More Ins Art

New header image I made for Insurgency for our next update. Had some fun doing this one, and I'm starting to speed up my process.

Material definition is hard.

Due Process - Interior Concept Art

Starting to work out what Due Process is gonna look like. This is only one environment set, we're eventually planning on more that take places in areas like apartment complexes, inside ships, etc etc.

Due Process Gameplay

Here's some gameplay from the shooter I'm working on with my friends, and an example of the pixelated particle effects I've been working on. Obviously the art is very VERY placeholder, I'm working on concept art for how the game's going to look.

Ok this is just amazing...

Retro FX

I'm starting up a new project with a couple friends. A tactical multiplayer room breaching game. We're planning on going with a pseudo-retro style, where high detail models have retro pixelated textures. This presents a really interesting and fun challenge for me; How do I make detailed particle effects with a retro pixelated stylization to them?

I've always been a huge fan of arcade game fx. I often reference them as much as I reference modern games, there's a lot you can learn from them. Games like Metal Slug or Raiden had some dazzlingly detailed visuals.

I've only just started establishing the style I want to work in, but I'm already having a lot of fun coming up with interesting ways of making pixelated effects. These are some textures that could potentially be used for a futuristic muzzle flash.

I can't wait until we get further in development. VFX will be a large part of the game so I've got a lot of fun work ahead of me.

VFX Tips - Making Smoke Textures

I was playing Space Marine the other day, and I was interested in the way they handle their smoke textures. The textures aren't animated as far as I can tell, and manage to get a lot of mileage without needing too high of a particle count.

I decided to try painting a smoke texture similar to the ones they used.

First I painted a brush to use to make the body of the smoke.

I made it out of a gradient circle brush and the smudge tool. I set it to use a bit of scatter, random angle and size, and a dual brush with a gradient circle to help unify the edges while painting.

I painted the general shape of the smoke with the brush.

I always like the paint on a midtone color because it gives you a better idea of what it could look like ingame. I then dropped the cloud I painted down to a dark tone.

They layed on highlights using a soft brush.

I then added a bit of darker value to help separate the cloud shapes more.

Then added a brighter highlight to better define the edges.

I slightly overlayed some photos of real smoke to add a bit more internal noise, and made the whole thing a slight tone of yellow (giving a texture some internal color differences can help your effects not look so uniform when colorized)

Now perhaps the most important thing to consider when making a smoke texture is the alpha map. You want to break up your alpha map as much as you can. Give it a lot of gaps and turbulence in the texture. You want to do this because when you have a particle fade out in a particle system, less of the detail is defined by the diffuse texture and is instead defined by the alpha texture, so if your alpha is a big opaque blob, that's what it's going to look like at a low alpha.

Good alpha map...

...Gives good results!

Bad alpha map...

... Gives bad results :(

Insurgency Promo Artwork

I'm still trying to hone my skills as an artist. I love looking at concept art from games or movies, it always motivates me to improve. But I was thrown from the frying pan and into the fire during my work for Insurgency. I signed on to do VFX work, as well as concept art for their next project. Keyword being concept art. Not marketing art. However, when the time came to release I was asked to create the image that would go up on the Steam front page. A daunting task to say the least.

Nevertheless, I accepted. It was a great opportunity to see what I've learned so far and how far I can push my limits. The results were better than I could have hoped.

The piece got a lot of praise from the team and looked great on Steam. My anxiety turned into excitement after seeing what I was capable of. So when they asked me to do art for their latest content update I approached the job with a newfound vigor. Hoping to see if I could do even better than the last piece.

Doing these two pieces was a great learning opportunity, and have made me feel even more exited about what I can learn to do in the future.