Aliens Fireteam Elite - Pathogen Expansion
I came onto this project just as the graybox stage was completed and jumped directly onto art pass tasks. It was my first introduction to the Alien Fireteam asset kits so it was trial by fire to hit the ground running and familiarize myself with the AFE art and design philosophy but ultimately I'm happy with the results I came up with. These shots all come from the three distinct campaigns which span the length of the Pathogen expansion. By far the greatest challenge was acclimating myself to building entire levels with spline tools to sell that Xenomorph hive look, because despite their very organic nature, there very much is a logic and shape language to how all the tentacles flow. But once I got the hang of it, the challenge of using this kit turned out to be very enjoyable to work with. The creative freedom these organic forms provided made for some very interesting shapes and room layouts which were a lot of fun to make. Just a note the assets listed here were already created and I just took part in world building for Pathogen.
I came onto this project just as the graybox stage was completed and jumped directly onto art pass tasks. It was my first introduction to the Alien Fireteam asset kits so it was trial by fire to hit the ground running and familiarize myself with the AFE art and design philosophy but ultimately I'm happy with the results I came up with. These shots all come from the three distinct campaigns which span the length of the Pathogen expansion. By far the greatest challenge was acclimating myself to building entire levels with spline tools to sell that Xenomorph hive look, because despite their very organic nature, there very much is a logic and shape language to how all the tentacles flow. But once I got the hang of it, the challenge of using this kit turned out to be very enjoyable to work with. The creative freedom these organic forms provided made for some very interesting shapes and room layouts which were a lot of fun to make. Just a note the assets listed here were already created and I just took part in world building for Pathogen.
As part of a Game Jam week between projects, every one was tasked with spending a week R&Ding a new tech or workflow that could potentially be brought over to our next game. I've always been very interested in node based workflows. it simply clicks with the way I think so I've always found it very pleasing to work in that way. Therefore the fact that I had yet to work in Houdini was long overdue. For Game Jam I downloaded a trial version of Houdini and set out to create tech that I thought could be useful in our game. I wanted to create an HDA which I could drop into any Unreal level, then cook, and which would then populate the level dynamically with foliage based on placement. This was my first foray into Houdini so it was daunting at first, but ultimately I was able to create such a tech. Unfortunately, given licensing issues, I was not able to get Houdini-Unreal integration so the tech remained within Houdini. But pictured here is a small hallway ripped directly out of the game with the tech applied. What it is doing here is projecting rays all around the established space, creating an array of points on the floor, with their distribution reflecting the AO created based on the intersection between wall geo and floor geo, and then depending on the value of the point, it would populate those points with an array of foliage assets.
The idea here was that the darker the value of the AO (the areas closest to the walls), the more the larger bulbous assets were populated, out of the way where players are less likely to clip through them. And as you scaled down to white in the AO, smaller and smaller foliage would populate in; beginning first with smaller spherical shapes to act as buffers to the large assets, and then later to the little "finger" shaped foliage which scale down as they become more and more sparse. It was a let down that ultimately I could not see the results in game but it was nonetheless a great learning experience for the possibilities with Houdini.
The idea here was that the darker the value of the AO (the areas closest to the walls), the more the larger bulbous assets were populated, out of the way where players are less likely to clip through them. And as you scaled down to white in the AO, smaller and smaller foliage would populate in; beginning first with smaller spherical shapes to act as buffers to the large assets, and then later to the little "finger" shaped foliage which scale down as they become more and more sparse. It was a let down that ultimately I could not see the results in game but it was nonetheless a great learning experience for the possibilities with Houdini.
