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

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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A little later in to the game, Joel and Ellie find themselves trapped inside a flooded tunnel. The only way across the dangerous rapids is to carefully traverse a half sunken bus as it's sits precariously in the water...

A little later in to the game, Joel and Ellie find themselves trapped inside a flooded tunnel. The only way across the dangerous rapids is to carefully traverse a half sunken bus as it's sits precariously in the water...

Technical artist Alex Rivera, handled the rigging and skinning, whilst I mainly focused on the appearance of the bus itself, I'd modelled it previously and so most of the work was on the unique shader setups for this dynamic series of events

Technical artist Alex Rivera, handled the rigging and skinning, whilst I mainly focused on the appearance of the bus itself, I'd modelled it previously and so most of the work was on the unique shader setups for this dynamic series of events

(All video includes audio) I personally really love these IGC (in-game cutscene) sequences, they give us a chance to direct the game play in a very cinematic way. In this case the player is in control during key moments of an otherwise, scripted sequence

For the exterior shaders I relied on a raindrop and animating wetness streaks shader i'd made previously, an interesting challenge here was to have the glass elements of the bus sort with the alpha blend/refractive qualities of the water shaders

For the exterior shaders I relied on a raindrop and animating wetness streaks shader i'd made previously, an interesting challenge here was to have the glass elements of the bus sort with the alpha blend/refractive qualities of the water shaders

Lead lighting artist Antoine Deschamps worked here to create this cool, cold, atmospheric lighting scenario, with this heavily directional lighting, my goal was to focus on material response, particularly in the wetness streaks and metallic elements

Lead lighting artist Antoine Deschamps worked here to create this cool, cold, atmospheric lighting scenario, with this heavily directional lighting, my goal was to focus on material response, particularly in the wetness streaks and metallic elements

All of the incredible water effects and the water shader itself were handled by our FX team in-house. There's always a lot of cross-communication as sometimes FX directly and physically influences our shaders

All of the incredible water effects and the water shader itself were handled by our FX team in-house. There's always a lot of cross-communication as sometimes FX directly and physically influences our shaders

In very wet and glossy lighting/material scenarios I pay particular attention to specular occlusion, so areas that would be in shadow do not reflect unrealistically. For this bus I manually paint and IBL occlusion mask to solve that particular issue

I made a custom glass shader for these doors that used a blurred refraction feature driven by an animated raindrop normal + roughness map. It helped emphasise the effect of Ellie being a briefly blurred silhouette that falls into focus as she lands

I made a custom glass shader for these doors that used a blurred refraction feature driven by an animated raindrop normal + roughness map. It helped emphasise the effect of Ellie being a briefly blurred silhouette that falls into focus as she lands

You can also see here that the previously unbroken left hand window, now shows a shattered effect. This was driven by some layers in the shader that were scripted to turn on, right as Ellie's foot made contact with the glass

You can also see here that the previously unbroken left hand window, now shows a shattered effect. This was driven by some layers in the shader that were scripted to turn on, right as Ellie's foot made contact with the glass

Here's a more detailed breakdown video, with some annotations in place to help describe the shader and scripting work that went into these intense few seconds of action

And the final sequence as it appears in-game. Those animated droplets were also scripted to turn on briefly as the shattered door swings open - it's a split-second detail that many will miss, but I like to think it's worth adding for those that catch it

Finally, as the bus sinks and Ellie is taken away by the current, all of the water droplet shader effects are disabled via script and render settings help to capture the feeling of the murky unknown that Joel must survive as he attempts to find Ellie

Finally, as the bus sinks and Ellie is taken away by the current, all of the water droplet shader effects are disabled via script and render settings help to capture the feeling of the murky unknown that Joel must survive as he attempts to find Ellie

Here's a wireframe render of the bus exterior, I actually modelled an early version of this for The Last of Us: Part II years ago and it was the very first test vehicle that I used to demonstrate the face-weighted normals + decals + wear-mask approach

Here's a wireframe render of the bus exterior, I actually modelled an early version of this for The Last of Us: Part II years ago and it was the very first test vehicle that I used to demonstrate the face-weighted normals + decals + wear-mask approach

The interior was not really seen much in regular play and so i squeezed a lot of details into an atlas texture. For this scene, I then layered on additional shader features, masks and effects to add the extra 'up-close' detail we needed

The interior was not really seen much in regular play and so i squeezed a lot of details into an atlas texture. For this scene, I then layered on additional shader features, masks and effects to add the extra 'up-close' detail we needed

It's a fairly low poly model as you can see, for the final version Alex added some great details, like animating cloth and destructible hand rails

It's a fairly low poly model as you can see, for the final version Alex added some great details, like animating cloth and destructible hand rails

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