an important part there's a desk there's a window with which you can see a laundry room on the other side of these things end up really confusing the space and they would explain these and then when they redesign in the space

moving things like a table and changing the flow of the room so that you end up being able to move about the space a lot more changing the elements and their specific locations to make the flow work a lot better making the range and the oven and the sink and chairs all similar colors stainless steel ends up reinforcing their connection with each other they're all functional elements of the room that you're meant to interact with and all of these things were really really interesting even taking uh the window to the room and making it a frosted window still letting light in but making sure you still feel like you're in a kitchen which made me think this works really well for us there's a lot that we can get from these types of ideas and rules and setups that i' not really heard about before but where do we go from here well first off I want to talk about how interior designers are just like level artists or World Builders or whatever term we want to use because we use all the same setups and techniques I also next want to talk

about interior design rules and interior designers tips and techniques for how they create a space and then I want to apply this specifically to game spaces and see what we can actually get away with in terms of using some of these ideas first off level artists are interior designers and maybe not in the obvious way we both build spaces and design them that's rather obvious but our fundamentals and our cores are actually so much closer than might be obvious you might think an interior decorator is just supposed to make a place pretty but that's not always their job their job is to create Form and Function just like us first off for an interior designer they're going to be dealing with form form is going to be defining what the mood and feeling of a space is what is the story that's supposed to be evoked from it is it supposed to be a sleeping space and you're supposed to feel calm and comfortable and warm or are you just supposed to get an interesting narrative about the people that actually live inside this space all of this is form and we and games deal with this in the exact same way

we evoke emotions in a space through form we tell you the story of the people that exist there and who might actually live inside that space next function function is specifically going to be defining what you do in a space and interior designers work with this in the same way we do they're going to have a space that's going to be meant for a certain purpose and the form is going to have to change to compensate that in some way shape or form so for example here you're meant to be eating in the space or going to the bathroom or eating and cooking these spaces have a different function and thus are going to visually look different we have the same thing for games we have the same setup where Gears of War you got a bunch of chest High walls large Open Spaces with which to shoot the function changes the appearance of the space based on what you're doing and Mass Effect a large open space where you can maneuver around an area even the placement of people in the space ends up being somewhat of a design

function for visuals because you tell people to start talking to the other elements that are inside of it or something like Prince of Persia large long spaces that you can jump across even the light orbs in these kinds of spaces telling you where you're supposed to go next leading you about the space the function changes how something looks but in all of this we need a balance of intent if we don't have that we can end with spaces like this this space is all function over form it's a very confusing space to look at it's hard to make out all the elements that are in there and it's even hard in some situations to actually understand right away what is the purpose of the space its function is generally supposed to be a gameplay room but sometimes things like the gameplay Advance poster or even the sofa ends up actually distracting from the main functional element here which is the TV with a little bit more of a balance of that form we can end up with something a bit more like this something where you understand what the purpose of the space

is and can work with it a lot better this is not necessarily a better space than another one but it evokes the certain types of feelings and moods that we're supposed to be getting right away Uncharted dealt with this the first Uncharted ends up having a lot of scenarios where you can get confused and lost because it happens to be a little bit of form over function the players don't necessarily know what they need to do because it looks like a ruin and too many things look very very similar and you don't know what to grab nauy dog dealt with this in Uncharted 2 by drawing out more contrast for the functional Elements by making sure that grabbing spaces become red and evoke a certain emotions so that you can grab them right away tanks draw out their contrast from the ground so you can make sure you know what you're always interacting with with all that in mind we want to look at the rules if we are the exact same as an interior designer then we really want to make sure to look at the rules that they use and see how they can

apply to us first off we want to look at lighting balance emphasis contrast Rhythm repetition and proportion and scale these are many of the rules that the fundamental ideas that interior designers use and we can look at them first off lighting but we're not going to talk about lighting because it's way too big it's a huge huge huge all-encompassing topic and there's no way I can cover it in this talk however one of the things I find really interesting is that that interior designers specifically deal with light fixtures for light for interior designers light fixtures are actually like one of the biggest points of contrast in a room and thus they draw the eye to it the most and thus it becomes one of the most important parts for defining how a space is going to feel and look it's a big design element each of these spaces the light fixture happens to be one of the most interesting things in the room which is really useful for us especially for things like what I worked on spinner cell you're supposed to shoot lights

