The Last of Us: Part II...Confronting 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 Antoine Deschamps (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
These fungus filled corridors and rooms were some of my favourites to work on, they were eerily quiet and when hit with bounce light from the flashlight, could take on a ghostly appearance...
The fungus team were responsible for creating the main library of fungus assets. As environment artists we would then create our own shaders to integrate our assets and environments so that the fungus felt like it had grown in the space over many years
Fungus was grouped in clumps, usually in corners and would usually have tendrils to suggest it's growth. A lot of really talented artists in the team worked on the main assets and my own fungus shaders for the integration made use of their base textures
Here's a video to show how much the shader pass helped to integrate the fungus assets. Fungus, paint peeling and tendrils (supported by modeled tendrils if needed) were added to my shaders wherever fungus assets were placed
The VFX team made incredible spore clouds that would react to the flashlight and player movement too, making them swirl and take on a life of their own
I spent many hours in this area, working on top of Edgar's initial pass. Adding more fungus and blending everything together nicely using shaders. This learning experience would prove to be important for the Abby hospital section I would work on later...
The flashlight's real-time bounce, enhanced here a little for the video, creates some beautiful lighting scenarios, the flickering of the flashlight also added another layer of atmosphere to these sections
This corridor cutscene was actually one of the first areas that we worked on to near final for this section, even though it takes place at the very end. This is so that the cutscene lighting and animation work could progress without having to wait on us
'Where's Abby?'
These very close up shots of Nora originally had a very low resolution, baked door as a backdrop. It was this moment that inspired me to work on the door-kits and to use tiling texture and more detailed modeling methods to achieve the detail we needed
'Think about what he did...'
Working on cutscenes is challenging, for this one shot I re-worked the door model and shaders to add more metal distressing and also re-arranged the slight bit of fungus we see many, many times so that it was present, but not distracting to the moment
We all know what happens next...