The Last of Us: Part II...Finding Nora
This gallery another in a series that showcases 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 Scott Greenway (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
This area directly follows on from the previous combat area of the hospital, Ellie proceeds upstairs in search of someone she knows only as 'Nora'...
Hospitals are full of signage, I decided that floating cards for the lettering/iconography would enable us to create all of the ward/door/hallway etc signs we needed without the need for hundreds of uniquely baked sign assets
The glass 'pane' uses a refraction shader with depth blur enabled, the letters themselves use an 'alpha cutoff' shader and sit on top of the surface, however...two transparent surfaces rendering on top of each other present challenges to overcome...
Here's a breakdown of how these signs and their shaders work...who'd have thought having nice glass signs would be so complicated...
The flash-light spaces were particularly creepy, real-time shadows and bounce light also meant keeping these levels well optimized was important. (You can also see another type of hanging sign using the previous technique in this image too)
Here we use various tricks to guide the player to their goal. The vfx team added these bugs that scatter near the vent opening, lighting made sure to make the glow from within the vent was enticing and I added the staining to draw the player in further
Edgar made these really nice, modular vents. I then worked into them further, texturing and shading and adding the 'diamond' pattern to the insides that i've always found interesting, as well as a lot of decals for rivets
Putting those transparent tarps I created to good use again...
'Dont scream'...this area was the first cutscene space i worked on, these are heavily art directed and it takes a lot of iteration to get the environments looking detailed enough whilst not distracting from the characters and story
It goes without saying that the character and animation team did incredible work, these cutscenes really draw you in
More refractive glass seen here on the door, I made a huge selection of doors for the hospital as well as a 'kit' for handles, hinges etc. If it's interesting enough I might do a breakdown of this in a future gallery