they should be the most interesting thing to see we can look at contrast contrast is going to be a fundamental underpinning element between everything contrast can change a room like this to this What's Happening Here is specifically we see one room where the function is a sitting room where you watch TV by just changing the contrast and deemphasizing the TV not even removing it but just deemphasizing it the room feels like it has a different function even though none of the elements have actually technically changed nothing's been removed just contrast has been adjusted this leads us to emphasis contrast is going to help us deal with emphasis now contrast and emphasis can happen due to contrasts in shape form color value any of those kinds of things will create more emphasis and will allow us to focus on different elements leading us around emphasis is really important for understanding where to lead players or people to certain elements and move them about a

space specifically it can emphasize proportions or or specifically uh the function of a space so in this space we have a table the table is emphasized from the walls which gives you the sense that you're supposed to interact with that specifically or the chairs emphasized from the other surfaces in the space meaning you're supposed to sit there these are the things that you're supposed to move to because they're the most emphasized one thing that I love that interior designers deal with with and one of the things that I think it's the most appropriate for us is the fact that interior designers always have to deal with full spaces unlike movies or uh concept art or certain other elements where you might just have to focus on singular 2D composition interior designers have to deal with what is all around you at all times which means they have to focus on emphasis in all areas in some way shape or form so in a space like this we have a problem with a lack of emphasis on one side of the room the bed is overemphasized from the other

side to reemphasize that area to make sure that you have a better set of focal points around this space we want to reemphasize the other side creating some elements that lead you about the space so you don't feel like it's actually empty next we can look at balance symmetrical balance specifically first symmetrical balance is when one side of a space does not necessarily override or overpower another one uh symmetrical balance can creating a space that's peaceful calm maybe somewhat formal it can have a strong impact however if it's overdone it can be somewhat isolating and intimidating one of the things I like about it the most is it can lead you through a space as opposed to around it where asymmetry comes in asymmetry is very useful for leading you about a space making sure that you can explore a little bit more it's more casual it's really uh a lot more exciting and it can get really chaotic if you overdo

it next we can look at repetition repetition is a really interesting thing especially when it's used by uh some really good interior designers often times they'll end up taking a painting for a space like in our first image and they'll end up using that painting as the focal point for color in the whole Space every set of colors is derived from whatever is in the painting that's the through line for the room and it ties everything together no matter what the shape or other elements are if we look at the next example Le we can see that there are a number of elements that all have the same color but their shape and form is different some are soft some aren't but they still work because of that through line of color because the elements are repeated they work the repeated element here being white even though the shapes don't match it still works because of that through line even in this space which might not be a necessarily appealing space for a number of people but there's that through line of shape large rectilinear elements end

up tying everything together even though the color scheme doesn't necessarily tie itself together nearly as much it's not as obvious but because there's that through line the space still works Rhythm I like to think of this as gradients as well a gradient through a space can lead your eye through it and allow you to feel a bit more moved through the space and a little bit more of that excitement in this space we have dark lower cabinets and light upper cabinets in here your eye is moved upwards in this space we've got dark lower areas and light upper areas but we also have a movement of shape we have large lower elements and then thin higher up elements this space has no rhythm or very little and so your eye is stuck it doesn't move about as much as it could you can look at proportion in scale one thing that I really like that interior designers do with proportion and scale is make a small space feel bigger simply through the elements that are inside of it by having clear

transparent objects or objects with thin lines where you can see through you end up getting a situation where you feel like you're in a larger space than you actually are if we get the opposite the space can feel a little bit more constricting and smaller and we need to keep this in mind when we're dealing with larger spaces because we'll end up in a situation where we want to use large elements to fill that space so that it doesn't feel too empty now this is not a very big room but because the elements inside it are so small and you can see through so many elements it ends up feeling a lot smaller than it or a lot larger than it actually is if we just change proportion in scale the space can feel a lot Cozier again not necessarily better than the other situation but it gives a different mood and feeling for the space now let's look at interior designers tips and techniques the thing that I really wanted to get out of this was to to show how we can apply seemingly arbitrary elements together

