ROLE

Planet Lead

RESPONSIBILITIES

As a senior environment artist for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I art directed and managed the lightning, texturing, and modeling for the planets, Alderaan and Hoth.

OUTCOMES

I directed the look and feel for Hoth, the planet first introduced in The Empire Strikes Back, based on the amazing concepts from our concept team.
I managed a team of 6 artists to complete the games largest scale planet within a tight schedule, inventing texture and terrain techniques that allowed us to deliver 2 weeks ahead of schedule.
As the Planet Lead for Alderaan, I established the look and feel of the textures, flora, and lighting to complement the multi-faction story. I managed a team of 5 artists to deliver Alderaan on time and at quality.
A Twitter poll posted by BioWare showed the community choosing Alderaan for Favorite Visuals.

“How might we create unique assets per planet that honor Star Wars lore on time and within budget?”

— Challenge during development of Star Wars: The Old Republic

CASE STUDY - HOTH

Hoth-ification and You!

TEAM

Planet Lead - Michael Harnisch

Artists - Justin Walters, John Morris, Jason Rosenstock, Brandon Bruce, Ian Moriarity

Concept Artist - Clint Young

Art Director - Jeff Dobson

Revitalize the planet of Hoth to create an experience that resonates with Star Wars fans by blending the classic elements they love with a new and fresh perspective that serves the game story.
Lead a team of 5 artists in efficiently designing and enhancing the largest planet in the game by focusing on prop creation, terrain painting, and lighting. Achieve a high-quality result within a tight timeframe while leveraging existing assets to streamline the process.
I developed terrain painting techniques tailored to our unpredictable game engine and taught these methods to our team. To stay true to the planet's lore, I also created a texture-enhancing process in Photoshop, ensuring that all assets accurately reflected Hoth's cold, snow-covered environment.
By using the new "Hothification" technique, we cut texture painting time by 88% and simultaneously generated diffuse, normal map, emissive, and specular textures. This enabled us to create over 150 unique assets with minimal extra effort, greatly enhancing the planet's quality.
Additionally, we finished the planet 2 weeks ahead of schedule, allowing the art team to contribute to other planets and positively impacting overall development.

The basis for the “Hothification” process is the idea that snow/dirt/grime will build up in the crevasses of an object. Crevasses in our diffuse textures tend to be the darkest areas of the texture. Each “Hothified” texture requires a black and white mask—the white areas will be where the snow/dirt/grime is packed onto the object, with the black areas being the still clean parts of the object. The mask is then applied to whatever material you want to apply to the asset—this example uses snow.

The above example shows a mask that had been doctored so the base of the object (the part that would be more likely to have snow packed into the grooves) has a most of the snow, helping to better ground it in the world. The mask can be applied across all textures, including diffuse, normal map, specular, and emissive, allowing object shaders to be created 8x faster.

LEARNINGS

Planet Lore is sacred in Star Wars

Players and critics lauded how the cold, harsh atmosphere was brought to life and appreciated the meticulous to detail in the lighting effects and texture design. The necessary frigid ambiance reinforced the planet’s iconic and chilling presence in the Star Wars universe.

Creativity Can Solve Any Problem

The mandate to only reuse previous planet assets on Hoth could have hindered the effectiveness of the final product, but as famed Creative Director George Lois would put it, “creativity—the defeat of habits by originality—can overcome anything.”

BONUS PLANET!

Alderaan is for Lovers

TEAM

Planet Lead - Michael Harnisch

Artists - Michael Sheidow, Justin Walters, Oggy Bonev

Concept Artist - Clint Young

Art Director - Jeff Dobson

Recreate Alderaan, a large two-faction planet, known only to fans as the home of Leia Organa, tragically used to test the power of the Death Star.
Design Alderaan to be experienced completely differently, depending on player loyalties, while keeping the terrain texture limit to under 15 textures.
I collaborated closely with my art team to develop a look and feel that embodies the "Swiss Alps" aesthetic from our concepts. We pioneered a new approach to modeled mountain assets, enabling easy adjustments to mountain ranges based on playtest feedback.
Alderaan was voted Most Beautiful Planet in a BioWare Twitter poll and continues to be a fan-favorite in the game for both Imperial and Republic players.