General:Noah Berry: Sky and Stars

''This is a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The original diary can be found here.
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rightNoah Berry, Artist
Hello TES fans and friends alike, and warm greetings! My name is Noah Berry and I am entirely pleased to be an environmental artist for Bethesda Softwork's latest and greatest massive CRPG, TES III: Morrowind. I am a graduate of James Madison University with a B.A. in Fine Art and have been a dedicated lover of all things computer gaming since I received my first 386sx16 back in the eighth grade.

Since then, I have been playing whatever I could get a hold of, and soaking in and relishing all of the incredible titles that gamers and developers alike have released over the years. I fondly recall one crisp autumn day in 1996 when I was introduced to what is now the nostalgic greatness that is Daggerfall. Upon playing, I was immediately impressed by the sheer scope of the game, the freedom, and the wonderful sense of atmosphere, mood and immersion. I eagerly seek these elements wherever they may reside in computer gaming and to be sure, Daggerfall has them in spades.

One of my favorite features of the game was the ever changing, and beautifully rendered Tamriel sky. (In all it's 320x200x256 glory!) There was no parallel for the experience of stepping out from the dark confines of Privateer's Hold into the winter night air as snowflakes drifted softly to the ground, then watching the sun lazily work it's way up into the gently brightening sky, awash in hues of red and gold. I simply hadn't seen it done before in gaming and I was floored. I still am.

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In fact, I have been constantly searching the skies (so to speak) in gaming since but have yet to be fully satisfied and sated. It became my goal quite readily after beginning work on Morrowind to try and help create the most beautiful and atmospheric skies ever seen in a computer game. I vividly remember the first time Todd Howard demonstrated the sky system for me when showing Morrowind and how awesome I thought it was. There was a stronger sense of clarity, movement and depth than I had seen ever before in a title and I beseeched him to allow me to be a part of that.

Fortunately for me, he agreed and I began working on the first texture. The alpha layer, or transparency part of the image, proved to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated as a careful balance needed to be achieved between what was visually appealing on the texture and what was functional as well realistic in the game. Those factors, coupled with the nearly limitless color and light settings for the world proved to be almost overwhelming at times, as the undertaking nearly became a hopeless, amorphous mess of pixels and color. However, the clear image of what I sought prevailed in my mind and a (hopefully) pleasing conclusion was in turn reached. A short time later, I returned to my celestial meanderings and began work on the Tamriel night sky.

The first and foremost things on my mind, of course, were the character generation screens from Arena and Daggerfall. Using a 3D Studio Max generated starfield and direct screenshots from previous TES games, I was able to highlight and Photoshop the constellations into view and incorporate them into the Morrowind texture set, resulting in the collage that appears over the players head in the game. The next step involved adding some more color to the scene, to help brighten things up, as well as creating a greater sense of depth. With alphas, I was again able to overlay colorful, ethereal nebula images that stretch across the sky, giving Morrowind a very unique, fantastical look.

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To further complete the far away feel, Tamriel's two moons, Masser and Secunda, were mapped with their own unique, colorful, and alien textures. The resulting effect will hopefully allow the player to look up and feel that they are indeed very far away from Earth, on the strange and wonderful isle of Vvardenfell, in the province of Morrowind.

Sincerely,
Noah Berry