Downtown District - Gears of War: E-Day
The canal, one of Downtown's main landmarks.
Near the Bank of Tyrus.
Street corners built for cover and combat.
A pharmacy corner on a side street.
Smoke over Downtown's edge.
Downtown from mid height, the skyline on the horizon.
A damaged stretch of Downtown from above.
The waterfront and the stadium beyond the blocks.
Downtown, from street level up to the skyline.
This is the post I'm proudest of as a lead. A lot of the polish you see here comes from the senior artists who saw it through to ship, and from the artists I hired and grew into the team. Seeing what they made of Downtown in the shipped game is the best outcome I could have hoped for.
The foundation runs through every frame: buildings from the building tool, the sky train and street furniture from the spline tool, and the district and road structure from the early layout passes.
Downtown is built in full, including blocks players never walk through: flying missions and vistas see all of it, and only some buildings open up into interiors. Keeping a whole district like that streaming and holding up meant leaning on World Partition with runtime grids, HLODs for the long views, virtual textures and ray tracing.
Huge shout-out to the whole Downtown level art team, and to the entire Environment Tech and Level Art teams behind Kalona.
More from this series:
• Kalona City and Downtown District: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rzXXQm
• Buildings and Building Tool: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JwEEN0
• Theater and Tools: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q0ooWD
• Downtown Photography Trip: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LaZZYA