Throughout my 10+ years of developing games at Amazon Game Studios, there are times where I need to do some R&D so we can push forth with visual direction. Here are some samples I’ve collected to showcase some of that.
Shockwave Study: Had the amazing opportunity to work with Jeremy Baldwin who was able to help us get procedural shaders to further our mesh VFX. This is a study I did of a shockwave with that shader. It’s all mesh and no particles. It does run through the particle editor though to control size and what not but it’s all mesh based. Pretty power stuff.
Rune Magic Study: Years back before New World was New World, the Art Director wanted to play w/ rune magic visuals. This is the test I did. The runic symbols were made by a concept artist and I put them together for real time VFX. Rather than this being straight flat, I built the mesh to be more 3D so they pop more along with layers.
Mood Study: This again was way before New World was a thing. Art Director asked me to create a mood study to capture what evil would feel like in the game. I played with everything and came up with this. I think we decided to shelve it and try something else back then. When Darkness Event was being created, the new Art Director asked me if I could touch back on this piece which I took inspiration from and made what Darkness Event is today. Crazy how it all came back around.
Smoke with Normal Study: This is a looping flipbook smoke texture with normal map. Pretty old test that goes years back but this was the start of creating flipbook textures from Houdini for the game. It was very difficult to get the right type of render along with normal map that worked well for our engine, but in the end it came out pretty cool. Normals will catch the light and cast shadow. The lighting inside the texture helps maintain the look. Was pretty proud once I created this. After this test, many flipbook textures you see in New World were made similarly.
All media are from the game New World and Amazon Game Studios owns all the rights. For more about the game:http://www.newworld.com
