Hi all, Christine "TrandoshYar" Chugon here. I'm an artist on Star Wars Galaxies and I was responsible for creating the Exar Kun heroic encounter dungeon. For this dev diary, I'll give you an overview of how the dungeon made it in game.
This particular dungeon started out as a pencil sketch given to me by Travis "Shadowbrak" Hicks, designer for the Exar Kun encounter. He gave me a layout of room sizes and what the overall theme of each room would be.
Here on Galaxies we use the 3D program Maya. In Maya, I blocked out each room, and using a default human mesh I guessed how big each room would be.
Once the rooms were blocked out, I placed floors, lights, and portals. Portals allow you to walk from one room to another and can be set with different attributes to work in many different ways (such as in windows for buildings and starships.)
Once the blocked out dungeon was complete, it was sent over to Shadowbrak so he could begin placing mobs and setting up encounters.
After that version was finished, I was able to get to work on the final dungeon. This included the details on the walls, as well as the creation of the roots, torches, and broken and collapsed areas of the dungeon.
I also had the help of fellow artist, Scott "I still don't have a forum name" Downey, who created the massive columns in the final room, as well as Exar Kun's sarcophagus and the big spiky objects found in the three large rooms of the dungeon.
Once the dungeon mesh was complete, I went to work on adding textures:
And lights:
After I (and everyone else) was pleased with the look of the dungeon, the final step was to do some worldbuilding. We use an internal tool to place objects into the world, or in this case a dungeon, and make the area look more lived in. Candles, skulls, particle effects, and the like were all added during this last and final step before the heroic encounter went in game.
And I think that about covers how the Exar Kun dungeon was created. I hope you enjoyed reading this dev diary.
Christine "TrandoshYar" Chugon
Artist, Star Wars Galaxies