THe Last of Us: Part II...the snow covered vehicles

I had two roles on The Last of Us: Part II, one as the vehicle specialist (asset creation, art/technical pipeline, management of library) and the other as a level artist (textures, shaders, assets etc).
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I'll be posting a gallery for each of the vehicle 'looks' that I created, this first being the 'snow' look that was used throughout our snowy/blizzard levels. In most cases I would work in a test scene and then would further refine the shaders and models once background artists had placed them in their levels. Once I had established the completed model/shader look, including the creation of the 'snow-kit' examples, I worked with Tyler Moore to propagate this look to the rest of the library.
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The Last of Us: Part II...background information on vehicles
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There are 500 vehicles in the Naughty Dog vehicle library, all created for The Last of Us: Part II
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Given the scale of the project and the amount of vehicles that were depicted in concepts, I knew that accepting the responsibility of being the vehicle specialist, on top of my other level art responsibilities would be a huge challenge. Without a dedicated team to work on vehicles for the duration of the project, I focused on developing a pipeline that could not only produce the highest quality assets, but that could also be done within an efficient time frame.
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While I modeled a large amount of vehicles, often saving the 'hero' vehicles or the entire military series for myself, I am also incredibly thankful to our outsource vendors for their help with many vehicle modelling/uv'ing tasks. There are many vehicles that our vendors modeled almost entirely before I would then receive them, add additional details and carry out my texturing/shading/technical setup pipeline.
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I'm also indebted to my friend Tyler Moore, in the final stages of production he was invaluable in helping to troubleshoot the thousands (!) of collision, traversal, cover and melee bugs that we ran into. Tyler also was instrumental in ensuring that background artists had the vehicle variations they needed. I had set up the template materials to define the 'looks' for each vehicle type and Tyler did a great job of propagating those looks to other vehicles when bg required them, as well as helping to optimize 'the fleet' when the time came.
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I'd also like to thank my Leads, Andres Rodriguez and Christian Nakata for trusting me with such a monumental task and for their support along the way, as well as Waylon Brinck, Florent Devillechabrol, Ke Xu, Steven Tang and Dongsub Woo (and many others) for their technical and graphics expertise that was essential in the process.

A snow vehicle test level that I created, there are a few missing here but this is the majority of snow covered vehicles that features in The Last of Us: Part II

A snow vehicle test level that I created, there are a few missing here but this is the majority of snow covered vehicles that features in The Last of Us: Part II

The is a nice example of the final 'look' that I created for the snow vehicles. The vehicle model was shared between all 'looks' but the shader treatment and 'snow-kit' made these suitable for our snowy levels

The is a nice example of the final 'look' that I created for the snow vehicles. The vehicle model was shared between all 'looks' but the shader treatment and 'snow-kit' made these suitable for our snowy levels

This image shows the 'layer stack' that comprised one of my typical snow vehicle shaders

This image shows the 'layer stack' that comprised one of my typical snow vehicle shaders

This image show the relatively seamless transition of a 'snow-kit' and the vehicles surface shader. If you look closely, you can see that the snow on the metal surface also has subtle 'depth' to it

This image show the relatively seamless transition of a 'snow-kit' and the vehicles surface shader. If you look closely, you can see that the snow on the metal surface also has subtle 'depth' to it

I used parallax occlusion mapped decals, in the same way I did on some of my ships in Star Citizen, to represent small rivets, vents and panel lines. The military vehicles (gallery coming soon) used this technique extensively

I used parallax occlusion mapped decals, in the same way I did on some of my ships in Star Citizen, to represent small rivets, vents and panel lines. The military vehicles (gallery coming soon) used this technique extensively

The RV that you explore at one point has a slightly different approach to the surface, using a slope blend driven by the normal detail within the texture I was able to simulate fine snow gathering along the paneling of the metal exterior

The RV that you explore at one point has a slightly different approach to the surface, using a slope blend driven by the normal detail within the texture I was able to simulate fine snow gathering along the paneling of the metal exterior

The following images show the vehicles as they appeared in the final levels. These were most often placed by the background artists, in this case Joakim Stiggson and Andrew Watkins. I was on hand to help troubleshoot any issues that arose

The following images show the vehicles as they appeared in the final levels. These were most often placed by the background artists, in this case Joakim Stiggson and Andrew Watkins. I was on hand to help troubleshoot any issues that arose

Joakim and Andrew did a fantastic job making these snow drifts to help integrate the snow vehicles into their environments

Joakim and Andrew did a fantastic job making these snow drifts to help integrate the snow vehicles into their environments

We saw Ellie clamber up the side of this van in one of our demos, this shot proved to be a real motivator in getting the wetness streaks and melted snow effect to look good up-close.

We saw Ellie clamber up the side of this van in one of our demos, this shot proved to be a real motivator in getting the wetness streaks and melted snow effect to look good up-close.

I loved this dark, foreboding area of the game, the environment artists did a great job placing the vehicles and building the snow drifts up and around them. Environment artists were Julian Elwood and Jeremy Huxley plus others in supporting roles

I loved this dark, foreboding area of the game, the environment artists did a great job placing the vehicles and building the snow drifts up and around them. Environment artists were Julian Elwood and Jeremy Huxley plus others in supporting roles

This is a good example of on of the 'snow-kits', these meshes would sit on top of the vehicles and the dithered blending shader feature would soften all points at which they intersected with the vehicle...(Thanks to Steven Tang for that amazing feature!)

This is a good example of on of the 'snow-kits', these meshes would sit on top of the vehicles and the dithered blending shader feature would soften all points at which they intersected with the vehicle...(Thanks to Steven Tang for that amazing feature!)