Artur Szymański
Art Director
Artur Szymański is a 3D art generalist and mathematician with a passion for combining graph theory and computer graphics.
He began his career as an asset creator, later transitioning into animation and technical art. For over seven years, Artur has served as Art Director at Simteract, shaping the artistic and technical vision for titles such as Train Life and Taxi Life.
He specializes in leveraging real-world data to build expansive game worlds, including 1:1 recreation of Barcelona in Taxi Life.
Talks & sessions
Building Massive Game Worlds: Procedural Generation and Optimization with Houdini
In this presentation, Artur will share a behind-the-scenes look at the ambitious process of generating and optimizing a vast 4000km² game world for the Train Life game. Building on the previous session's focus on terrain and building generators, Artur will guide us through the advanced techniques and tools developed to bring this immense world to life on the Nintendo Switch.He'll touch upon the innovative use of Houdini-based tools to create detailed landscapes and how World Composition was leveraged to craft seamlessly connected world tiles. Artur will explain the strategic implementation of 'corridors' blueprints for efficient level design and art, which proved crucial in managing such a large environment.
A significant part of the talk will be dedicated to the intricate optimization process. Artur and his team faced the colossal task of compressing the game data from 100GB to a mere 6 GB. He'll share their journey through this 'post mortem' of sorts, revealing the challenges and solutions encountered in maintaining the integrity of the game world despite the substantial data reduction.
Attendees will leave with a comprehensive understanding of high-level game world creation, the power of procedural generation, and practical insights into making expansive virtual environments viable on consoles with limited storage capabilities.