Creating the Look of Uncharted 2

SHOW YOU WHAT WENT INTO CREATING THE LOOK FOR UNCHARTED 2

ERICK AND I SPLIT OUR TASKS BASED ON STRENGTHS

ERICK HANDLING IMPLEMENTATION AND MYSELF WORKING ON THE CONCEPT AND
MARKETING SIDE

WHY DO I SPELL MY NAME LIKE THAT?

MIES VAN DER ROHE WAS A FAMOUS GERMAN ARCHITECT OF THE BAUHAUS

MY BACKGROUND IS IN FILM. I

I WAS ART DIRECTOR ON MTR AND BROTHER BEAR

AN ART DIRECTORS JOB IS TO ORCHESTRATE. Everyone HERE plays their instrument

PIECE OF MUSIC.

VISUALS REINFORE STORY, MOOD, EMOTION

TO DEPICT THE HORRORS
OF WAR.

Everything here absolutely inappropriate to conveying that message.

Works for irony

Surprising how many people do no consider the overall goal when coming up with
shapes and colors

LETS GO OVER BRIEFLY SOME OF THE HIGH LEVEL CONCEPTS WE HAVE TO WORK
WITH

STYLE GUIDES ILLUSTRATE WHAT WE ARE AIMING FOR

TINDI STORY

COULD SPEND 90 MINUTES ON THIS ALONE

SHAPES AFFECT HOW PEOPLE FEEL

CRITISIM ON FIRST GAME, A PIRATE IN A TSHIRT TOOK TOO MANY BULLETS TO KILL

WE NEEDED A BETTER VISUAL SYSTEM.

Shambhala needed to be
awe inspiring
come from details alone.
MONOLITHIC
HUGH FERRIS

AND NEEDED SOMETHING UNIQUE
INDIAN
COMBINED SIMPLE BASE FORMS TO MAKE UNIQUE SHAPE WE COULD THEN ADD
THE DETAIL TO.

SIMPLE GRID SYSTEM FOR DESIGNING MULTIPLE REPEATING SHAPES FOR REST OF
CITY.

COLOR NEEDS TO BE DESIGNED LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE

ALL BROWN AND GREY
NO PROGRESSION

DRAKE NEARLY DEAD
COLOR APPROPRIATE FOR SITUATION

COLOR AND LIGHTING VERY EMOTIONAL TOOLS
IN THIS VIEW WE HAVE A MID DAY SUN, BRIGHT, CHEERY AND PEDESTRAIN.

SAME MODEL AND TEXTURES, THE ONLY THING THAT CHANGED IS THE LIGHTING
BUT IT COMPLETELY ALTERED THE MOOD. MUCH MORE SOMBER NOW. AGAIN, NO
MODEL OR TEXTURE CHANGE.

LETS LOOK AT SOME CONCEPTS

DRIPPING SAP FROM CENTER OF ROOT CLUSTER

TRY NOT TO DO TO MUCH OF THIS

FOUND A GREAT BOOK ON CHINESE STEAM LOCOMOTIVES THAT SHOWED OLDER
TECHNOLOGY.
VERY USEFUL IN COMING UP WITH EVERYTHING IN THESE BUILDINGS

WE GO THROUGH MANY DIFFERENT DESIGNS FOR EACH LOCATION

TRYING OUT DIFFERENT STYLES

EARLY SAP POOL, MORE CAVE LIKE AND OPEN

AT ONE POINT THE TREE OF LIFE WAS GOING TO MORE OF AN ENTITY, PULLING ALL
THE STRUCTURES DOWN INTO THE GROUND WITH IT

START WITH SIMPLE GEOMETERIC SHAPES
FEWEST VALUES
THAT WAY I CAN SEE IF THE PAINTING HAS POTENTIAL BEFORE WORKING ON IT FOR
HOURS

