GDC Festival of Gaming is part of the Informa Festivals Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

March 9-13, 2026
Moscone CenterSan Francisco, CA

Agenda

The Modular and Expressive World Art of 'Keeper'

Nick Maksim  (Principal Environment Artist, Double Fine Productions)
Location: Room 2001, West Hall
Date: Tuesday, March 10
Time: 1:50 pm - 2:50 pm
Pass Type: Festival Pass, Game Changer Pass - Get your pass now!
Audience Level: All
Track: Visual Development, Design
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: Video
Audience Level: All

The Modular and Expressive World Art of Keeper will be a detailed run-through of the environment art development pipeline for the game. It will go over using Adobe Modeler (VR) for game environment art, the teams proprietary tech for asset instance variation, their painterly foliage brush stroke application, and their mesh morphing tech.

Takeaway

Attendees will learn how the Keeper team was able to hide the repetition of assets in their environmental art while maintaining an efficient workflow, ways to approach expressive asset creation for games with VR, and methods for transitioning arbitrary meshes into each other.

Intended Audience

This talk will be palatable for a general audience but artists will find the most interest.
There are no explicit prerequisites required to understand this lecture, but basic familiarity with world building, model sculpting and working with Unreal Engine may be helpful.