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

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, which was a brand new position created at Naughty Dog. 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 etc) alongside Naughty Dog Lead Artist, Todd Foster (modelling and layout on the Firefly Lab).
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I have a lot of work to dive into and i'm excited to try and bring breakdowns and insights into some of our workflows, but it's been important to me to also take time to rest and as this is a process I love, I really want time to enjoy it.
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I'll be uploading additional galleries along with detailed information and break downs in the coming weeks (months heh) and I hope those of you that are interested will enjoy some of these galleries to come.
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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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Environment Artists for the incredible opening 'hometown' level were the amazingly talented, Jonny Chen and Khanh Nguyen and Scott Greenway was our brilliant Lighting Artist

The tank that I designed for TLOU:II made a come back for this game. I based the design on a mix of the British Challenger, the American M1 and the Italian Ariete to create a new 'hybrid' that would be unique to The Last of Us World

The tank that I designed for TLOU:II made a come back for this game. I based the design on a mix of the British Challenger, the American M1 and the Italian Ariete to create a new 'hybrid' that would be unique to The Last of Us World

The tank itself was 80k triangles and the additional supply bags (provided by our outsource partners) were 10k triangles. I used a mixture of my favourite techniques, bake-kits, decals, mid-poly, wear-masks & multi-layered shaders to complete the look

The tank itself was 80k triangles and the additional supply bags (provided by our outsource partners) were 10k triangles. I used a mixture of my favourite techniques, bake-kits, decals, mid-poly, wear-masks & multi-layered shaders to complete the look

Here's a little look at some brdfs. The tank could also be posed with armour plating removed, tracks damaged and the turret rotated. A few times the turret was 'aimed' in such a way to help tell a story of the destruction present in the world

Here's a little look at some brdfs. The tank could also be posed with armour plating removed, tracks damaged and the turret rotated. A few times the turret was 'aimed' in such a way to help tell a story of the destruction present in the world

Here are some of the pieces I baked from high poly meshes and textured in substance painter. This is one of my favourite parts of the process and I try to do it on a lot of assets per project if I can

Here are some of the pieces I baked from high poly meshes and textured in substance painter. This is one of my favourite parts of the process and I try to do it on a lot of assets per project if I can

This water truck was a new vehicle for TLOU: I. I created it with the help of outsource partners. It had an optional 'intact' or 'broken' ladder that I hoped we might make use of for traversal up onto the tank, perhaps as a vantage point...

This water truck was a new vehicle for TLOU: I. I created it with the help of outsource partners. It had an optional 'intact' or 'broken' ladder that I hoped we might make use of for traversal up onto the tank, perhaps as a vantage point...

I worked with Barry Evans (senior technical artist) to push a new car-paint/secondary gloss shader look for the vehicles on TLOU: I as well. I re-authored hundreds of multi-layered shaders in order to propagate this new look to the entire library.

I worked with Barry Evans (senior technical artist) to push a new car-paint/secondary gloss shader look for the vehicles on TLOU: I as well. I re-authored hundreds of multi-layered shaders in order to propagate this new look to the entire library.

All of this work would come together in scenes like this - the freeway traffic jam. It was worked on by many other talented ND artists. I would be on hand to troubleshoot vehicles if needed, but mostly I got to sit back and admire how the team used them

All of this work would come together in scenes like this - the freeway traffic jam. It was worked on by many other talented ND artists. I would be on hand to troubleshoot vehicles if needed, but mostly I got to sit back and admire how the team used them

I believe this shot was used in one of our announcement trailers. The audio and ambient animation always really brings these scenes to life

Vehicle posing was something we continued to strive for, I liked to think of the poses as giving each vehicle a unique story and character. In certain areas we would have doors open, luggage spilling out or gruesome remains inside to help support the mood

Vehicle posing was something we continued to strive for, I liked to think of the poses as giving each vehicle a unique story and character. In certain areas we would have doors open, luggage spilling out or gruesome remains inside to help support the mood

The 'burned-shell' vehicles required a different pipeline and shader setup. I never spoke about it before but it was extremely challenging to put together. These skeletons of long burned vehicles would litter the world of The Last of Us: Part I

The 'burned-shell' vehicles required a different pipeline and shader setup. I never spoke about it before but it was extremely challenging to put together. These skeletons of long burned vehicles would litter the world of The Last of Us: Part I

In this short walk we can see how creatively the environment artists were able to use the burned-shell vehicles to form a road block. Posing and integrating with ash and burned debris piles really helped sell the look

I built a modular kit of parts that would be used across all burned-shell vehicles (10 in total). Twisted, charred steel was represented with high-low poly bakes and trims and all could be posed/swapped to create new and interesting looks for all vehicles

I built a modular kit of parts that would be used across all burned-shell vehicles (10 in total). Twisted, charred steel was represented with high-low poly bakes and trims and all could be posed/swapped to create new and interesting looks for all vehicles

Textures were always limited to 1k maximum, so my 1k would have to stretch to cover all baked elements. All other layers would usually have a 1k diffuse and then 512 support maps...authoring for lower resolutions can be challenging, but rewarding too

Textures were always limited to 1k maximum, so my 1k would have to stretch to cover all baked elements. All other layers would usually have a 1k diffuse and then 512 support maps...authoring for lower resolutions can be challenging, but rewarding too

Studying the reference most vehicles that survive flames end up as burned, ashy husks. But to add a little flare and colour breakup to crowds of them I added a subtle flaking paint layer into the shader, which could change it's colour based on placement

Studying the reference most vehicles that survive flames end up as burned, ashy husks. But to add a little flare and colour breakup to crowds of them I added a subtle flaking paint layer into the shader, which could change it's colour based on placement

Here's a look at my shader and how the layers stack to complete the look. I used a lot of 'blend against other layers' functions in order to keep all of the layers stacking cheaply in game

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