Free Art & Level Design Resources Megathread

Minos · October 25, 2014

Hey!

After seeing that gamedesign bundle thread I thought it would be a good idea to have an updated thread with free tutorials and resources for game art and level design.

I'll start with some youtube channels I follow and can keep this up to date as we go like the job census thread.

3D Art (Environment Art/Prop Modelling/Characters etc)

Level Design

World Of Level Design

level-design.org - Knowledge Base

Interlopers.net
Guiding The Player's Eye

Level Design Inspiration Machine (Tumblr gallery)

Composition in Level Design (Gamasutra version)

2D Art/Concept Painting

Cubebrush (also has some zbrush tutorials)

MrJack (Concept artist on Starcraft II/Heroes of the Storm)

Tyler Edlin (learned a shit ton on this channel)

Xia Taptara

Иван Смирнов (in russian but some good gems in there)

Game Development

https://game-development.zeef.com/ (large list of softwares and tutorials)

pixelprospector.com (Big List of Game Design Articles)

Gamedev.net

TigSource Tutorials Forum (also has a lot of game art tutorials)

Others

Parka Blogs (art book reviews)

(Please post your links in the same format so I can just copy and paste them)

Sigma · October 25, 2014

I dont' know how to express my emotions from this except as follows....

:shock: :dance: :tinfoil: :mario: :hurg2:

3D Art (Environment Art/Prop Modelling/Characters etc)

3D Palace

CgSwot - 3D Tutorials

Brief Considerations About Materials | Manufato

Complex Material Tutorial | Marmoset

DONTNOD specular and glossiness chart | Sébastien Lagarde

Home | Art for Games

Nem's Tools [Home - News]

Normalmap Baking Basics - Imgur

The Computer Graphics Society

[PBR] Physically Based Rendering Bible - Polycount Forum

Physically Based Rendering Encyclopedia - Google Docs

easiest way to cut holes in 3ds max - YouTube

Hard Surface Modeling Tips in Maya - 3dmotive - YouTube

3dtotal.com

Blue Prints

United States Blueprints - Download free blueprint for 3D modeling

Weaponeer.net

Weapons - modern fire arms

Color Theory

RYB Color Wheel

Red, Yellow, and Blue | dave eddy

Portfolios

Hans Palm

Hans Palm - hard surface 3d artist

PHILIPK.NET

2D Art

dafont.com

Edited October 25, 2014 by Sigma

Pampers · October 25, 2014

Noice

you also have https://game-development.zeef.com/

Z3LCIAH · October 25, 2014

Level Design
World Of Level Design

level-design.org - Knowledge Base

Interlopers.net
Guiding The Player's Eye

Level Design Inspiration Machine (Tumblr gallery)

Composition in Level Design (Gamasutra version)

Game Design
pixelprospector.com (Big List of Game Design Articles)

The Designers Notebook (Lots of articles by Ernest W. Adams)

Gamedev.net

User Interface Design
gameui.tumblr.com
hudsandguis.com

Developer Diaries

Game Trailers - Dev Diaries

Minos · October 26, 2014

Updated the first post with some links. I'll curate these so they don't become a huge mess in the future but feel free to post links here!

Also, anyone from the core who got tutorials on their portfolios let me know!

FrieChamp · October 27, 2014

Not going to edit your thread, but I'd be happy to see at least the level design theory-related resources from the old thread to be carried over into this one ("General Level Design Articles & Best Practises"):

Also the 3D section might be a better fit than OT?

kanine01 · October 29, 2014

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/ is a good resource for beginners.

Jack_is_my_name · May 14, 2015

Hi, this guy has a lot of good scifi .tga textures

http://www.philipk.net/

scroll to the bottom of the page to see them, download the id tech 4 version to get decent sized individual files.

ElectroSheep · May 14, 2015

D3ads · June 8, 2015

http://www.360cities.net/

Shedloads of 360 panoramas of places from all over the world, massive database for level design here!

SuperDuperYeah · August 24, 2015

Hey thur guys !

Been prototyping a first person game in UE4 and got to the point where I needed military-ish hands. So I found a CSS rig online and decided to do a little work on it in Maya to fit UE4's standards (1 root instead of 2). I had to redo the skin weights... I'm a level designer soooo... It's definitely usable but not "pro". It's a really bare bones rigs (massively bad pun lol). There's no controls, constraints and fancy things like that. I added a bone for camera animations and such.

The main use for this thing is just to have something to work off from when prototyping realistic fps games (no grey character thing or blue guy). I've linked the source files that I used to tweak the rig if people want to change stuff. There's a 2014 and a 2016 Maya file, an fbx and unreal files you guys can add directly to your projects (created with 4.8.3). I've also added the original textures. They are referenced in the Maya projects.

Here's the download link : https://www.dropbox.com/s/9y333vxqqvg0kud/FirstPersonHands.zip?dl=0

Hope this thing is going to be useful for people doing the same-ish stuff as me.

blackdog · December 20, 2022

An interesting article about #leveldesign for Warhammer

https://www.playdarktide.com/news/dev-blog-level-design

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