Exho Level Design 

For this assignment we got our first assignment by a real company called Exho,

our assignment was (is) to create a level/stage to simulate driving a boat through the dutch channels in Virtual reality (VR). the company that gave us the assignment wants to use it to train new employee s.

so the target audience are new employees or people in training who want to drive freight boats and other types of industrial boats

 our concept is a level in which almost every type of landscape which includes: forest,village, city, farmlands and an industrial harbor.

here's a screenshot of the latest version of the level :

(the next few images come from the level designer/artist)

the first thing the artist did was look for inspiration on google maps and google earth wich resulted in the following moodboards:

next we designed a basic level sketch wich would serve as our first concept/iteration of what would become the level.

this was later edited to a second iteration (this one is more accurate to the final version , how ever there are a few minor changes in the final design):

next it was time for a basic block out (3D sketch for those not farmiliar with game art and development jargon) to begin with the block out the artist of the team began with a basic floor plan and started adding some not long after:

after getting feedback from the teachers we decided to change the port (the area at the end) since its quite industrial and seeing how many skyscrapers and houses where around it we deemed it a little unrealistic. in short change was in order:

we placed in some finalized and place holder models provided by the model team, and here's a detail shot of the harbor and part of the city in progress:

and here are two versions of the level side by side, one with placeholders and one finalized version with almost no place holders( note: there is still some place holders in here but they are replaced with the actual models in the unity level.)

what follows are some unity screenshots from the developer:

what follows are a few explanations about how we worked together and what we learned

how did we work together:

at the first we discussed the concept for the level through teams and created a list of assets we needed from the model team. next we created a trello page with tasks relating to the basic block out. after we finished the block out we mostly communicated through Microsoft teams. on the artists side the artist had to replace placeholder models with the new models created by the model team as the new models came out. while on the developers side the developer worked on getting the level working in unity as well as testing/trouble shooting the new versions of the level as the artist modified the level. for example checking if the models where scaled right, if they where on the correct rotation and if the textures where working.

what did i learn (hard and soft skills) Artist:

the hard skills:

I've learned a couple of new things in blender which is  the program i used.

-I've learned to apply all transoms before exporting models to fbx. because if that doesn't happen the model will come out weird in other programs such as unity.

-I've learned to work from a block out to a final model as opposed to staring with the final model right away.

soft skills:

-I've learned to work directly with a developer

-I've learned to work with milestones as opposed to a singular deadline

-I've learned to work on something assigned by a real company as opposed to getting an assignment from school.

what did i learn (hard and soft skills) Developer:

hard skills:
- I've learned a large quantity of the import settings of unity models
- I've worked with different texture and material settings
- I've learned to design a level in segments to avoid overlap and problems

soft skills:
- I've learned to explain problems and offer solutions to a artist
- I've learned to adjust models and pivot points where needed
- I've learned to plan and work around milestones, instead of a deadline
- I've learned to communicate with a artist team

are there any questions?