Hero assets, props and filler

Not every asset in a scene deserves the same effort. Environment teams sort assets by importance: a few hero assets that anchor a place and draw the eye, props that make the space believable, and filler that is cheap, reused and barely noticed. Okan Beyit, an environment artist at Zero Latency, describes starting every scene by deciding a "hierarchy of importance for the assets" so he can "invest more attention and detail into these assets" (80 Level: Preparing Assets for Environment Design).

A clear hierarchy lets a small team make a scene look detailed without spending weeks on minor assets such as a bin.

#The tiers

#Hero assets

A hero asset (hero prop, hero building) is a unique, high-attention piece placed where the player will look at it closely or remember it. The Level Design Book says a "hero prop / hero building should ground an important place in the level", and that in multiplayer such landmarks "help facilitate callouts" (The Level Design Book: Environment Art), meaning players can name a spot ("by the statue") to their team. Heroes often double as landmarks and focal points.

Typical traits:

• Unique. Used once or a handful of times, so it can carry a memorable shape and story detail.
• Close to the camera or the critical path. Detail is spent where the player actually looks.
• Unique texturing is affordable. Because there are few of them, heroes can have their own unique textures and higher budgets.
• Story-bearing. Heroes are natural carriers of environmental storytelling.

Hero props matter in portfolios too. EMC3D - Game Art's video on junior environment portfolios has a chapter titled "Pick A Charming Hero Prop", followed by one on why that is effective (YouTube: What Is The Strategy For Creating A High…). See planning a portfolio piece.

#Props

Props (secondary assets) are the furniture, machines, vehicles and objects that make a space read as a real place. Beyit describes them as added "for the purpose of framing and enhancing the primary assets" (80 Level: Preparing Assets for Environment Design). They are reused across a level, so they share materials, trim sheets or texture atlases, and they get moderate budgets.

Often they are reused across a whole game. In Adrien Thierry's ArtStation post on Dishonored 2's Clockwork Mansion, two of the prop images are captioned as pipes "you can find in many other Dishonored 2 levels" (ArtStation: Clockwork Mansion maintenance areas). And on The Last of Us Part I, Matthew Trevelyan Johns found that texture memory was being consumed by many small, uniquely baked props, so he moved most of them onto shared baked-bevel trims; he estimates about 80% of his Lab assets (chairs, a table, windows, a door frame) used them (ArtStation: The Last of Us: Part I...Trim Pipeline). A prop does not need its own texture to look finished.

Props are also built from kits. Jon Arellano's breakdown of God of War Ragnarök's Asgard kit assets notes that many props were kitbashed, and that many were concepted and created by artists across several studios (ArtStation: God Of War Ragnarok - Kit Assets). See kitbashing.

#Filler and clutter

Filler is the small stuff: bottles, papers, debris, cables, leaves. It fills gaps and adds density but should never compete for attention. Filler is usually built in sets, packed onto shared atlases, often scattered with procedural placement and scattering or decals, and given little or no collision (see collision meshes).

Beyit's vegetation shows the idea: leaves baked to a texture sheet and recombined into cards "in different configurations to make large, medium and small groupings", so that "numerous variations" come "using only a handful of assets" (80 Level: Preparing Assets for Environment Design).

#Kit pieces and surfaces

Below everything sit the modular kit pieces and tileable surfaces: walls, floors, trims, terrain. They are the most-placed assets in any scene and should be the least memorable individually. See trim sheets and ways to texture an environment.

#Deciding where an asset belongs

Ask four questions:

1. How close will the player get? Something seen at arm's length needs more detail than something across a valley.
2. Does gameplay depend on it? A climbable crate or a key door must read clearly; see affordance and signifier.
3. Does it tell the story or orient the player? Then it is a hero candidate.
4. How many copies will exist? An asset placed 300 times must not carry unique, memorable detail.

The Level Design Book's environment-art chapter recommends planning with an asset list, considering each asset's brief, approval, scope and pipeline (The Level Design Book: Environment Art). A useful list has one column for the tier, which fixes the budget, texturing method and review effort before anyone starts modeling.

#Art-led and design-led heroes

Heroes are usually chosen with level design. A hero placed at a junction becomes a landmark; one placed at the end of a sightline becomes a goal. On the DOOM map Empyrian, the art team, as Felix Leyendecker describes it, themed areas with colour through banners, stained glass and torches so players could tell areas apart (80 Level: Environment Design: Modularity, Color &…): identity carried by repeated props rather than one statue. Both approaches work; pick based on whether the place needs a single memorable anchor or a whole district identity. See wayfinding and layout and flow.

#In production

• Block out with proxies. Place grey stand-ins for every hero and prop in the blockout so their size and position are tested before modeling.
• Hero first, filler last. The Level Design Book advises to "start big, and save smaller details for later art passes" (The Level Design Book: Environment Art). See set dressing and art passes.
• Use bought or kitbashed props where they fit. Unity's prototype team swapped asset-pack props over a greybox to move quickly (Unity Blog: Realizing rapid conceptual design with…). Keep your own effort for the heroes. See kitbashing and asset libraries and asset licences.
• Budget by tier. Heroes may get unique textures and higher triangle counts; props share atlases; filler gets the lowest budgets and aggressive LODs. See polygon and triangle budgets and texel density.

#Further reading and watching