Embark Studios spoke at the Nexon Developers Conference about how it created 3D content for ARC Raiders with a team of around 20 people, including 15 on the world content team and four on the character content team as of the game’s launch.
At the Nexon Developers Conference on June 16, senior environment artist Michael Anderson and technical art director Ivar Dahlberg from Embark Studios spoke about how the team approaches creating 3D content in ARC Raiders. The developer said the game was an experiment to see if the team could build “a game of this size with a very small team.”
“We need to invest in powerful tools that will let a small, passionate team of developers focus on creating games that players will love,” Anderson explained. These tools allow developers to create game-ready elements out of something simple.
One of the tools Embark showcased is a library of real-world landscape data, essentially a custom Google Earth, used to create landscapes. Another tool allows developers to automatically create low-poly nature elements from high-resolution data created by RealityScan. RealityScan creates 3D models from photos, and Andreson added that the last time the team went to take photos, they took approximately 120,000 of them.
These tools, combined with systems that auto-place small things like grass and pebbles, allow Embark to create landscape scenes in as fast as 20 minutes. This is also complemented by the fact that the art director and concept artist create concepts in 3D straight away rather than sticking to traditional methods.
Things take longer with buildings, but there are tools for that, too. Anderson showed a tool that builds things like concrete walls from a simple box, where a developer marks areas for damage, cables, vegetation, and more. For example, an extraction point in ARC Raiders takes only a few hours to build.
Similarly, for more complex buildings, Embark uses a tool that turns simple grey boxes into in-game models. There is a series of steps, and instead of adding detail manually, it uses data sockets to add objects with a press of a button.
Now that ARC Raiders is out and Embark is working on live-service content, the teams have expanded. But ultimately, it’s all about avoiding bottlenecks and empowering creativity when creating 3D content, and it also applies to creating characters, cosmetics, and more.
