Belonging - Materials & Effects
This post is a mix of things that I created for Belonging which don't fit anywhere else. First we have one of my favorite effects I got to create for the game, which is the murals. When I started on the project there already was the idea to make them layered, but they were like a free floating object, which didn't quite seem realistic for the near future setting of the game. My Idea was to create something which looks more similar to the kinds of holographic display which you can actually buy today. I really like how they turned out in the end, although of course a lot of the credit here goes to our 2D artist Milo for creating all the images in Illustrator.
The second thing I wanted to show of is a Niagara effect I created for our guidance mode which highlights collectible objects when opened. The visuals here are similar to the recording characters in my previous post. I was also inspired by some of the sonar effects you see in movies, which is fitting given that the game takes place on an island in the North Sea.
Last I just wanted to quickly show of some of the different kinds of glass I created, which isn't complex from a technical perspective, but I had thought about it a lot throughout the project and there might be some helpful tips in there for those interested.
As I've already mentioned a huge thank you to Milo for the Mural graphics and of course everybody else on the team for their input on these effects.
To make the mural effect I took the interior box texture mapping in Unreal, which can be used for Spiderman style building windows, and removed all the parts but the back wall.
I was suprised myself how well the layering actually worked. While it makes sense from a technical perspective I was kind of expecting some artifacts.
Because all the layering happens inside a single material there aren't any of alpha blending issues you might have with separate objects.
Normal glass uses Unreal's Thin Translucent shading model which gives the most expensive and highest quality shading. I really like the way this material interacts with the GPU Lightmapper.
Exterior windows actually use a fully opaque material from the outside.
This was necessary to be able to optimise the level loading so that interiors don't have to be loaded just because a room is visible from afar
From the interior windows actually use an unlit material. The normal reflections were so annoying that I decided to just add subtle reflections through the use of a matcap so that the view to the outside is less restricted.