Mobius Digital
  • Games
    • Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye
    • Outer Wilds
    • Beacon 38
    • Terra Chroma
  • News
  • Team
  • Press
  • Support
  • Contact

Taking On Timber Hearth

4/27/2018

 
Hello everyone!

We’re back with more updates on our art. This time we’re delving into the Hearthian homeworld: Timber Hearth.

Timber Hearth has always been the proving grounds for our art style because it contains a wide variety of natural environments, as well as the Hearthian civilization. Between the different craters on its surface, it has a wide variety of challenges to solve: specific pathways, cliffs, jumps, ramps, overhangs, and lots of important sightlines.
Picture
The Hearthian home planet, Timber Hearth and its Attlerock Moon

When we initially started work on the game at Mobius, we had a very small art team and a very limited time frame to make the game. Because we were working with so few resources, our main objective was making the environment consistent and designing it in such a way as to point players to important objectives. By the time we had decided to reboot our art style, we already had a number of ideas for how to improve our pipeline.
Picture
The post alpha Timber Hearth Village vs. a paint over of the same scene that shows our goal to improve the lighting, fog, and thematic design of the environment.
Picture
The same part of the village at night time in the final pass.

First, we needed better tools, lighting, fog, and material shaders. Our technical artist created a number of useful tools for placing objects and aligning them to spherical environments. We switched over to Unity 5’s physically based rendering pipeline so that we could take advantage of the greater diversity in material types and lighting options, with the addition of our own custom variants of the new shaders. We also created 3D fog lookups so that we could have our fog density and color vary based on the radius of a sphere as well as the position of the sun, giving the atmosphere of each planet a natural progression based on time of day.

Picture
Some early shots of day vs. night lighting on the new rocks.

Second, we needed a more modular art style that worked with the main visual strength of Outer Wilds - the fact that our lighting is dynamically caused by the sun. Initially our modular assets created problems for level design because the rounded shapes created too much visual noise and distracted from the points of interest. We tried a number of different shapes and styles, but the winner was a hard-edged style that, when combined with our new alignment tools, allowed us to carefully build clear paths and cliffs as needed by design.
Picture
A high poly style test vs. the first version of our final style, and final in game art of one of the Timber Hearth craters.

Not only did the hard-edge rocks help with level design, but they reminded us of national park posters, which encouraged our final aesthetic style. We leaned into the hard edges with a simplified low-poly aesthetic for rocks that feels naturalistic but falls into the background, so as not to create false paths. By using geometry for small scale detail and textures for large-scale gradients, we were able to create an environment that reacts well to dynamic lighting while still feeling massive from a distance.

Picture
Left, old rock test in greybox crater, right final art.

Finally, and most importantly, we needed our new style to work with level design. One of the main objectives in Outer Wilds is navigating complex 3D spaces, which can be very challenging. Our new hard-edged rocks were the top contender on this front for a variety of reasons. The clear edges create a clear delineation between walkable floors and walls, which helps players to jetpack around the surface. They respond well to lighting, which we can use to highlight pathways and interactable objects. Finally, because the rocks are simplified and low-poly, we can emphasize architecture and technology with higher detail models to create points of interest.
Picture
After all of our iterations this is what Timber Hearth Village looks like today!

Until Next Time
That’s it for this update. Join us in another two weeks where we’ll be talking about The Hourglass Twins.

Cheers,

Mobius

Facebook
Twitter

fireboyandwatergirl4.online link
5/7/2018 01:55:20 am

Thanks for sharing this amazing information


Comments are closed.

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015

    From the

    strip

    Updates on our games, our process, and the joys of being Mobius Digital.

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Outer Wilds
    Step By Step

    RSS Feed

Follow us on
Fan Content Policy
  • Games
    • Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye
    • Outer Wilds
    • Beacon 38
    • Terra Chroma
  • News
  • Team
  • Press
  • Support
  • Contact