ONCE THAT WORKS I CAN ERASE AND ADD, DESIGN THE SHAPES IN DETAILED
SILHOUTTES

START LAYERING IN THE ATMOSPHERE

AND THE FINAL MODELING AND TEXTURES

THIS ONE I STARTED WITH A SIMPLE MODEL IN SKETCHUP

ALWAYS START WITH GOOD VALUE PLAN, EVEN IF IT TAKES JUST 5 MINUTES

WASH IN MY BASE COLORS

FLAT SHAPES AND COLORS. KEEP IT POSTERY IN THE BEGINGING. IF I CAN GET IT TO

START ADDING TEXTURE BUT ONLY AFTER MY COLORS AND VALUES ARE RIGHT

WALL FLAT SO ADDED ADDITIONAL PILLARS AND CHANGED COLOR FOR SCALE

DESIGNERS BLOCK MESH. OLD SCHOOL . DRAWN WITH LINE TOOL IN PHOTOSHOP

FLAT TONES, GROUND PLANE IS SEVERAL PHOTOS OVER PAINTED GROUND

WASHING IN THE ATMOSPHERE

HITTING THE TOP PLANES WITH LIGHT

90% HAND PAINTED. PERSPECIVE LINES TO HELP WITH TRAIN

MORE PAINTED DETAILS. A FEW PHOTOS ON THE FENCE TO RIGHT AND WOOD
CRATES

ADDING SOME PHOTOGRAPHIC DETAIL LIKE JUNK PILES AND TRAIN SIGNALS

NOW LETS LOOK AT THE DETAIL THAT GOES INTO A DESIGN

ACCURATE ROOF CONSTRUCTION BASED ON RESEARCH

DRAWINGS FOR BROKEN WOOD AREAS

DRAWINGS OVER BLOCKMESH FOR EVERYTHING DOWN TO PLACEMENT OF
LANTERNS AND FLAGS

DRAWING FOR MORE DETAILED BRIDGE SUPPORT

NOISY TEXTURES NEEDED TO BE UNIFIED

AND PAINT OVERS TO MAKE SURFACE MORE READABLE

LETS LOOK AT THE SWAMP LEVEL

THE LOOK OF THIS LEVEL

MOST LIKELY THINK IT ALAWAYS LOOKED LIKE THIS, RIGHT?

NOPE, STARTED ALL ROOTY AND A LITTLE ALIEN

EVEN WENT AS FAR AS MODELING AND TEXTURING . BUT GAME DESIGNER SAID IT
LOOKED TO OTHER WORLDLY

WHICH WAS TRUE, WHILE CREEPY WAS NOT UNCHARTED. TOO ALIEN!

SO WE TALKED AND CAME UPON FRAZETTA AS NEW DIRECTION. THICK MOSS, ROPEY
VINES

MORE, DRAINING SWAMP SO BOARDS TO WALK ON, WHICH GAVES US PATHS AND
VISUAL CONTRAST TO JUNGLE

FINAL ART. SET MOOD AND FEEL WE AFTER

DRAWN OVER DESIGNERS BLOCKMESH.

SOME OF THE INSPIRATION
FREDRIC CHURCH

JAPANESE RAIN FORREST. VERY DIFFERENT THAN JUNGLE UNCHARTED 1

, My name is Erick Pangilinan,
Im
Ive

And most of those years were spent as a enviroment artist on

the crash bandicoot and the jak and Daxter series.

Since Robh already talked about concept art section,
Im gonna
translating that into game art.

And everyone knows about reference

scan it and build the blockmesh

the gameplay blockmesh to the artists.

Then, we walk through the entire level, and brainstorm ideas to on how to make it

we do a first pass to check our scale and composition. Similar to how Robh draws his
broadstrokes

for problems along the way.

When we get a blockmesh

And come up with different ways to make the layout more interesting.

The concept art will take us to
gotta play good and be on
framerate
be done in-‐game.

And this is where translating the blockmesh

First, we try to understand the gameplay
basically a wall, but it could be anything that prevents the player from crossing the

Here, we try to follow the concept art by putting a bunch of buildings to block the
wanna

Another idea is to create a cliff as the barrier.
up the environment.

Now This gives us a good silhouette, and the parallax with the mountains behind it.

we try to see if our shapes will work with the design, and see if we can use the same
kind of trees

help cut down the draw distances.

And we just layer more details on top of the base shape. This became the
construction strategy for the rest of the level.

ide from the tech and gameplay

of these principles we considered in this scene.

First, We try to get the proportions right by counterweighing the big shapes with the

then we plan WHERE to put the details to make the silhouette more interesting.

We also played with the angles to make it more aggressive, and make the level look
more dynamic.

So, using these principles to compose the shot, really helped put together this level.

So, we added a pool!.....doing things like this is important, especially in multiplayer

One way to start, is to separate the ground plane from the wall plane.

