Thread by @Nova_Crystallis

Currently on stream: a development panel with background artists Masato Shida and Yoshiki Takashi. twitch.tv/squareenix

The "BG" team creates the backgrounds you see in the game. The towns, the event maps, the high-end raids, and all the little objects. It's a jack of all trades.

Shida works on environmental lighting, brush-ups, and textures.

Takanashi*

Takanashi was on a business trip recently to Saudi Arabia to talk to game creators there. There's investments being made into different trades, and they invited Square Enix staff to come and meet with aspiring creators.

Yoshida says 80% of the university students have played FFXIV. It was unusual to get a visa, so near Riyadh they visited places foreigners didn't travel to much. They took pictures of the sand and rock for work.

They'll talk about some of those pictures and experiences made it into the game.

Before this job, Takanashi worked in architecture. He's worked on Square Enix titles like Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII, The Last Remnant, Final Fantasy XIII, etc.

Some of the towns and objects he has created:

Shida worked on Final Fantasy XI, XII, XIV. He created the Ridorana Lighthouse in -both- Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIV's Return to Ivalice.

The textures seen here are his work. The runes on the Tsukuyomi arena are hand drawn by him.

Now: onto creating a town. Featured is Crystarium, a town in Shadowbringers.

There are many steps in creating an HD town.

Yoshida instructed that the Crystarium is supposed to be a last bastion against an encroaching threat. Yoshida let their creativity go from there. From many concepts, one is decided. Yoshida stressed that there would be several layers.

Yoshida wanted something multi-layered like Ishgard, but easy to navigate through.

The scenario team provides key details:

They also request certain features:

From there, the BG team will establish key design rules.

Takahashi shares a mock-up from his notes. From this 2D map they'll start building the 3D area.

A quick, basic 3D mock-up is created to scope out the space.

Once they create it, they take it to Yoshida, who provides his feedback.

Another mockup is created and Yoshida provides more feedback. He says you need to protect the people living in the city.

Yoshida says he loves 'The Matrix' series and watches them once a year. He says it's like Zion, from the second and third movie.

It's a compact area where a lot of people live.

Outside feedback from Yoshida and the scenario team, it's up to the BG team to fill in the blanks.

Takanashi created many different objects to make this tavern area feel lived-in.

The scenario team says "make a tavern", and it's up to Takanashi to come up with the details regarding the objects.

(The Roegadyn with the moogle cap is a placeholder for a character that hasn't been created yet. He looks like that so it's easy to spot that a character hasn't been placed.)

Chickens!

Those chickens have existed since 1.0 but now they finally get to use them.

The hidden snowmen, ghosts, moogle island, that all comes from the imaginations of the BG team.

Yoshida likes giving a lot of power to the teams that create seasonal events so he doesn't do checks on them - he'll play them on his personal character.

So they have their art, but then art director Minagawa wanted to make the town feel more like the town from Project Rapure -- FF14's early codename.

Showing 'Project Rapture'.

Concept artwork from Project Rapture.

The Project Rapture tech demo video was created in 2005. There were some impractical designs for a game project such as 3D models of filaments inside lightbulbs inside lamps.

So, with the instruction to make the city resemble the one in Project Rapture - the team made adjustments.

They use this art as a baseline.

Keeping the designs intact while limiting memory cost is a challenge, there are a lot of tricks. Then assets are placed in the game.

The last step is the Completion phase.

Next is Shida's section where he adds lighting and other effects to the areas Takanashi's section creates.

When deciding what type of lighting you want to use, you have a planning phase. Yoshida requests a "DARK FANTASY" for example.

In A Realm Reborn, they had bright colors like 1.0, but in Heavensward, Yoshida requested "DARK FANTASY". Early on, they had to create the rules from which other decisions would be made.

What is "DARK FANTASY" (to Yoshida at least)?

These are the things Yoshida conveys so that creators can establish a general feel for the game.

In the Data Creation phase, using
the Amh Araeng area in Shadowbringers as an example, the textures can be created.

This is where Shida's pictures from Saudi Arabia come in. If you just put in the photo as a texture, it looks flat, so there is a specular map that is created that tells the engine how to reflect the light. That's why it looks 3D.

Now, placed in-engine with the specular maps. Lots of different variations from his photos. He took over 1000.

Pre- and post-lighting.

Shida says the Central Shroud has textures based off the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden and Yoyogi Park.

Shida asks himself "where do I want to go to take these pictures?" There was place in Japan that has a cliff that extends a long way for Gyr Abania. Google Street View is a good location scout.

Created in Photoshop, this is how light will change over the course of an hour. For the clouds, he couldn't find a good spot. So he flew to Guam to take pictures of cloud formations.

Shida said he went on his own dime. 💀

So you talk to the holders of the purse strings to pay for a trip to Guam and they say "there's clouds in Tokyo!!"

So, to light an area, you add the sky, then environmental lighting, then weather, then filters, etc. This is done for different times of the day.

Shida says he drew this "Milky Way" by hand. It took him an hour.

Yoshida does a final check on the zone. When asked what's the strangest request from Yoshida: "I want it to feel hotter. Raise the temperature. It looks like it's cold."

Another check Shida does is place characters in the zone to see how the lighting interacts with them.

Screenshots of some Shadowbringers areas include Lakeland, Rak'Tika Greatwood, Il Mheg, and Kholusia.

That's a wrap for the dev panel!