What Is Greyboxing in
Videogames? By Neil Blevins Created On: Oct 5th 2022
A greybox, also sometimes known as a blockout, is where the game's
Level Designer creates a super simplified version of the environment to
test the layout for gameplay purposes. When creating a level, there's a
lot of important questions that need answers, like is this hallway big
enough for a vehicle to travel along? Are these platforms close enough
that your character can jump from one to the next? Are there large
areas to travel through that are boring? This lesson will give you a
brief overview of what makes up a greybox, and then focus on how a
concept artist is most likely to interact with a greybox environment.
You have two choices with this lesson, watch me discuss the issue in
the video below, or read the full text.
What is a Greybox?
A greybox, also sometimes known as a blockout, is where the game's
Level Designer creates a super simplified version of the environment to
test the layout for gameplay purposes. When creating a level, there's a
lot of important questions that need answers, like is this hallway big
enough for a vehicle to travel along? Are these platforms close enough
that your character can jump from one to the next? Are there large
areas to travel through that are boring? These are some basic questions
that need answering as soon as possible to ensure that the best player
experience.
A greybox environment is traditionally made with grey cubes, but these
days you'll sometimes see colored cubes or cubes with simple grids on
them. I've even seen a few with super simple textures, but in general
you don't want to add too much detail to a greybox level since the
whole point is to test the flow without getting caught up in the
details. In the film industry, the closest match to this sort of job is
layout or previs. In those jobs the camera work tends to be more of a
concern, but you also create simple environments to check scale and
make sure your shots work.
Here's a few greybox setups from the videogame Disintegration. These
were posted online by artist Rick Lesley, and you can see the greybox
level, and then the final level once all of the detailed models were
added. And note, this does not include all the props that the final
videogame level would have in the arena.
So as I'm not a
level designer, I can't speak too much more into the thought and theory
that goes behind making a good greybox environment. But as a concept
artist, I've had to deal with greyboxes many times, and so that's what
I'll focus on for the rest of this lesson.
In the beginning of a project, you're likely going to be making more
loose paintings, you're a little less concerned with scale and metrics,
and you're trying to find the mood of the game, the color palette, the
design language. But after that phase, a job you're likely to do is
paint over greybox models showing what the level could potentially look
like using those rough concepts you did earlier as inspiration.
Here's an example of this again from the game Disintegration. I was
asked to concept a base up in the mountains, first I was given a bunch
of reference material from the art director, and then I started
designing the basic buildings and shape language that the level may
have.
Next I fashioned my own greybox level from a greybox provided from the
client, you can see it's mostly simple boxes with a grid.
If you're a concept artist that prefers to work primarily in 2d, then
the next step is to make some perspective grids over the greybox image
and start painting. But if you're a concept artist that uses more 3d in
your workflow, get an export of the greybox model from the game engine
and bring them into your favorite 3d app. In this example, the greybox
is in 3dsmax, and I then used the layout to build some simple 3d
buildings. I tend to find painting architecture in 2d takes a of of
time, and it's faster instead to model the architecture in 3d so the
perspective is all handled for you. Here's the result of the modeling
process. Again, these are concept models, they can be helpful for the
people who will build the final assets for the game, but your goal at
the concept phase isn't to make perfect assets, its to create stuff
that's flexible so you can make changes quickly.
Now the final step, I went in and used a combination of hand painting
in photoshop and photobashing to create the final scene.
After a revisions process with the art director, the image is handed to
the team to give them some idea what the final scene will look like.
Modelers will break down the concept and decide what models they'll
need to build, texture artists look at the concept and start to prepare
the materials. And of course, it's totally possible big stuff will
change, maybe the greybox has changed since you did your paintover, but
the concept is still helpful to answer a lot of design details even if
the exact level doesn't appear in the final game.
Conclusion
So if you plan on becoming a concept artist for videogames, hopefully
this gives you some answers on what greyboxing is and how you'll be
working with them to create final concept images. And if you're a level
designer, hopefully this answers your very first questions and gives
you the inspiration to search on the web for more detailed explanations
from actual professional level designers. There's a lot of great stuff
out there, including the twitter trend "Blocktober" where level artists
post their greybox environments every month of october. So check it out!
