**Viacheslav Bushuev 討論為他即將發布的游戲Rabbit Story (Steam)創建Low poly環境的方法.**
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*Hi, my name is Slava Bushuev, and today I would like to tell you how I developed the graphics of Rabbit Story – the game I’ve been currently working on.*
Hi，我是Slava Bushuev，今天我很樂意分享我是如何開發我現正在開發中的游戲Rabbit Story的圖形效果。
*I started the developing process in summer 2016. I decided then that I was going to finish the game in two weeks! I was still working in Allods Team back then, so I only had free time in the evenings and during weekends. And yet I felt so motivated as if Tyler Durden was holding a gun to my head, saying that if I didn’t do it in two weeks, I was a dead man! Of course I never made it for that deadline, but still I managed to finish the first part in three weeks.*
我的開發進程始于2016年夏天。我曾決心要兩周內完成游戲！那時候我還在Allods Team工作，所以我的空閑時間只有晚上以及周末。然而我如此目的明確就像Tyler Durden拿著槍指著我的腦袋，說如果我不能在兩周內完成，我就會變成一具尸體！當然我并沒在deadline內完成它，但是我仍設法在三周內完成第一階段。
*My primary profession is a level designer, and I am also a lighting artist. This is why I put the main focus on level design. Initially, Rabbit was supposed to travel the world, and the story was told through dialogues and environment. The problem was that even if it had been possible to build up the locations in such short notice, I still wouldn’t have had the time to create the models.*
我的本職是一名關卡設計師，同時也是一名燈光師。這就是我首先把主要精力放在關卡設計的原因。最開始，Rabbit應該環游世界，并且通過對白與環境傳達故事。而問題在于即使能在那么短的距離內建立（流程？游戲世界？），我依舊沒有足夠的時間制作模型。
*This is why I decided to purchase a complete setting and build the game on it. I couldn’t find anything suitable in Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace so I decided to look through Unity Asset Store. Toon Environment Pack instantly grabbed my attention with its simplicity, curious stylization, angular fir trees, and appealing colors.*
這就是為什么我決定購買一套完整配置（素材）并在其上（利用其）構建游戲。我無法在UE4的MarketPlace找到合適的東西，所以我決定到Unity Asset Stroe 去找找。Toon Environment Pack因為他的簡單樸素而引起了我的注意，不尋常的風格，棱角分明（造型分明？輪廓分明？）的冷杉樹，以及富有吸引力的色彩。
*This is what my first attempt to design the world looked like.*
這是我初次嘗試的場景效果。
*Not so bad for the first try.
Developing a game is an iterative process, so in order to learn how to do something, you first need to do it as you can. After the first attempt, you build the second iteration, and so on, until you achieve the desired quality.
While working on my project I came across a game called Hob developed by Runic Games, and I loved the way rectangular grass looked in it.*
初次的嘗試并不糟糕。
游戲開發是一個迭代的過程，所以為了便于學習如何做一些事情，你首先需要去做你做得到的。在初次嘗試之后，你再進行第二次的迭代開發，重復這樣，直到你取得期望的品質。
在我的項目開發的時候，我碰到了一個叫Hob的開發者開發的一個名為Runic Games的游戲，我喜歡看起來像這樣的矩形草地。
*I decided to create something similar for Rabbit Story.*
我決定為Rabbit Story做點類似的東西
*This is a game screenshot after the first three weeks of development. I must give proper respect to Unreal Engine 4 whose lighting system allowed me to create a smooth, nicely colored picture.*
這是第一周開發之后的游戲截屏。我必須對UE4予以適當的尊重，因為它的光照系統允許我創建平滑而漂亮的彩色圖像。
*However, the detailing was obviously not sharp enough, especially for the full-screen mode.*
然而，這細節顯然是不夠的，特別是在全屏模式下。
*At that stage, the development was paused – the first version of the game was ready.*
在這個階段，我暫停了開發——而游戲的第一個版本也已經完成。
*I kept pondering over what could be done in order to improve the picture quality of Rabbit Story without investing into expensive and complex models, but nothing occurred to me.*
我一直思考如何不依賴更復雜而昂貴的模型去提高Rabbit Story的畫面效果，但是我沒想到。
*At the end of that summer, a new World of Warcraft add-on – Legion was released. Together with my friends, I tried it out; WoW had always been beautifully designed, but this time the graphics quality increased significantly. Especially I was impressed by the way Blizzard’s artists had filled the locations with greenery. That was the moment when I realized that despite of Rabbit Story’s simple stylized graphics, I can still fill it with greenery in the way they do that in AAA games these days. Luckily, I had plenty of experience in that after having worked on Skyforge and Armored Warfare!*
在夏天結束的時候，一個新的 World of Warcraft 插件 Legion 發布了。我和朋友一起嘗試了它，WOW從過去開始就一直有著精美的設計，但是現在的圖形精度已經大幅度的增加。而暴雪的藝術家在各處填充的綠色植被令我印象深刻。就在那一刻，我意識到盡管Rabbit Story是簡單風格化圖形效果，我依舊可以像他們這些天制作AAA游戲一樣的方式填充大量的綠色植被。非常幸運的是，這在我有過 Skyforge 和 Armored Warfare 的工作經驗后。
*After certain experimentation with the graphics, I got this picture:*
在經過一系列嘗試后，我得到了這樣的效果：
*The main changes included approximately 10x increase of triangle count for the fir trees and the addition of small filling grass.*
主要的變化包括了為冷杉樹增加了約10倍三角面和添加了小的草叢。
*For a final touch, I added more details to the road, some dried bushes, branches, and flowers.
