By: Nelson Schneider (Designer)
The time for this Spring quarter is slowly coming to a close. And though it went by quickly, managed to contribute a lot to the Shadow that Pervades project. Throughout the quarter I was given the art role for the city level. For the first few weeks of the quarter I was tasked with working on texturing models through Substance Painter. Although it was my first-time using Substance, I managed to learn the basics of it quite quickly. The first few models I textured can be seen below.
Used and abandoned is of course the theme for all items. The environment plays a big role in storytelling. Essentially, I want the players to believe that the world they are traveling through has been abandoned for a long time. I made sure to texture all models to look convincing enough to get that message across to the player.
As I got more familiar with Substance, I was given tougher models to texture.
I’m particularly proud of how the Truck and hotel marquee turned out. I found myself coming back to those two models often. There were little details that I felt would make the models look more believable, the small scratch and dirt marks for example in some areas are barely noticeable but are a huge addition to making the models look real. It’s details like that which bring models to life.
The next few weeks I worked on making normal, roughness, metallic and height maps for decals. Most of them were grunges to and cracks to add to the feel of the environment. Some others included signs and small textures. Some of the decals I worked on can be seen below.
As mentioned earlier, most of the remaining decals I worked on were different variations of the grunge textures.
Lastly, as the quarter came to a close, I worked together with Amaru to populate the space in the parking garage area of the city level. The floor he and I worked on was the 4th floor in the garage. The theme he and I went for was a small maze of obstacles around the area to have the player travel through it right before they reached the top floor. Additionally, Amaru and I populated the first floor a bit with cars around the area to create a sense of people trying to escape the area.
That would be it for what I’ve worked on throughout the quarter. Although having remote classes took a bit away from the full experience. Working on this project was truly a fun and insightful experience into the gaming industry.