Info
Type: Game
Task: Environments, Tech Art, Lighting
Tools Used: Unreal Engine
Date: 2025 Feb - Aug
Concept
A mecha pilot defects from their squadron to take revenge, while being hindered by their AI assistant.
Role
I was required to create a living environment for our vehicle combat game while also creating the stylised shader to keep the visual style cohesive.
Breakdowns
Our lighting is driven by a combination of fog and a single directional light for art direction, where different scenes have different coloured fogs depending on the mood of the environment.
To give a watercolour-like effect, we darken edges by subtracting a blurred version of our image to find areas to darken.
In some versions of the shader we also use a Kuwahara filter to remove fine details, giving a painterly effect.
Our outlines are created by overlaying multiple passes of the Sobel filter on different scene textures.
In our compositing stage, we use world space textures to drive lighting variation and line boiling.
Our grass material is driven by the colour of the ground underneath, allowing us to blend the grass within the environment. This uses Runtime Virtual Textures to sample the colour of the landscape.
Rocks in our environment are textured in world space to allow for scaling of the geometry without texture warping. We also use a Z-up material to ensure top-facing planes are procedurally painted as grass, saving time in environment creation.