Matthew Trevelyan Johns
Principal Environment Artist - Naughty Dog
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The Last of Us: Part I...Bills truck

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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At one point in the game, Ellie and Joel meet Bill, who gifts them a pickup truck. I worked with our amazing outsource artists and vendors, instructing them on my new, cutscene vehicle modeling and uv pipeline before reviewing and correcting the models

At one point in the game, Ellie and Joel meet Bill, who gifts them a pickup truck. I worked with our amazing outsource artists and vendors, instructing them on my new, cutscene vehicle modeling and uv pipeline before reviewing and correcting the models

I then focused more on the texture/shader pipeline for the truck. We often saw the interior in extreme close-ups, so I used a mix of tiling + baked maps, decals, face weighting alongside other techniques to ensure the quality held up

I then focused more on the texture/shader pipeline for the truck. We often saw the interior in extreme close-ups, so I used a mix of tiling + baked maps, decals, face weighting alongside other techniques to ensure the quality held up

Here's a quick look at a breakdown of the interior. Examining the textures and the wireframe, hopefully it demonstrates the extra level of detail that I hoped to achieve with these cutscene vehicle interiors

Here's a quick look at a breakdown of the interior. Examining the textures and the wireframe, hopefully it demonstrates the extra level of detail that I hoped to achieve with these cutscene vehicle interiors

I'd previously worked on all of the surrounding vehicles seen here for TLOU: Part II. It was fun to revisit the scene though, this time with a focus on the hero vehicle and many different camera angles

I'd previously worked on all of the surrounding vehicles seen here for TLOU: Part II. It was fun to revisit the scene though, this time with a focus on the hero vehicle and many different camera angles

(Includes audio) Much of this sequence would feature in a big story trailer for the game, this would mean shader and lighting adjustments per shot sometimes, to ensure everything looked as good as possible

Densely packed roads like this were pretty common throughout both TLOU:I & II, they were great cases to test the vehicle pipeline that didn't employ 1:1 bakes and instead used tiling textures, masks and 'bake kits' to create lots of unique vehicles

Densely packed roads like this were pretty common throughout both TLOU:I & II, they were great cases to test the vehicle pipeline that didn't employ 1:1 bakes and instead used tiling textures, masks and 'bake kits' to create lots of unique vehicles

It was a great experience to work alongside technical artists, Alex Rivera and Charlotte Francis, who were responsible for the rigging setup and the many, awesome, animated glass fractures and destructible elements of the truck

In the original game, this reflection seen on the glass was added in post I believe, but for our new version, everything was real-time. I worked with technical artist, SIchen Liu to come up with this fake reflection using a scrolling shader. A fun trick

Each shot in this in-game-cutscene had extremely finely tuned lighting, in some cases I applied shader hacks to improve the shots. For this shot I added hand-painted AO to the tops of the tires, to darken the base colour and spec response under the arches

Each shot in this in-game-cutscene had extremely finely tuned lighting, in some cases I applied shader hacks to improve the shots. For this shot I added hand-painted AO to the tops of the tires, to darken the base colour and spec response under the arches

The exterior used tiles, bake-kits and a new vehicle clear-coat shader setup. I also worked with technical Artists Alex Rivera and Charlotte Francis who added an AO bake and highly detailed, smeared window textures respectively to complete the look

The exterior used tiles, bake-kits and a new vehicle clear-coat shader setup. I also worked with technical Artists Alex Rivera and Charlotte Francis who added an AO bake and highly detailed, smeared window textures respectively to complete the look

I liked the fine grain effect here on the dash, it's only seen for a split second amidst the chaos of a shattering window, but the little details like this are really worth squeezing in to achieve the fidelity we want I think

I liked the fine grain effect here on the dash, it's only seen for a split second amidst the chaos of a shattering window, but the little details like this are really worth squeezing in to achieve the fidelity we want I think

(trigger warning - this scene is a little violent) A lot of scuffling and fighting in and around the vehicle interior here. Alex did a great job in rigging all of the interior parts for animators to do their magic

The damage and metal warping here on the side of the vehicle was mostly achieved using a very strong normal map I created and then aligned in real-time to try to pick up the best angle from the cubemaps in the scene

The damage and metal warping here on the side of the vehicle was mostly achieved using a very strong normal map I created and then aligned in real-time to try to pick up the best angle from the cubemaps in the scene

I worked with our vfx team to apply a new system that tied my emissive shader to the vfx lens flares and runtime lights for this quick shot. It allowed us to perfectly time all three of those elements together to achieve the blinking head and tail lights

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