If you’re looking for level design tips to bring the polish of your projects up, this is the blog for you! Read on for some tips and tricks from our talented 3D artists who create the expansive and detailed demo scenes for our asset packs.
1. Do Your Research
Before you even begin working on your project, it can be helpful to play (or watch walkthroughs of!) some successful games in a similar genre to what you’re developing. Spend time thoroughly examining each room or area. The goal here is not to directly copy, but to get a feel of the way the levels flow. Thinking critically about the way the levels were built can often inspire you, and help you solve any challenges you may run into with your own project.
2. Greyboxing / Level Blockout
First things first, we know getting a new asset pack can be a little overwhelming. There are a ton of really cool assets, and you wanna use everything right away, but you gotta resist that urge and start really simple.
Hot tip: Rather than placing a ton of assets into your project right away, we recommend checking out our demo scene to get a sense of what’s included in the pack, then move onto planning your own project when you feel familiar with everything.
Here’s how the first phase of our demo scene planning looks, compared to a more finished looking scene.
It’s not very exciting, but it allows you to focus on functionality, layout, and the key physical objects your player will interact with. This process is called greyboxing. Start simple, by creating your level using just cubes and other primitive shapes. You can find lots of handy shapes for blocking out in Synty's POLYGON Prototype pack! But the key tip here is to first block your level out using greyboxes with pure functionality in mind; walls, floor, stairs, interactables etc, do not get distracted with set dressing! That comes later.
Hot tip: make sure to use snapping for making buildings and other modular things quickly in whichever engine you’re using!
3. Regular Playtesting
Once you've got your greyboxes in and you’ve run around the level a bit, take stock of your progress and ask yourself: does it feel natural to navigate what you've built? Once you’ve got something playable, it’s time to get an outside perspective. The key to a good game is regular playtesting, you need to get comfortable sending your game out to players to see how they approach your levels and to gather their feedback. This should be done right from the prototyping stage! Playtesters will spot things it’s hard for you to see when you’re so close to the project, and it’s going to save you a lot of time and stress if you can fix those things early on in the process rather than at the end.
Hot tip: playtesters don’t necessarily need to be highly experienced gamers, or people you don’t know. Asking friends and family to be your first playtesters can be a good and easy option which doesn’t require a lot of outreach and marketing planning in your early phase of development.
4. Set Dressing
When beginning to layer in detail, we recommend starting large and working your way down. Get all the large props and buildings done first then work downwards in size. Remember to keep up your playtesting throughout this stage, and make sure not to over clutter the level. Your main goal is to keep navigation easy for the player, if you overdress (something that’s very easy to do!) then players may get lost or confused, and you will begin to struggle with game flow.
Keep in mind that everything should feel like it was placed in a scene with a purpose. When creating your own levels try to tell a story through your design choices by asking yourself questions like, 'why are these tables destroyed?' or 'would a character expect to find a dining hall next to the barracks?’ These questions can inspire and guide you as you build out your level. Environmental storytelling is the key to ensuring players feel immersed in your world.
Hot tip: Create presets using assets you know will be repeated throughout your levels, for example tables or desks. Pre-dress these items and save them as new prefabs that you can easily reuse, so you can reduce your time spent dressing your game overall. Though, be careful not to overly define these presets with highly unique props as the more noticeable they look, the more they will stand out as repetitive in your project overall.
5. Lighting & Post Processing
The final step of your level design process will usually be lighting! Time spent researching and experimenting with lighting and post processing is never wasted. Good lighting can really take your game from average to awesome! Lighting is quite tricky and not something that can be learned quickly, but it’s worth investing time into understanding.
Although lighting will be different for every game, and every level, a good general rule of thumb is to have one primary directional light with supplementary points and spotlights. Do not create lights for individual assets, such as a row of candles. Instead create a large ambient orange light placed above the candles. Creating too many lights will cause shadow and performance issues. And lastly, this wouldn’t be Synty lighting advice if we didn’t suggest you turn on shadows!
Post Processing is a vast topic (that could have a blog post of its own!), and while there are hundreds of different post processing effects, either built in or from third parties, there are a few key effects that are worth mentioning:
Bloom will create light gradients around bright objects, which helps to create more realistic looking lighting. Experiment with different values and be careful not to overdo the bloom, otherwise, your level lighting can look blown out.
Ambient Occlusion creates natural shadows in crevices, corners, and where objects meet, making levels look more realistic and grounded by showing how indirect light is blocked. However, it does affect performance, so you’ll need to find a balance between visuals and performance.
Color adjustments encompass a few effects Lift, Gamma, Gain, Contrast and Saturation can change the entire mood of a level. Change values to a more blue hue and your level will feel much colder, perfect for night levels. But don't wholly rely on these effects, make sure to use lighting as well.
And finally, be sure to enable fog to help fade out your background from your playable space.
We recommend checking out some tutorials on YouTube to learn more about lighting and post-processing. We have a ‘Key Art Lighting in Unity’ tutorial (below) which may be of interest!
Still feeling overwhelmed with level design? Our POLYGON Map Packs are easily customisable, with toggle-able groups and presets which create a great foundation for set dressing, whether for your own games or as an exercise for learning more about level dressing.
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