Level Design / environment - Dissertation idea?

[manhuntworld]

hey guys, i need some level design / environment driven dissertation ideas.

I'll be starting my dissertation in september of this year and need a good problem or current issue to use for a dissertation project.

I originally had "using games engines for architectural 3D visualisation" so basically using UDK or any other game engine and modelling the environment inside to give a representation of what a design may look like but not in a normal way like a AUTOCAD program. basically my idea that i was pushing with it was that its all in real time and other visualisations used for architecture design are not, well not to the degree of a games engine. they're is many papers backing up my idea as it has been done before but was really wanting to know what you think?

other than that could you guys please give me any ideas that could be feasible in a level / environment art background.

thank you kindly

[Schmung]

Think you should be fine here as long as you can come up with substantive enough areas that you want to explore in this topic : what's different about the pipeline? do the rendering constraints of game engines make things too difficult from an asset creation perspective to make it worth it? are certain engines more inherently suited to this sort of thing than others?

So yeah, there's a ton of stuff you can explore in that field, it's just finding a way of presenting it as an academically interesting topic that you can explore in a fairly in depth way rather that 'I want to make building in UDK' or w/e.

[JamesKing3d]

Hi manhuntworld.

I work as a CAD product engineer. I went to school for 3-d media for film and animation. My career goals lie in the game industry. I like this idea for a topic, and I can offer you some basic points that you would need to comment on and/or discuss.

the main one I can think of right now is scale and precision. entertainment and architecture look at things 2 different ways. and often times, one doesn't understand the other's view. game visuals have very little structure or framework beneath them, in the same way as architecture, where every bolt, washer, link and cable are often depicted. most or all of which represent real tools/hardware with product numbers so they can be estimated and ordered when the time comes to build. the amount of info is overwhelming sometimes. with games, it's a different directive. game environment art is designed to give a player a feel or emotion, and much much less effort is spent on specific details about what kind of hardware holds something together, or how many feet/meters are between each Ibeam in a warehouse.

these two different elements lead to two different pipelines.

I'll try and add some more in a while, I have to head out.

good luck

[Serenius]

Additionally, game architecture is oftentimes slightly out of scale than what you would see in the real world for game play considerations. Things like wider hallways and doors, ceilings can be higher or lower based on the scale of characters, etc.

[manhuntworld]

Thank you all for the help and advice, i think as you have all said, its very different in regards to the scale of objects and models in a game engine than it would be to a read autocad program.

what's different about the pipeline? do the rendering constraints of game engines make things too difficult from an asset creation perspective to make it worth it? are certain engines more inherently suited to this sort of thing than others?

i like that what Schmung said, think its good to look into asset creation and the pipeline differences toward a game engine etc. I'll give this a good think over and have a speak to my supervisor to see what he says.

thanks you all.