The flowers are actually the most important detail – they add bright and necessary accents to the scene.*
在最后，我給小路添加了更多的細節，一些干枯的矮灌木、樹杈以及花朵。花朵實際上是最重要的細節，它們是使得場景變得鮮活的重要存在。
## **Model Development 模型的制作**
*Rabbit Story has a fixed camera angle; sometimes it moves in the cutscenes but the general angle never changes.*
Rabbit Story進行了攝像機角度的修正，有些時候會進行過場動畫演出，但是一般情況下鏡頭角度都不變。
*This allowed me to design single-oriented assets which made the task much easier.*
這使得我進行面向單一視角（single-oriented？）設計資源的任務變得簡單。
*They used the same technology in Diablo 3; in one of their announcements, Blizzard called it 2.5D.
Apart from saving your time, this technology allows you to use less triangles on models.*
Diablo 3使用了類似的技術，在暴雪的公開發表中，他們將其稱之為2.5D。不同于為他們節省時間（的技術），這個技術使得他們可以在模型上使用更少的三角面。
Also, all models are slightly inclined in relation to the camera.
This way they look better from above. They used the same method in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
此外，所有的模型都是略微傾斜的朝向攝像機。
這樣會使得從上面朝下看起來效果更好。塞爾達傳說：眾神的三角力量2使用了類似的技術。
*All flower and herb models are created with geometry – they don’t have textures; only materials of different colors.*
所有的花草都直接用模型進行造型，并沒有使用任何貼圖紋理，僅僅是用了不同漫反射顏色的材質。
*Advantages of this method:
Fast development; no need in creating UV layout or drawing the textures.
Models of this type are not much heavier for the performance; they have more triangles but they have no alpha channel which facilitates their rendering in the engine.*
這種做法的優點有：
開發快速，不需要創建UV以及繪制貼圖
這種類型的模型的性能開支（相較于其他類型）并不會大太多；他們需要使用更多的三角面，但是并沒有使用透明通道使之更易于在引擎中進行渲染。
## **Light and Post-Processing 光照和后處理**
*This is what the picture looks like without the light:*
這是沒有光照時的畫面效果：
*And this is what it looks like after Unreal Engine applies Ambient Occlusion to it. It can be seen quite clearly how it highlights the volume and the details which are usually drawn in the textures.*
而這是在UE中應用Ambient Occlusion（AO）的效果。這使得體積感得到增強，而這通常是繪制在紋理上的細節。
*The final picture with the light and post-processing.*
這是啟用后處理和光照之后的最終效果
## **Optimization 優化**
*Unreal Engine 4 uses deferred rendering.
This roughly means that each layer of a frame (color, normal map, light, depth, etc) is rendered separately and is stored in the video card memory. Then they are put together in a single image on the screen.*
UE4使用了延遲渲染(deferred rendering)。
這意味著在每幀中所有層（顏色，法線貼圖，光照，深度等）都將分別渲染并儲存在顯存中。然后再將他們合并成一張完整的圖像并顯示在畫面上。
*One of the advantages of this rendering method is that it provides the possibility of dynamic lighting with multiple sources of light, and great scope of options for picture post-processing, for instance, adding blur to the background.*
這種渲染方式的優點之一是他為多個動態光源提供了可能性，以及擴大了圖像后處理的選擇范圍，例如添加景深模糊。
*Its drawback though is that it has high requirements for the video card and its memory, especially when processing high-definition graphics (e.g. 4k).*
而它的缺點是對顯卡和顯存有更高的要求，特別是進行高清圖像處理的時候（例如4K）
*In order to have 60fps in the game, each frame has to rendered within 16 milliseconds. The faster one frame is rendered, the higher is fps.*
為了讓游戲能達到60fps的幀率，每一幀都必須在16ms內渲染。每幀渲染得越快，就會有越高的幀率。
*Below is displayed an example of Rabbit Story render statistics for one frame.*
下面展示的是Rabbit Story渲染一幀的統計數據。
*BasePass is the rendering time of the scene geometry, and as it can be seen from the diagram (orange part), it’s just 25% of the overall rendering time of the frame – the rest is the light and post-processing.*
BasePass是渲染場景幾何體的時間，并且從圖中可以看出（橙色的部分），它僅僅占用了這一幀渲染總時長的25%，其余都是燈光和后處理。
*Even though the number of triangles has increased by more than 400%, it almost didn’t affect the performance, thanks largely to the instanced static mesh.*
盡管三角面的數量增加了4倍，它對性能卻幾乎沒有影響，這主要得益于實例化的靜態網格。
Thank you for your attention. And don’t forget to check my game.
Viacheslav Bushuev, Level designer
原文地址：https://80.lv/articles/tips-on-low-poly-game-environments/
