The Last of Us: Part I...Hometown chase b
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.
---
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.
---
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).
---
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.
---
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.
---
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!
---
Please enjoy this small gallery and stay tuned for more very soon!
---
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
Continuing the ride into town, the player experiences this dramatic crash moment. We model swap here from our intact vehicle, to the crushed version and some challenging glass shader work was required to help the subsequent gameplay sequence
As well as some modeling and shader work alongside Alex Rivera on the damaged vehicles here, I was responsible for the look of the windscreen. It was extremely challenging to get right, it needed to look good from both the interior shot and the exterior..
I used multiple normal maps, and varying layers of refraction and parallax occlusion that would be enabled in time with the different kick animations. I worked alongside Alex Rivera and Charlotte Francis of the technical team to achieve the final look
A quick view of our in-house shader preview, this more clearly shows some of the layering of details in effect. Some of the finer crack and shatter layers aren't visible here as they are enabled during the kick sequence...
For the vehicle look 'before the outbreak' Barry Evans, our incredible technical shader artist and I were really excited at the chance to try and replicate a more realistic car paint that would be used just for the opening sequence of the game
Barry created an amazing shader full of features that replicated the varying layers of primer, paint, metallic and clear coat. I adjusted these and then added additional layers to the shader to add subtle scratches, ao driven dirt and other wear effects
Here you can see the subtle paint flakes (one of Barry's customisable shader properties) as well as the subtle scratches, smears and defects I built in to the shader to help sell the final look
Here i'm quickly cycling through some controls in Barry's shader, varying roughness & metallic of both primer and paint layers as well as showing my favourite 'flip-flop' feature (two toned color). Sadly we wouldn't use it for the sequence
The garage area doesn't really get seen before it explodes during the chaos of the opening sequence in the final game. But Scott Greenway's lighting pass pre-explosion, provided a nice little test area for me to work on these shaders
For The Last of Us: Part II, I made a library of 'burned shell' vehicles. These were put to use again throughout Tlou: PII, including here in the opening sequence for many of the burning wreckages we see along the player path
I love the way the runtime lights illuminate the fog in this section as you race through this area
Khanh Nguyen added nice muddy, blend shaders to integrate the ambulance I had worked on previously. I then worked with MJ Whiting, lead vfx artist to get our new animating lens flare + runtime light system active on these flashing emergency lights
Here's a short look at the various ways in which vehicles were placed in the scene and could add to the environment story telling and chaotic nature of the sequence. Alex Rivera and the animation team did a great job in bringing them to life too
A small detail, but we went to extra effort to have 'crashed' versions of many of the vehicle set that Khanh Nguyen and Jonny Chen (level artists) could strategically place to add to the environment story telling
I'll admit it took me a while to capture this shot of Tommy and his revolver just as I wanted it...
Hailey Del Rio provided me with the detailed graphic designs for the police badges etc and I created these custom police cruisers to 'wear' them...only for our vfx artists to take pleasure in burning them to the ground! :P