Inside World of Tanks: HEAT’s Art, Engine & Vehicle Design Pipeline

World of Tanks: HEAT reimagines Wargaming’s signature armored combat as a faster, more forgiving tactical shooter built around respawns, mid-match vehicle swapping, specialized battlefield roles, and character-driven Agents.

Following the launch of Season 2: Fire and Ash, 80 Level spoke with Product Director Artyom Yantsevich and Art Director Hanna Babitskaya about how the team created a standalone experience that retains recognizable World of Tanks DNA while establishing its own visual and mechanical identity.

The developers discuss the game’s 70/30 design philosophy, which grounds approximately 70% of its alternate-history vehicles and technology in real engineering while reserving the remaining 30% for experimentation. They also explain how Agents, tanks, abilities, colors, materials, and silhouettes are developed as cohesive identities, allowing players to quickly understand each vehicle’s role without compromising the game’s semi-realistic military aesthetic. We also discuss HEAT’s production pipeline, including its use of Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, Houdini, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Figma, alongside Wargaming’s proprietary engine.

World of Tanks: HEAT is a standalone tactical vehicle shooter rather than a direct expansion of World of Tanks. What prompted the team to build a new experience from the ground up, and how did you define what HEAT should be compared to the main World of Tanks franchise?

 Artyom Yantsevich, Product Director: Over years of work on World of Tanks updates, the WoT team kept gathering player feedback, and certain themes came up again and again. Some fans of armored combat weren't drawn to the strategic side of the game; they wanted the fantasy of faster, more dynamic battles. Others found the stakes too high and were looking for more forgiving gameplay, something to unwind with.

Those observations became the hypotheses we took into prototyping. Through a series of playtests, that prototype gradually took shape as what is now HEAT: faster-paced matches with respawns and mid-match vehicle swapping, mechanics that set the core experience apart from World of Tanks.

To support that pace, we assembled a vehicle roster that mixes machines WoT players already know with more modern and experimental designs. The same thinking runs through the damage model, the level of detail on the vehicles, and the design of their support abilities. Here we draw heavily on the unique experience of that team, their track record of recreating real vehicles in-game and building experimental units grounded in real engineering principles, with a few imagined elements that make sense within the world we've created.

The game features experimental vehicles in an alternative post-WWII timeline. How much freedom did that setting give the art and design teams when creating tanks, modules, weapons, and visual customization options?

Artyom Yantsevich: A lot of freedom, but with rules. We use what we call the 70/30 approach. About 70 percent of the technology in HEAT is grounded in real, tested engineering. The other 30 percent is where we allow ourselves to ask “what if.” Even the strangest weapon or module in the game has a basis in something that was built, proposed, or prototyped in the past. Nothing in the game is pure fantasy.

This balance matters a lot for the art and design teams. The alternate timeline lets them build vehicles that never made it past the drawing board, but every design still has to look like it could work. If a player sees a tank in HEAT and believes an engineer could have built it, then we did our job.

Hanna Babitskaya, Art Director: Everything starts with the gameplay design. Once we understand the battlefield role of a vehicle, the game design team either gives us a specific real-world tank to use as a foundation or a direction for the type of platform we’re looking for.

From there, we evaluate the vehicle’s abilities and determine how much they should influence the design. The more grounded the gameplay mechanics are, the closer the vehicle remains to its historical counterpart. In those cases, the visual changes are relatively subtle—adding equipment like a machine gun, an active protection system, or other authentic military hardware.

When the gameplay introduces something much more experimental, such as a railgun, the process becomes very different. We may keep the original chassis as a starting point, but redesign the turret and weapon system almost entirely from scratch. Even then, we rarely invent shapes out of thin air. Instead, we study multiple real vehicles, borrowing engineering solutions, proportions, and design elements from each of them to create something that feels believable.

As a general philosophy, around 70% of what players see is based directly on real military technology. The remaining 30% is either adapted from existing references or designed specifically for our alternate-history setting. Our goal isn’t to recreate something that actually existed, but to create something that feels like it could have existed under different technological circumstances.

The same philosophy applies to progression modules. Whenever possible, we use real-world military equipment that naturally supports the gameplay function of each upgrade. Only when an ability itself is fictional do we create entirely new visual solutions to represent it. Even then, we try to keep the design language consistent with real engineering rather than pure science fiction.

When it comes to visual customization, we follow the same balance between authenticity and creative freedom. We use real-world military references and practices as one part of the ideas — historical camouflage patterns, markings, paint schemes, and other details that could realistically exist on vehicles of that era.

At the same time, the alternate-history setting gives us more room to explore more stylized and experimental directions. We can create customization options inspired by specific environments, maps, events, or different interpretations of how these vehicles might have evolved in our timeline. explore.

For us, the important thing is that every customization option still feels connected to the vehicle and the world of HEAT. Even when we introduce fictional elements, they should feel like a natural extension of the technology, history, and visual language we have established.

HEAT introduces Agents, battlefield roles, and hero-enhanced tanks. How did the team approach blending recognizable armored vehicle combat with more character-driven, ability-driven gameplay? 

Hanna Babitskaya: From an art direction perspective, our role is to translate and amplify the gameplay vision through visual design. We work closely with the game design team to make sure roles, abilities, and identities are clearly communicated to players.

Our work starts with the Agent silhouettes, poses, and the overall visual language to communicate the character’s battlefield role and personality. This is an interesting challenge because HEAT is built around a semi-realistic setting rather than fantasy, so we have fewer expressive tools and rely on more subtle design decisions.

