Now that I knew what our theme and hero assets were, I could start sketching out some ideas for the environments layout.
I started by creating a rough top down view sketch, thinking about where everyone’s hero assets could be placed. I opted to place the altar itself in the centre of the room as that is the most important object in the room. The four pillars around it support the room structurally, with Tom’s broken pillar asset being used for one of them.
The staff, urn and mask positions are interchangeable, but I felt as if the staff being near the entrance makes sense as it is used to light up the rest of the candles in the room.
I then created a 3D sketch, to get a better sense of how the layout would actually look. Obviously the scale is off and the hero assets would be more spread out in a larger room, but this helped me understand the general layout better.
I felt as if it was a bit messy and hard to understand and so I cleaned it up by using the line tool in photoshop.
I then added labels to each asset to avoid any confusion.
I also thought about how the lighting would look in the environment (the light is shown by the red arrows). My staff’s candle would radiate light but I felt as if that was not enough. Obviously there would be candles all over the room, but since our environment is underground, the room would be mostly dark. This would lead to details such as cracks not being visible.
Therefore, I felt as if a hole in the ceiling to allow natural light from outside was a good idea. Not only that, but if the hole was in the middle of the room, the light would shine directly on the altar, which is the main attraction in this environment.
I experimented with what multiple holes would look like and although it would allow even more light into the environment, the light being focused on the altar is better in my opinion.
Overall, I like this layout for the environment, however I will need to block it out in Unreal to get a better sense of if it is the right choice or not.