and still have them apply to exactly what we're doing first off one rule I like that de that they deal with is don't fight the architecture interior designers can't just drop a ceiling in a room it's hugely expensive it's much more expensive than it is for us but the thing that I love is when they don't fight the architecture they use the kinds of rules that sometimes we don't have to which is really interesting dealing with those constraints is always helpful for us so a level designer gives us a situation that we can't readily work with or we want to drop a ceiling because ah the room's Too Tall but maybe there are other gameplay elements that we have to change we can start to focus on the way that they deal with stuff like that in here so for this situation the ceiling's too high but we can't just drop the ceiling height maybe we can add in things like crown molding the crown molding gives us a bit of an eyeline element that we can use to deemphasize a bit of the uh sealing element and bring our eye down a bit more making it feel a little bit more intimate or lead the eye

back up again still keeping in that crown molding but allowing us to look at that higher area however this is deemphasizing the table a little bit which is supposed to be the focal point of the space we could instead use something like veilance beams which are a really interesting element for actually lowering the ceiling height artificially and still allowing a ton of light in and the feeling of height in the space without explicit height next the 306010 rule this is really interesting one that I stumbled across which was really neat because it's really good for dealing with a color scheme so you start off with 60% of your room being a large dominant color that's somewhat desaturated your intermediate color which takes up 30% of the space can be more saturated and 10% can often be meant for large bold pops of color it's useful in a number of situations and it's really really powerful for creating a nice color scheme that tends to work together really nicely it also works for most

design in general including a men's suit and same with that color scheme that can just come right back into another room as well but how do we apply this to games the most important part is trying to realize that even though interior designers are dealing with feature walls and pillows and patterns and wallpaper and we seem like we're dealing with something entirely different we're not we're dealing with shape color value all of the same fundamental elements so all of these things should be applicable but first let's look at an interior designed space Dishonored has great art I I absolutely love what they've done with their spaces but what if things didn't work so well what if there was a problem with the space What If for example the space ends up feeling a bit too tall removing some of these elements that were uh making the space feel a bit more stable and human when they're removed we end up with a bit of a problem however if we adjust the space if we create a bit more Rhythm by just adjusting some of the pallet here darkening the floors and

lightening the walls we create a bit more of a rhythm through the space which works quite a bit better than it did before without that Rhythm next we can start applying the 60310 rule in this situation we can end up with something that's going to lead our eye around a little bit more on top of that we can start applying some lights in the scene in a specific ey line this allows us to actually have one specific height for the space where we didn't have that element anymore and comparing again not necessarily a better space but it fixes some of the problems that we've run into previously next I want to look at a level I was working on for Splinter Cell Blacklist this was supposed to be a liquid natural gas Refinery this is not supposed to be a designed space this is pure form over function over form there is it's not supposed to feel like a design space otherwise it's not proper

it it's not really the way it's supposed to feel and this is what we did we consistently focused on building out the space with function over form which ended up sometimes making the space very confusing early on and we had to use some techniques that were a little bit heavy-handed to lead the player around because players got confused really early on as to where they were supposed to go so in this space for example it's a Sandbox area we're supposed to move about and grab certain elements however I want to focus on one specific area moving to the side coming up this staircase looking over to the right and in this area this is where there's a number of terrorists and you're supposed to go get them I don't want to emphasize that area too much because it already starts to get confusing to even look at right away if we come back we jump over this railing and we go down this pipe this leads us to another area and a number of people got confused trying to get to this space it wasn't heavily head people weren't heading to

it a lot and I wanted to look at some ways at least early on we did start to resolve some of these going back there we go so I want to look at how to adjust this space how to change the feel of it a bit more to lead a person about first off Rhythm all of these are subtle simple changes which is why I think they're the most applicable for us but even just changing the rhythm of the space leads our eye up and tends to make the space a little bit more interesting to look at next we can look at deemphasizing that large pillar there's a ton of pipes and a ton of contrast on that element but we're not supposed to interact with it why are we emphasizing it if we think about emphasis we want to pull that away and create something a bit more simple next asymmetrical balance or rather symmetrical balance creating a bit more symmetrical balance in this space can lead us through it instead of around it because right now we only have two paths so by creating the similar patterns that we