The next step is creating a connection between the player and the Agent. We look for unique visual features, expressions, poses, and styling that communicate each Agent’s personality and make them memorable. The goal is for players to quickly understand who the character is and build an emotional connection with them. After that, we bring the Agent and the vehicle together into a single visual identity. We treat the character, vehicle design, colors, materials, details, and overall presentation as one cohesive visual package. Together, they create a powerful and unique combination that feels like a single identity rather than separate character and machine.
During combat, our focus is on supporting the feeling of scale, impact, and intensity while maintaining clear visual communication.

First, because HEAT is a fast-paced game, readability is critical. Damage states and vehicle conditions need to be immediately understandable so players can quickly evaluate the situation during combat. Second, we focus on the physicality of the world — the scale of objects, the reaction of materials, destruction, and environmental interactions. These elements help communicate the weight, size, and power of armored vehicles.

Third, abilities have their own visual language and color range, allowing players to clearly distinguish them from vehicles and the environment without breaking the overall visual style. Throughout the entire process, we follow our 70/30 philosophy. The foundation of our designs is always based on real-world references, military technology, and physical logic, while the remaining space allows us to explore creative interpretations and new ideas that support gameplay and the overall experience.

The game launched across PC, Steam Deck, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and GeForce NOW with full cross-platform play and progression. What were the biggest production and technical challenges in supporting so many platforms from day one? 

Artyom Yantsevich: Building HEAT on our own engine was the biggest challenge. It gave us control over how the game looks, feels, and plays, but it also meant we had to solve every problem ourselves, on numerous and very different hardware platforms.

Cross-play and cross-progression add another layer. Each platform has its own account system, its own certification process, and its own timing. Keeping all of that aligned, so a player can move between PC, console, and Steam Deck without losing a bit of progress, took a lot of coordination across the team.

Closed beta testing on all platforms was essential. Many of the issues we fixed before launch were things we simply could not have found without real players on real hardware, so the HEAT community was a big help with this very ambitious process.

There are detailed performance targets across platforms, including 60 FPS modes, Steam Deck presets, and PS5 Pro support with PSSR. How did the team approach optimization and scalability while preserving visual quality and combat readability? 

Artyom Yantsevich: Readability came first. HEAT is a fast game and players need to understand the battlefield at all times. When we had to choose between a nicer effect and a clearer picture, we chose the clearer picture.

After that it becomes a scaling question. We set a target for each platform and built the settings around it, so a Steam Deck preset and a PS5 Pro preset both give a game that feels responsive, even if the visual detail is different. Technologies like PSSR help us hold image quality while keeping the frame rate stable.

For us the frame rate is part of the gameplay, not only a technical number. Low latency changes how a fight feels, so it's critical to both the look and feel of the game that players can set clear frame rate minimums.

Can you talk about the rendering and art pipeline for HEAT? What tools and workflows does the team use to create vehicles, maps, effects, materials, damage states, and final in-engine visuals?

Hanna Babitskaya: While each discipline has its own workflow, the overall production pipeline follows the same structure.

Everything begins with gameplay and creative direction. Once the core gameplay goals are defined, our associate art directors and concept artists translate those ideas into visual concepts. Depending on the task, this stage combines traditional 2D concept art with 3D blockouts, paint-overs, and sometimes even simple animations to explore forms, proportions, functionality, and the overall feel before production begins.

Once the concept is approved, the assets move into production. Different teams use different tools depending on their specialization, including industry-standard software such as Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, Houdini, Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, and others. Whether we’re creating vehicles, environments, visual effects, or materials, the goal is always the same: build assets that are visually consistent, technically efficient, and easy to iterate on.

Production is highly collaborative. Every week, the team leads and associate art directors review their progress with the art director to make sure the assets still match the original creative vision and meet the quality bar. These reviews are an important part of our process, and they’re not just checkpoints. If we discover that an idea can be improved, we’re happy to return to the concept stage, refine the design, and then continue production with a stronger visual direction.

At the end of every week, we also hold an open art sync where every artist from every discipline shares the work they’ve created over the past few days. It’s more than just a progress update. It gives artists an opportunity to present their work, explain their creative decisions, learn how to communicate their ideas, and see what other teams are building. The meeting is open to anyone in the studio, not just artists, which encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration and often sparks valuable discussions or ideas that might not emerge within individual teams.

The final stage takes place in our proprietary engine, which is being developed alongside the game itself. Assets are imported, assembled, and polished there, where we fine-tune materials, lighting, effects, damage states, and the overall in-game presentation.

One of the biggest advantages of working with our own engine is the close collaboration between the art and engineering teams. It’s a two-way process: engine developers help artists make the best use of new tools and technologies, while the art team continuously provides feedback, requests new features, and identifies opportunities to improve the workflow. This allows both the engine and our production pipeline to evolve together throughout the development of the game.

With the Launch Season structured around five free weekly Battle Passes, five additional tanks, and progressive Agent unlocks, how are you thinking about live-service pacing, player onboarding, and keeping the community engaged beyond launch?

Artyom Yantsevich: We wanted the first weeks to feel generous and easy to follow. A weekly rhythm gives players a clear reason to come back and a goal that is realistic to finish.

Progressive unlocks are mostly about onboarding. New players do not see everything at once. They learn one Agent and one role, then the next thing opens up. That is much friendlier than putting the full roster in front of someone on day one. Our first full season expanded to two months, and future seasons will expand a bit further and deliver regular new content with some fixes, optimizations, new gameplay options, and other surprises thrown in.

We are reading community feedback closely, and the priority is to ensure that we deliver a game that is "familiar but new": bringing the familiar World of Tanks DNA while combining it with a faster, Agent-based experience that shifts it into a new experience.

Wargaming, Developers of World of Tanks: HEAT