Matthew Trevelyan Johns
Principal Environment Artist - Naughty Dog
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The Last of Us: Part 1...Hunter City atrium

The Last of Us: Part I is a particularly special project for me, my enjoyment of the original game inspired me to pursue a career at Naughty Dog and this was the first project for which I was promoted to the position of Principal Artist. I fulfilled this role for the duration of the project and it was an incredible learning experience.
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As Principal, I was tasked with expanding upon, and developing new art pipelines that would help empower the environment team to create a visual experience that could truly harness the full potential of the PS5. I also took ownership of some very technically challenging sequences and was responsible for creating many of the modular assets and shaders that would be shared across the project.
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I continued my roles as the Vehicle Specialist (asset creation, art/technical pipeline, management of library) and as a level artist (textures, shaders, modeling etc).
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This has been my third Naughty Dog title and it 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. Please do check out all of the posts from the other incredible Naughty Dog artists!

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Please enjoy this small gallery and stay tuned for more very soon!
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This shot would be the opening to our official announcement trailer. The environment was worked on by other talented artists prior to me, and I was tasked with applying final polish/look adjustments to the area to try and push it even further

Water reflections of this clarity and quality are extremely hard to come by in games, our tech art team really raised the bar in order to achieve our visual goal here

Water reflections of this clarity and quality are extremely hard to come by in games, our tech art team really raised the bar in order to achieve our visual goal here

As I'm also responsible for creating all of the vehicles, I was simultaneously working on their models/shaders, as well as the environment. Getting the right reflection response on the taxi and clear read on the hunter bus proved particularly challenging

I took the Hotel Grand for a month or so, working with Topher Sassman. It was a difficult task, we were tight on time and I wanted to re-texture and shade the entire space so that we could hit that wow-factor the original space had

I took the Hotel Grand for a month or so, working with Topher Sassman. It was a difficult task, we were tight on time and I wanted to re-texture and shade the entire space so that we could hit that wow-factor the original space had

Topher and I worked together, along with our outsource partners, to redesign the hanging art pieces on the back wall, as with all iconic spaces, we wanted to preserve the 'feeling' of the original space, whilst improving it wherever we could

Building on the work done by other artists, I remodelled many of the 'hero' elements, like this bar, so that they could take advantage of the brand new, trim texture/shader pipeline i'd been working on specifically for TLOU: Part I

Building on the work done by other artists, I remodelled many of the 'hero' elements, like this bar, so that they could take advantage of the brand new, trim texture/shader pipeline i'd been working on specifically for TLOU: Part I

I hope to post more information about the TLOU: Part I trim pipeline soon , but here you can see a little breakdown of my brdf passes, color and roughness are the two that I spend the most time balancing

I hope to post more information about the TLOU: Part I trim pipeline soon , but here you can see a little breakdown of my brdf passes, color and roughness are the two that I spend the most time balancing

I divide my meshes to provide good topology that will allow me to paint vertex colours to blend my multi-layered shaders smoothly, with no sudden, abrupt transitions or 'stretched' blends between vertices that are too spaced apart

I divide my meshes to provide good topology that will allow me to paint vertex colours to blend my multi-layered shaders smoothly, with no sudden, abrupt transitions or 'stretched' blends between vertices that are too spaced apart

This peeling plaster shader did a lot of heavy lifting throughout game too, I built the textures using a mix of megascans, photoshop and substance designer, before creating a robust shader that could be tinted and used baked ao for further weathering

This peeling plaster shader did a lot of heavy lifting throughout game too, I built the textures using a mix of megascans, photoshop and substance designer, before creating a robust shader that could be tinted and used baked ao for further weathering

Here's a look at one layer within the shader. It's very high frequency, because the shader only blends this in at the edge of the paint, where it peels. I began with a megascans source and mixed, cloned and added to it using other methods to arrive here

Here's a look at one layer within the shader. It's very high frequency, because the shader only blends this in at the edge of the paint, where it peels. I began with a megascans source and mixed, cloned and added to it using other methods to arrive here

Eagle-eyed players might have noticed that I kept the clocks that feature here at the same exact times that they were in the original version of the game...even though we changed practically everything else, little call backs like this were fun to do

Eagle-eyed players might have noticed that I kept the clocks that feature here at the same exact times that they were in the original version of the game...even though we changed practically everything else, little call backs like this were fun to do

Interesting surface response is something I always try to push in my work. Even with the weathered and grungey look to many parts of the environments, I always like to try and get metallic elements to respond to lighting and reflections well

A lot of repeating, modular kits are used in our work, like the banisters and railings, leveraging modularity and using world space shader effects to vary the grunge and textures on them is a really powerful workflow

A lot of repeating, modular kits are used in our work, like the banisters and railings, leveraging modularity and using world space shader effects to vary the grunge and textures on them is a really powerful workflow

It was fun to get to work on this small, but iconic space for the game, I tend to hop around a bit within projects and often for short, intense periods. But I find those sprints really rewarding and this space was no exception

It was fun to get to work on this small, but iconic space for the game, I tend to hop around a bit within projects and often for short, intense periods. But I find those sprints really rewarding and this space was no exception

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