There are many facets to the development of the game as a whole, I’m confident there’s a wealth of knowledge to share on each front. This series of blog posts delves into the many aspects I was involved in, regarding world-building and graphics. I hope to consolidate the things that I’ve learned over the course of the game’s development. Hopefully this will provide some insight for...
Recreating a real-world location was definitely new for me, having previously only worked from inspiration. Gathering references was easy, though the immense variety of locations made it difficult to really distil what represents Oregon in its broadest form. Vegetation is plentiful in Oregon, the state itself can be divided into several ecoregions. Though it largely boils down to forest, grassland and high desert. Forests provide a...
The landscape makes up the foundations of the game world. Hence it was the starting point for developing the environment. Building a terrain that was tailored to gameplay and level design, and should evolve alongside them, was a first for me. Design Lay of the land At the start of the project there were still many unknowns: How large was the world going to be? What’s...
The shading in Lake could simply be described as Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR), as opposed to PBR. Giving way for artistic freedom, yet not so far that it shies away completely from the rules of nature. Simplified rendering was also a practical choice, putting less strain on the production workload. The game uses Deferred rendering, to avoid rendering depth and motion vector pre-passes for all objects and...
80 Level is a central hub for resources about the various aspects of game development. They invited me to talk about my principles and approach toward art production. You can find the interview here: https://80.lv/articles/unity-shaders-for-stylized-scenes/
The “Fantasy Adventure Environment” was selected as a finalist in the “Asset Store Best Artistic Content” category for the Unity Awards 2017. If you’d like to support it, your vote is appreciated! VOTE HERE The winners of each category will be announced at Unite Austin October 3-5, 2017.
As part of the Unity Asset Store’s “Biggest Sale Ever”, the Stylized Water Shader package is 30% off, from $10 to $7.
Last weekend I took some time out to practise some asset production. I often find myself creating or learning something useful along the way when I do. What started out as a curiosity about using Substance Designer to create pixel art, ended up as a homage to Guild Wars 2’s April Fool’s gag: the Super Adventure Box (SAB).
The upcoming Unity environment asset pack is getting some attention, after having to focus my efforts on other projects. The only way to achieve animated, stylized, vegetation in Unity is to either use SpeedTree or the integrated Tree Editor. Both of which come with their own set of limitations. Which sparked the creation of custom shaders, featuring bi-directional wind animations and simulated Subsurface Scattering. This asset...