The Last of Us: Part II...Abby hospital approach
This gallery is part of my on-going series showcasing my work on The Last of Us: Part II.
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As well as being the vehicle specialist for the duration of the game, I also continued my role as a texture and shader artist with my usual level responsibilities.
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For this particular area, I worked in partnership with Edgar Martinez (modelling and layout) and Bethany Lowe (Lighting) as well as the rest of the fantastic Naughty Dog team, without whose contributions none of these levels would be possible.
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My main responsibilities included the creation and adaptation of textures and shaders for application to the environments and contained assets. The levels ended up being so huge that I also did quite a bit of modelling and additional set dressing, working back and forth with Edgar, to continually push and improve each other's work. I also spent a lot of time in researching a new asset pipeline for which these levels became our testing ground.
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Working on The Last of Us: Part II has been an incredible experience and as always, it takes a monumental team effort in order to make such amazing games. Without the hard work and dedication of the entire team, across all departments, none of this would be possible.
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I would also like to take time to thank our incredible outsource studios who time and time again prove to be so vital to our development of these worlds, their contributions are incredible and I am incredibly grateful to have worked with them.
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Edgar Martinez portfolio, please check him out! https://www.artstation.com/edgar_a_martinez
(Includes audio) Prior to Abby's exploration of the hospital, she must make the swim. Even for a relatively small area like this a huge amount of work was involved in creating the shaders and assets to really sell the look underwater
The player path is relatively simple so to make the outline of the approach more interesting I made use of a lot of my vehicles, I think their angular silhouettes contrasted the softness of the foliage quite nicely in the mist (which I increased here)
Special thanks to Santiago and our design team who created this unique level load scenario to load and unload a tonne of our assets and shaders depending on Abby's swim state. A clever trick that the player would never see
More remnants from the old world, long forgotten...
I did a lot of work on this causeway, building upon a great pass that Edgar had done. I wanted to sell the idea that water had consistently streamed down here during times of high rainfall and the asphalt had worn, cracked and been washed away over time
To achieve a flow pattern in the mud of this length, I used a relatively simple approach - a tiling normal map (created by another artist) + some warped uv's. A lot of ways to achieve this effect but I like this one, it's nice and easy
Bethany Lowe did an amazing job in creating the dramatic lighting for this shot, I loved John Sweeney's art direction for this moment too with that strong floodlight and silhouette
I really liked the way the light and reflections hit these rain streaked glass shaders I created. Abstract views like this are often missed by the player but sometimes I find them the most appealing way to view certain parts of the environments
The WLF were clearing out infected from this hospital and burning the bodies...a small story telling moment, but one that required two different burn piles for the different timelines in which we visit the hospital...
...Abby's section takes place prior to Ellie's so we see the fresh burn pile here, but later when Ellie infiltrates the hospital. I replaced this pile with burned skeletal remains, in order to help inform the player of the timeline.
Abby is arrested here for being AWOL from the WLF forward base. I've played around with the render settings and camera angle here to make it feel more ominous, just for fun