have on the right we can end up with a space that's a little bit more symmetrical and a little bit less chaotic got to lower those lights dark images for Splinter Cell next I want to look at the area we come into next because we don't want to think about this as just two dimensional compositions because we always need to think about it as a space you move through or around I wanted to repeat the same elements that I had before dark the floor creating some of that symmetrical balance but then I also wanted to look at reemphasizing those light sources it's spinter cell we're supposed to shoot them and the nice thing about these elements is that because they're the highest point of focus you're really going to start looking at them and they tell a story about the space we're in they're a design element as well as an emphasis Point next changing some of the elements here to create a little bit more flow and a little bit more directionality and reemphasizing the other area with a number of catwalks and

pillars that weren't there before and comparing moving up the stairs we end up in this space which is an incredibly complex looking area there's a lot of detail and a lot of contrast in all spots if we darken the floor again we deemphasize that space you're not supposed to interact with it we can lead the eye away from it it's a common one I like doing it it's really nice gives a good effect next deemphasizing that wall again keeping it a bit more simple and just consistency next deemphasizing this element again we see too many details through the other spaces that we don't need to see so we deemphasize that and make sure you don't get lost this back wall was also becoming a big point where you'd feel like you need to head towards it but you don't do anything there that door you're not supposed to go through so by deemphasizing it

lowering the contrast in that space we end up with something a little bit more manageable and less distracting next adding in it's hard to see there adding in some of the green text on the wall and leading some pipes down to the other area means that now even if we're left like this the players are LED much closer to the area where they're supposed to interact with which means I don't have to focus on really heavy-handed signaling to tell somebody to go there because there's a number of elements that lead you there already but if we wanted to push it further we could start putting in some simple coloring across the areas where you're supposed to interact with we could reemphasize that light source leading you back into that area and even just deemphasizing other elements some more so that you really don't end up going where you're not supposed to or getting confused by other elements and all of these areas are still applicable if we can do it on a liquid natural gas

Refinery we can do this on caves mountains other areas that you're working with exteriors all of these same rules and ideas apply it's not just for feature walls and pillows because it's all fundamental elements that we always deal with anyways in closing we want to look at interior design for inspiration sometimes we can end up creating similar cliche things like I would be doing with my students when I was constantly coming back to movies and games and and the things that I'd see there to tell them how to fix a space interior design can be something that we can come to to see new ideas fresh elements and fresh ideas that we weren't thinking of before it's useful for getting a better understanding of our goals and intentions do we want more repetition in a space to fix areas that aren't working together do we want to use more rhythm in the space to lead the eye about do we want to have more form over function do we want to tell more of a story than we want players to necessarily understand exactly what

they're supposed to do interior design can help give us some of those ideas and goals and intentions for a space it gives us history we can start to understand where we came from as a career as a job and and and as a as a craft it's really useful for us to get that kind of insight and educational accessibility the thing is I don't have a degree in interior design I I've never taken that kind of education I watched HGTV and we all can it's useful for that it's a really accessible way to get this information one thing that I don't want to look at is games and movies for inspiration as to how to create game environments because they're not threedimensional they don't deal with all sides like we need to so why not watch HDTV this is an ad this is an ad apparently all of this stuff is actually available online for fre which is great you can watch shows like Sarah 101 and

specifically pure design those are two shows that I actually learned a lot from really early on they're very specific and very clear as to what you need to learn you can also look at interior design blogs specifically ones that focus on all sides of a space Not Just One Singular image shows blogs like fresh home decorate Home Design find and Apartment Therapy are great places to go to for this information in closing uh we want to look at interior design to to better understand who we are as a craft and and and as a job and and what we do it's really valuable for us may not always make a space better but it'll help us better understand what we're really trying to do and what we're really trying to accomplish in them thanks

um oh and I and I think there's is there time for questions or no okay there's no time for questions um I I I will be at the wrapup room uh so if you do have any questions and you want to ask I'll be there otherwise I'll be at the UB booth at 4:30 today as well so see you then [Applause]