Battle Area Part 1

One of our first assignments for 3D arts was to make a battle arena in Maya, using references from other games. Before we started on making the arena we were tasked with making a moodboard with various images from different games. This was to help us reference and show off what we wanted to create for our arena.

As it was my first time using 3D software like Maya I wanted to create something simple that would not be too difficult for me. Because of this I decided to make a arena that was similar to one of the arenas in World of Warcraft. Despite the game having a very distinct art style most of the models are low polly, thus being easy to copy as there wasn't much complexion to copy with the models.

I decided to copy Darlaran arena a sewer area that was located under one of the main cities in the game, the area was small yet at the same time interesting to do. 

However, we were not tasked with copying the arena, but making our own with reference. Because of this I set out to copy some parts of the arena, while adding my own twist to those parts.

When I first started working on the arena I set out to make the ground of the level. I first made the floor area look like the square floor that can be found in the moodboard images. With this I needed to add a drain in the middle of the floor. I did this by adding a cylinder to the middle of the base and then cutting with a difference booleans. 

After the main base area was made I then added in pipes on one side of the map to give off the impression that the area might be a sewer. After doing so I decided to add stairs to two sides of the arena to give the player a little more area to explore, and to add more complexity to the level. 

When this was done I decided to add clutter such as boxes and ruins into the middle of the arena to make the area seem less empty and lonely. The middle of the arena also had a ruin added near the drain, this was also done to give off the impression that the area might of been abandoned. 

A ramp was also added to allow the player access to the sewer pipes that over looked the rest of the level. 

Despite adding crates and other clutter to make the level feel less empty I still felt like there wasn't much in the level, and still felt like there was a lot of empty space. To fix this I added a broken walkway that stretched from one end of the map to the other. 

To keep with the theme that the sewer was abandoned and in disrepair I made it look like the walkway was falling apart. Planks were placed on the floor and moved to look like they were falling off of the walkway itself. There was also one section of the walkway that had completely collapsed and had fallen on It's side, scattering planks on the boxes below it.

 On each part of the walkway near the collapsed part I bent the walkway downwards to make it look like the thing ripped the planks off.

As well as all this destruction I also slightly rotated each plank that made up the walkway to make the it seem more life like and more hand made.