GDC 2025 Session Viewer
Building the Natural World One Hex at a Time: The Procedural Environment Art of 'Civilization 7'
Dean Scott (Environment Artist, Firaxis Games)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Visual Arts
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: Intermediate
This presentation details the artistic problem-solving process employed in creating the natural environment of Civilization 7. Dean Scott (Environment Artist) will go into detail of how he used procedural content generation in combination with more traditional game-art practices to create a tactile and lived-in world while working within a very small team. He will look at authoring art with Houdini, talk about some of the processes used to generate assets while maintaining the look and feel of the Civilization franchise, and show how prototyping procedurally enabled our team to polish the game into what it is today. He will talk about how making foliage doesn't have to be painful and work through some of the problems we faced when making art for a world that is ever-changing and emergent every time you end your turn.
Takeaway
Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of how we leveraged procedural content generation tools to create art, prototype ideas, and solve technical challenges while building the natural world in Civilization 7.
Intended Audience
This presentation is intended for mid-to senior level environment/tech artists that are interested in procedural generation art pipelines; more generally people interested in making art for Strategy games in the modern industry.