Building the world of Lake: Terrain
Backdrop
One aspect of the pacific north-west, which I personally greatly romanticize, is mountains.
In contrast, hailing from probably the flattest country on the planet, they’re incredibly humbling and imposing. True titans, that withstand the hardships of nature and time. A sentiment I definitely sought out to capture.
In the context of a game world, they’re excellent at conveying a larger scale and provide a canvas for atmospheric and lighting effects to shine. Early on, the parts of the terrain, which fell outside of the playable area, were used to create mountainscapes.
This went a long way, but given the relatively low detail of the terrain, they never managed to “pop”. The cliff material covering them was also tailored to a relatively close viewing distance, and simply turned into a single color far away.
I took a stab at creating standalone assets for the mountains, since these could benefit from a dedicated albedo and normal map, without relying on the terrain materials. I iterated on the shape and silhouette until I achieved something striking and characteristic. One for the northern- and southern side, as as well as a general purpose mountain to be randomly placed at varying rotations.
The assets were placed just at the edge of the terrain and the result was a sight to behold! I was very satisfied, as the environment suddenly had an injection of character.
For the northern mountains (aptly named Providence Peak), the green channel of the normal map was inverted. This was purposely done so that the sun would still appear to hit the face of the mountain, despite actually orbiting around and behind it.