Gamasutra has generously relaxed their typically restricted content viewing rules to allow people to read this nice “how to”: Illustrator-to-Maya: How to Design and Build the Perfect Level. This tutorial is specific to Illustrator and Maya, but there are probably other software options/match-ups out there to allow this kind of workflow. For me the timing is great since I’m trying to nail down a design for a virtual home/business space in Second Life and am wanting productive offline options for doing some simple iterations (there is a fee charged for uploading textures, and I’d rather not pay if I don’t have to… besides, it just fills up the servers).

More generally, there’s a section of the tutorial for using real world reference. From the article:

Perhaps we want to build a level that resembles a location from real life; this can be easily done by importing a background texture map as a template.

I wonder how many level designers out there who’ve read about Google’s latest tool will have a light bulb go on over their heads while reading this tutorial. Word will spread.

via Blue’s News