Rift - Golem Foundry - Process

During the development of Storm Legion there were many new dungeons most all with tight deadlines attached.  My co-worker (Tri Do) and I were given the task to execute one of Doug Nishimura's designs (the Throne Room) into a playable boss room and recycle the new assets into another unique dungeon (The Golem Foundry).  We immediately started working on the concepts that Doug had made for us.  We worked it out so that Tri was point man on the concepted room and I would model support while I would be point man for the kit-bashed room and Tri would model support for me.  Here is the Throne Room finished (Tri Do did the majority of the work you see in this image, Doug Nishimura designed it, Leonard Williams made the tall dream-catcher in the middle, I grey-boxed the room, made the pillars, throne and statues):

Here are some of the models I did for this room (Pillar concepted by Doug Nishimura statue concepted by Carlyn Lim):

After getting the main model requests out of the way for the Throne Room I moved onto blocking out the Golem Foundry.  There was a lot of back and forth with the content designers and I ended up remodeling the grey-box a few times as they figured out the game mechanics of this dungeon.  The theme for the dungeon was a factory where Iron Golems were being crafted.  When the scale and layout was approved I moved onto designing the look with the models/textures from the Throne Room and what ever else I could piece together in time I had.  Because I was using recycled models and textures the challenge was to use these pieces and still make the dungeon unique looking, not just an offshoot from the Throne Room but a completely different looking dungeon that would hold up on its own.  I ended up filling the walls using the large circular windows of the Throne Room to form various vents and shafts, giving lots of opportunity for steam and flames and whatever other VFX I could get.  

I try wherever possible to get movement in any of the environments I design.  Even if its just adding rotating fans in the walls it makes for a far more compelling experience than just stiff geometry.  These are the fans used throughout the Golem Foundry:

The finished room took me about a month with Tri helping on golden gate in the back.  Opening up the roof allowed me to cast a nice directional light onto half of the level giving some nice bright contrast to the dark and gloomy dungeon.

In order to keep the factory aspect running I crammed these Iron Golems everywhere the play-space wasn't needed.  This is a shot throught the glass under the player's feet in the main chamber:

The final Golem Foundry:

Here is a somewhat high quality walk-through of the main chamber of the Golem Foundry.  Make sure you change the quality to high if you watch:)