The Last Scribe - La Mancha

I had the opportunity the work on an upcoming game called The Last Scribe. My role was to develop and tackle the whole environment pipeline for the procedurally generated levels in the game. This presented three major challenges:
1) Artistically I had to create visually stunning environment which is aligned with the art direction
2) Due to the constrains I needed to create optimised tools and shaders to reach target framerate
3) Above all of this the world also had to be alive and dynamic

Even though that these are quiet challenging I had a lot of fun to create beautiful art but also tackle the Tech art side of it. Designing the different systems, researching and developing solutions required a lot of effort but the reward was how everything came to life and started to work together.

One example of this the procedural wind system for real-time vegetation. This system is part of a shader which has core roles like to make vegetation look good with the art style and to make the environment feel alive.
The main components of this wind system are:
-WPO-based vertex deformation in foliage materials
-UV distortion for additional foliage movement (also if there are cases where WPO is too expensive it still adds movement and the foliage will not be still or static)
-Texture-driven wind gust mask
-Parameterized wind controls (intensity, scale, depth)
-Vertical attenuation (bottom-of-grass stability)
-Optional layered motion (primary wind + gust variation)
-Breaking up wind frequency so the wind does not blow with the same intensity all the time

To populate a procedurally generated level with vegetation a material driven PCG system was developed which gave a lot of flexibility and the option for quick iteration.

Everything in the environment the assets, vegetation, building has been modeled and assembled in Unreal Engine by me.

If you are interested in the game and want to support it you can wishlist it on Steam.