How we made waterfall in “Season : A letter to the longer term”

Hello ! Since I’m allowed to share my work and the way we’ve executed it in Season : A letter to the longer term, I assumed it may be good to share the method of creating our waterfall, from ref to outcome, with some technical ideas, it may be good info for college students ! Let’s begin

SEASON : A LETTER TO THE FUTURE ART DIRECTION

What’s Season : A letter to the longer term?

Season: A letter to the longer term – Launch Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Video games – YouTube

Season is a story sport launched in early 2023 the place you discover the world to document what you possibly can. It’s a peaceable sport, the place you possibly can bike, document sound and {photograph} the surroundings, folks, and life.

On the artwork aspect, Season has a powerful illustrative artwork course, primarily impressed by conventional artwork like portray, with two-tone shading.

VFX sensible, it was primarily environmental, so we needed to emphasize this artwork course with much less transparency and robust colour.

What in regards to the waterfall then ? Properly, our refs had been real-life, portray, but in addition anime films like Ghibli. Combining actual life and the artist’s imaginative and prescient helped us to give you our personal stylization and imaginative and prescient of the waterfall. Let’s check out our refs :

Now that we have now decided our half, how will we do it? Properly, after a couple of fast assessments on totally different strategies, the simpler and extra fascinating was to interrupt these elements into totally different meshes. It permits us a greater management, it’s simpler to work in shader, we need to keep away from transparency as a lot as we will so we are going to make it both opaque or masked. However one vital level : we will take into consideration poly density for WPO, relying on the impact. Spotlight and water physique, for instance, don’t want so as to add WPO on it, since we have now a Foam layer to cover edges. so we will have decrease density on it, and better density on the froth half. That being mentioned, let’s check out this half first :

BREAKING DOWN THE FOAM

First and foremost, I can’t suggest sufficient to observe Simon’s discuss on RiME impact ( ‘Stylized VFX in RiME’ by Simon Trümpler | Unreal Fest Europe 2018 | Unreal Engine – YouTube ). It was a place to begin for our pondering course of.

Our waterfalls are smaller, so the underside foam must be smaller too, and we wished to maintain a much less spiky-shape, one thing rounder, softer. For that, I handpainted a tiled texture with spherical form (method realized in VFX Apprentice, much like the feel you’ll find right here https://www.artstation.com/paintings/Krnwno) and utilized blur. The concept is to have the softest gradient attainable whereas retaining clear form. That is the one for WPO. After which, I’ve made a masks to permit me to “cheat” the 2 tone shapes within the materials. Nothing loopy within the shader, although because of the approach we managed our totally different occasions of day within the sport, the colour is managed by a MaterialParameterCollection. We might optimize it a bit by having the masks in Vertex Shade, however I wished to have the ability to management it.

In niagara, I’m controlling the spawn charge, field location to make it roughly wider relying on our Waterfall dimension, and with Particle Alpha worth subtracting to the opacity masks, I’m including a pleasant dissolve. The overlay of a number of particles provides this delicate impact, with out a lot overdraw as a result of it’s a masked particle!

For the froth layer, the identical method was used. I used some noise and tiled texture to create a masks with this form. First I labored on the outer form, after which added an interior noise so as to add a couple of foam components taking place the water. To assist promote the accelerated motion of the water, you are able to do an influence on the V axis of the UV, with a price decrease than 1. it would deform your UV to stretch a part of it and squeeze the highest. Since our waterfalls are divided into a number of waterfalls, we needed to break the repetition of the fabric. you should utilize the item place to manage a parameter so every occasion might be distinctive. should you divide it by a scalar you possibly can regulate how briskly the worth modifications whereas transferring. The mesh is created relying on the waterfall’s form, with excessive poly density to have a easy WPO, however with a LOD system. We tone down WPO with digicam distance so it doesn’t look bizarre with much less poly, the thought is to not see any transition.

BREAKING DOWN THE WATERBODY

Alongside the froth, the water bodyis clearly one of the crucial vital elements. In spite of everything, it’s referred to as a waterfall !

We needed to make it match our water shader, so a whole lot of the fabric is re-use. What’s fascinating to us right here is how we determined to deliver again our references. In anime films like “Spirited Away” we will see darker water tint and whiter texture taking place (we will additionally discover the identical sample in a whole lot of cartoon refs).

For the darker tint, we simply make a masks multiplied by a noise, and this masks enable us to manage colour variation

For the sample transferring down, we truly use a sharper model of the froth’s WPO texture, with out the blur step. we stretch it with an influence, as we did in foam shader, we merely masks the highest of the waterfall by utilizing the Vertex regular. To keep away from a whole lot of repetition and UV points, the feel is world aligned, so every occasion is offset a bit, and we will have extra management on the dimensions of the sample with out eager about UV.

BREAKING DOWN THE HIGHLIGHTS

For the spotlight, I need to thank Filo Filo: Sketch #9 WIP – #4 by Filo , I used the method I realized from this sketch. As proven earlier, on the waterbody, We did a masks multiplied by a stretched noise, on a masked materials, with brighter colour than the waterfall on a separate mesh with decrease density.

BREAKING DOWN THE SPLASHES PARTICLE

Nothing fancy right here : 2 cell noise with totally different dimension and pace added collectively to offer a extra advanced form multiplied by a RadialGradientExponential to restrict it to a spherical form and erosion managed in Niagara. We use the identical perform on all our water shaders to manage colour relying on the time of day.

MY TAKEAWAY

Time to wrap this up. So, what can we be taught from this ?

• First factor of significance : That is the results of a looooot of forwards and backwards to get what we would like. I really feel prefer it’s vital to keep in mind that we have now to fail, be taught, repeat, see with our lead or idea artist, get different’s viewpoint, on the finish it’s nonetheless a staff work. Crucial factor to bear in mind is to work towards your artwork course, and take a look at your refs lots.

• Re-usability is vital ! Lot of texture has been shared between all these totally different shaders, it’s an effective way to avoid wasting time and perf too. There’s a step earlier than the polish the place you’re in your shader with present textures, it’s time to make check with what you have got in texture. There’s an superior speak about this step in texture from Simon (once more ! ) : Learn how to (Not) Create Textures for VFX – YouTube (That is aGDC discuss but when I bear in mind proper , Simon did one other one with extra rationalization, be happy to share it please !) . But in addition a whole lot of shader elements, that we will collapse to a perform, have been re-used. and that is a lot of a time saver. Time is our most valuable useful resource, so should you see you’re utilizing the identical group of node inside your shader, do a perform, expose it to library, remark it (at all times remark your work) and voila, you possibly can reuse it quicker and with only one node.

• Optimize when it’s time to optimize. Don’t go loopy in your shader pondering “I’ll do it later” after all, however don’t limit creativity with optimization at first. You’ll discover your approach. It’s simpler to chop/cut back scope than so as to add one thing with a brief deadline. Make it look good.

• The RTVFX group is a gem. Even should you don’t discuss that a lot, be sure you lurk. Everybody’s keen to share their information, I used to be in a position to obtain that as a result of I realized from others.

It was lengthy, let me know any suggestions, thought on this breakdown, when you have any query I’ll attempt to reply it
Good time to thank my lead Stephen Tucker, and everybody right here who shares info, I like to recommend you to observe Simon’s discuss lots.

If you wish to see others Season’s VFX you’ll find them right here : https://www.artstation.com/kalomnia and there’s additionally smaller breakdown for two different impact !