We can also do this by placing objects between the ground plane from the wall to
separate them

Putting shapes in the middle of the path will help create a stepping stone effect to
lead the players eye.

In this example, the water acts as

Arches are another good tool to lead the player through the space. They are natural

And great to use to frame a scene.

Also Articulating the path will make the traversal more interesting

Its also cool to see a landmark from different distances

And the closer you get, you get to see more details about it....
And when you get there, it gives you a sense of accomplishment.

A lot of these pointers seem very obvious, but during a busy schedule, its really easy

Always remember, The art you are creating needs to help the purpose of the design.

Here at Naughty dog, the job of the modeler, texture artist and lighting artists are 3

focus being good at that specific job.
Modeller

Basically, The modeler builds the geometry for the level , The modeller is also

refnodes
we can also fade our instances.

Then just continue fading other parts

Until just the basic shape remains.

This really helps out our framerate

But What -‐arrange the parts of
your instance? Like this? And save the data individually, but keep this file as a

it! We call this modifiers!

brick instances that we can use to follow

terrain.

And they also work on skinned prototypes! Like tree roots or vines!

So you can modify your roots to crawl on any surface you want!.....and all of these
variations came from the original prototype!

By building with refnodes, and applying modifiers to them., we can generate
unlimited variety in our environments.

So, in our environments, After the modeller

The texture artists Uvs and textures the geometry from the modeller. They also
manage the texture memory and shader cycles.

When we switched to the ps3, we realize how important it was to generate a good

to develop the best way to make normal maps.

And for us, the best way was using zBrush
are sculpted in zbrush

You can extract the maps from zbrush Xnormal

in some cases, we like the Ambient Occlusion and Normal maps generated by
Xnormal zbrush is totally fine.

zbrush and we explored other ways to
im going to show you 3 ways we tried to generate
normals

First , We tried Nvidia plugin

In this example, I want to show you the comparison of what we got using the 3

For Crazy bump and the Nvidia
maps.

For Zbrush, we will build the wall, rock by rock.

For Crazy bump, its actually not that bad, it turned out a little softer and not really

The Nvidia kinda look noisy with a bunch of
artifacts.

Now zbrush a good range of depth and protrusion.

Now, combining the color map,
Nvidia
And zbrush gives you a pixel perfect combination of the normal map with the color
map.

Although, crazybump might be ok, you still need a good color map to get good
results. The advantage of the zbrush method is, you already have all geometry in 3d
so its much easier to do changes or variations.

very high pixel density and save on
shaders

shaders fading into eachother

the blend threshold acts like a mask. This determines how much gets blended into
each other.

you 1 shader the threshold
mask will determine how much of the sand seeps between the rocks

This gives us a very natural way to add transitions with each material respecting the
physical properties of the other.

Remember this modified instance? The ones you can use them all over the place?

stayed on top all the time , huh?

So, they came up with the slope shader can apply a blend shader
and orient it to any angle based on vertex and pixel normal.

So, the snow can be blended to any amount and any angle no matter how you rotate
each piece.

And with the modifiers, This gives us unlimited variety using a single prototype.

In application, you can use this slope shader not only on small rocks, but also on the
ground, structures, and entire mountains.

With tiling textures combined with the blend shaders and slope shaders, We have the
luxury of high resolution pixel density, and unlimited variety on our surfaces and
objects.

So basically, We do all our lighting set up in maya ligthing calculation for
our Global Illumination is done by a software package called NOVA.

Nova
called Rainbow.
So, in this layer, we have the Direct Sunlight
because we replace this with a run-‐time direct sunlight, so we can cast run time
shadows.

this saves a lot of time.

This is our bounce lighting

we will use in-‐game.

So, in-‐game, We can see the baked lighitng -‐time lighting
elements affect it.

One trick we do is we try to limit the runtime shadows by dropping them when they
.

We also use light maps, we try to limit them to interior spaces to get more details on
our shadows.

this talk is about art direction, the ND team is a very collaborative and driven team
that needed very little direction.

To our designers, with their awesome blockmesh

To the modelers, who detail the environments

And the texture artists, who develop shaders.

And lighting, to complete the atmosphere of the level.

I hope everyone enjoyed our presentation
and take away some useful ideas for their games.

Creating the Look of Uncharted 2

Creating the Look of Uncharted 2

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Creating the Look of Uncharted 2