Hello ! Since I’m allowed to share my work and the way we’ve finished it in Season : A letter to the longer term, I believed it may be good to share the method of constructing our waterfall, from ref to consequence, 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 recreation launched in early 2023 the place you discover the world to file what you may. It’s a peaceable recreation, the place you may bike, file sound and {photograph} the surroundings, folks, and life.
On the artwork facet, Season has a powerful illustrative artwork course, primarily impressed by conventional artwork like portray, with two-tone shading.
VFX smart, it was primarily environmental, so we needed to emphasize this artwork course with much less transparency and robust shade.
What concerning the waterfall then ? Nicely, 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’ve got decided our half, how can we do it? Nicely, after a number of fast assessments on totally different strategies, the simpler and extra attention-grabbing was to interrupt these components 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 are able to so we are going to make it both opaque or masked. However one vital level : we are able to 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’ve got a Foam layer to cover edges. so we are able to 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 speak 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 needs to 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 (approach realized in VFX Apprentice, just like the feel you could find right here https://www.artstation.com/art work/Krnwno) and utilized blur. The thought is to have the softest gradient potential whereas protecting 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 as a result of manner we managed our totally different instances of day within the recreation, the colour is managed by a MaterialParameterCollection. We may optimize it a bit by having the masks in Vertex Coloration, however I wished to have the ability to management it.
In niagara, I’m controlling the spawn charge, field location to make it kind of wider relying on our Waterfall measurement, and with Particle Alpha worth subtracting to the opacity masks, I’m including a pleasant dissolve. The overlay of a number of particles offers this tender impact, with out a lot overdraw as a result of it’s a masked particle!
For the froth layer, the identical approach 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 inside noise so as to add a number of foam parts happening 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 worth decrease than 1. it’ll 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 article place to manage a parameter so every occasion can be distinctive. for those who divide it by a scalar you may alter how briskly the worth adjustments whereas transferring. The mesh is created relying on the waterfall’s form, with excessive poly density to have a clean WPO, however with a LOD system. We tone down WPO with digital camera 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 components. In spite of everything, it’s known as a waterfall !
We needed to make it match our water shader, so a variety of the fabric is re-use. What’s attention-grabbing to us right here is how we determined to convey again our references. In anime films like “Spirited Away” we are able to see darker water tint and whiter texture happening (we are able to additionally discover the identical sample in a variety of cartoon refs).
For the darker tint, we simply make a masks multiplied by a noise, and this masks enable us to manage shade variation
For the sample transferring down, we really 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 through the use of the Vertex regular. To keep away from a variety of repetition and UV points, the feel is world aligned, so every occasion is offset a bit, and we are able to have extra management on the dimensions of the sample with out serious about UV.
EDIT : As simon informed me, i left a ineffective node within the ZAxisMask logic : VertexNormalWS is already normalized, you don’t need to put a normalize node after. Sorry for this inconvenience
BREAKING DOWN THE HIGHLIGHTS
For the spotlight, I need to thank Filo Filo: Sketch #9 WIP – #4 by Filo , I used the approach 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 shade 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 measurement and pace added collectively to provide a extra advanced form multiplied by a RadialGradientExponential to restrict it to a spherical form and erosion managed in Niagara. We use the identical operate on all our water shaders to manage shade relying on the time of day.
MY TAKEAWAY
Time to wrap this up. So, what can we study from this ?
- First factor of significance : That is the results of a looooot of backwards and forwards to get what we would like. I really feel prefer it’s vital to do not forget that we’ve got to fail, study, repeat, see with our lead or idea artist, get different’s perspective, on the finish it’s nonetheless a group work. A very powerful factor to bear in mind is to work towards your artwork course, and take a look at your refs quite a bit.
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Re-usability is essential ! 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 current textures, it’s time to make take a look at with what you could have in texture. There’s an superior speak about this step in texture from Simon (once more ! ) : (Not) Create Textures for VFX – YouTube (That is aGDC speak but when I keep in mind proper , Simon did one other one with extra clarification, be at liberty to share it please !) . But additionally a variety of shader components, that we are able to collapse to a operate, have been re-used. and that is a lot of a time saver. Time is our most treasured useful resource, so for those who see you’re utilizing the identical group of node inside your shader, do a operate, expose it to library, remark it (at all times remark your work) and voila, you may reuse it sooner and with only one node.
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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 manner. It’s simpler to chop/scale back scope than so as to add one thing with a brief deadline. Make it look good.
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The RTVFX neighborhood is a gem. Even for those who don’t speak that a lot, you’ll want to lurk. Everybody’s keen to share their information, I used to be capable of 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 speak quite a bit.
If you wish to see others Season’s VFX you could find them right here : https://www.artstation.com/kalomnia and there’s additionally smaller breakdown for two different impact !
