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Victor D. Goossens
Unreal Engine - Technical Art & Project Management

    The World of The Podlands - Environments, Lighting and Foliage

    Work I did for an open-world adventure game, The Podlands. Hard-surface assets (ruins, basemeshes for rocks) are Nathan Viller's (https://www.artstation.com/nathannv).
    I was responsible for material-work, postprocessing, lighting and optimization. I also handled most set-dressing, as well as creating all foliage in the scene in Speedtree. I also handled small amounts of texture-work through Substance Designer.
    Performance targets (which we reached) were aimed towards 16ms on a GTX 1060, with lows being at worst 20ms, as measured on a laptop running a GTX1060 and an i7-7700hq according to UE4's profiling tools.

    Welcome to The Podlands. One of the biggest design goals for The Podlands was to make exploration exciting and invigorating - The world needed to be warm, mysterious and inviting.

    Welcome to The Podlands. One of the biggest design goals for The Podlands was to make exploration exciting and invigorating - The world needed to be warm, mysterious and inviting.

    Colors throughout the project were taken into a warmer spectrum to encourage the player to settle in and casually enjoy the world they were in.

    Colors throughout the project were taken into a warmer spectrum to encourage the player to settle in and casually enjoy the world they were in.

    Nighttime is intentionally incredibly dark - tamed animals can help with this by providing light. To avoid pitch-black nights, we decided to brighten distant fog in order to maintain some visibility and contrast.

    Nighttime is intentionally incredibly dark - tamed animals can help with this by providing light. To avoid pitch-black nights, we decided to brighten distant fog in order to maintain some visibility and contrast.

    Small foliage such as ferns and grass were designed to be reactive to the player. All relevant logic was handled through materials to avoid incurring the usual CPU cost associated with proper physics.

    Small foliage such as ferns and grass were designed to be reactive to the player. All relevant logic was handled through materials to avoid incurring the usual CPU cost associated with proper physics.

    One of the biggest challenges in creating The Podlands was in its lighting setup. While the game is stylistically unrealistic, our artstyle leans heavily on high-fidelity lighting - without it, it falls apart.

    One of the biggest challenges in creating The Podlands was in its lighting setup. While the game is stylistically unrealistic, our artstyle leans heavily on high-fidelity lighting - without it, it falls apart.

    We needed to create incredibly high-contrast and rich scenes, completely dynamically lit. Distance Fields were this project's biggest friend. They allow for incredibly effective and optimized large-scale AO, provided care is taken in setting it up.

    We needed to create incredibly high-contrast and rich scenes, completely dynamically lit. Distance Fields were this project's biggest friend. They allow for incredibly effective and optimized large-scale AO, provided care is taken in setting it up.

    Rock and grass colors in The Podlands are controlled by virtual textures, allowing us to paint grass and rock colors across the map - allowing for smooth transitions and small-scale localized colors.

    Rock and grass colors in The Podlands are controlled by virtual textures, allowing us to paint grass and rock colors across the map - allowing for smooth transitions and small-scale localized colors.

    The rock material is built to emulate strata-lines and erosion using displacement and tesselation. This is world-aligned to allow our rocks to merge seamlessly. The following section shows a sample of the foliage assets created to populate the world.

    The rock material is built to emulate strata-lines and erosion using displacement and tesselation. This is world-aligned to allow our rocks to merge seamlessly.
    The following section shows a sample of the foliage assets created to populate the world.

    Small foliage was mostly kept under 1000 tris (with ferns being under 300). Our tri-counts would have swelled up dramatically if we would have tried to accurately shape our meshes to our alphas, but as we worked with an early z-pass this was unnecessary.

    Small foliage was mostly kept under 1000 tris (with ferns being under 300). Our tri-counts would have swelled up dramatically if we would have tried to accurately shape our meshes to our alphas, but as we worked with an early z-pass this was unnecessary.

    Larger trees such as these were kept in the 3k-10k triangle range, and agressively LOD'd. The large birch is an exception at 20k, but functioned as more of a hero-asset within the world.

    Larger trees such as these were kept in the 3k-10k triangle range, and agressively LOD'd. The large birch is an exception at 20k, but functioned as more of a hero-asset within the world.

    The standard trees and bushes for Temperate were kept under 10k tris. The small bushes are around the 1.5k each, the slightly taller ones are more sillhouette-heavy and are 4k-5k, with the tallest one being 7.5k. Again, all heavily LOD'd.

    The standard trees and bushes for Temperate were kept under 10k tris. The small bushes are around the 1.5k each, the slightly taller ones are more sillhouette-heavy and are 4k-5k, with the tallest one being 7.5k. Again, all heavily LOD'd.

    For scale on these large trees, see the next image. These trees are VERY heavily LOD'd, with LOD0 being a solid 25k tris, with that number being cut in half by each of its three LODs.

    For scale on these large trees, see the next image. These trees are VERY heavily LOD'd, with LOD0 being a solid 25k tris, with that number being cut in half by each of its three LODs.

    A small demo-cluster assembled from various temperate-biome assets.

    A small demo-cluster assembled from various temperate-biome assets.

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