My name is Dan Haard, and I am an environment artist for The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ (LOTRO). My job is to create, among other things, the grasses, bushes, trees and lo, the very dirt that your character will walk upon as you adventure through LOTRO!

When tasked with creating environment assets for Ered Luin, I first stepped back and looked at the overall ambiance the team wanted to achieve in this area. My goal as an environment artist is to create world assets that not only work consistently with each other, but unify to give the place a distinct visual meaning; a story that even the rocks will tell. In the case of the highlands of Ered Luin, we wanted to tell a story of a frozen wild; a place set apart, as the natural boundary it is, from the rest of Middle-earth.

(click on images for larger versions)

In any story, the devil is in the details. While looming peaks are the easiest way to describe a mountain range, the ground-level, more discrete environment assets I was to create also needed to reinforce this idea. They needed to match not only each other, but the dwarven city structures as well. Since these lands are mostly wild and untended, the scarce grasses, shrubs and tall trees all needed to make the dwarven strongholds feel nestled-in and tiny compared to the vast surrounding wilderness. We needed to show that while habitation was possible, it was not easy, and that venturing off the beaten path could mean a cold, lonely grave. One by one, we created pieces of under- and overgrowth that would help to convey this message.

Just as if I were actually landscaping my own home, I started from the bottom up. I first created terrain textures of frosted grass, solid snow, and frozen dirt to allow for varied terrain types. It was important to allow for different states of freezing – white snow offers a distinctly different ambiance than either slushy snow or a more lightly dusted earth. My goal was to create only a few textures that, when combined appropriately, would allow for the largest array of climate variance.

Next we crafted frozen, barren grass. These grasses needed to feel hardy enough to grow in the harsh winter climate that dominates the area, but still be mostly subdued by the elements. Along with the grass came frail bushes, heavy-laden with snow and providing but a little shelter to the creatures that dwell in the highlands. Both the grasses (which we call frills) and the bushes are placed procedurally. This meant that their color palette needed to work seamlessly with any terrain texture in the area, a challenge in and of itself.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly for this area, we added trees. We created lightly frosted trees, white but still unhindered by any real volume of snow. Then we created snow covered trees, with branches drooping under the weight of a heavy snowfall. These trees are the final touch, in my opinion, and one of great importance; though the place may seem wild and inhospitable, the tall conifers endure even the bitterest of cold, a reminder that even here, the ready and the strong may carve out a life of their own.

Figure A displays the tree’s texture. The texture includes three parts: A snowy conifer branch, solid snow with pine needles poking through, and frosted bark.

Figure B reveals the wireframe of the snow-heavy branch that characterized this tree. Precise positioning of the snow pile’s vertices was necessary to convey soft snow with a limited number of polygons

Figure C shows the full wireframe of the finished tree.

The finished trees added to the game world.

 

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My name is

Dan Haard and, in another age, before the world of Elves and Men, I was a graphic artist. My days were filled with catalog covers and client meetings. But my precious, a LotR MMO, called to me from beyond the sea (of wheat, in the

Midwest). So I left behind the sunny shores of California and sailed (not really) forth, seeking the lands of Middle-earth, which were still under construction, in need of some help, and conveniently located in Massachusetts.