Grim Dawn Grim Misadventures #41
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A 41st "Grim Misadventures" installment is ready for consumption over at the Grim Dawn forums, in which designer "Zantai" takes us through the process of bringing a piece of concept art to its graphical representation in the game. There are some images to go with the piece, which starts out like this:
Grim Dawn has many unique items for you to discover, and their power must be equally matched by their visual presentation. You may have noticed that some of our 1-30 level-range epics still use placeholder art (Blackwood Wand, I'm looking at you). That is all about to change. Our artists have returned to itemization to bring these stragglers to release-ready state. You can expect this effort to extend into the 30-50 range as well now that many of you are collecting those epics for the first time.
The creation of an item's visuals is a multi-step process. It usually begins with the designer deciding upon an item's name and stats, then providing the artists with a rough idea of what the item should look like. Sometimes, this step is reversed, where an artist has an idea for an item visually and the designer than wraps stats and a name around this description.
The artists then take the description to create a concept. This serves as a frame of reference when the item is modeled. Once drafted, the concept art goes through a brief review where it may be adjusted based on how it will present within the game. We have to consider things such as the angle at which you view an item as well as the camera distance. Sometimes details that look great in concept turn out muddy within the game. This is the point where we predict such issues and fix them, before the item even goes into the modeling step.
Once the concept has been approved, the item is modeled and textured. The modeling step attempts to replicate the concept art, but sometimes changes are necessary to avoid clipping into the character model or to enhance details that would otherwise not show up very clearly in the game engine.
