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seabedtest-bandeau2.png

Role : Environment Artist and Tech Artist

Team Size: 6

Production duration : 5 Months

Technology : Unity (xbox controller only)

Introduction

Sea-Bed is a horror game project for the final project of my second year at ESMA. As a team of six, we've been asked to produce a 15 minute long horror game / puzzle-adventure. During the production I was in charge of the Narrative design and Lead art, then, when we started the production, I was the environment artist while writing the narrative.

Teams Members :

  • Raphaël Boibien - 2D / 3D Artist

  • Dany Begue - Narative Designer / Environment Artist

  • Chloé LUPIAC - 2D / 3D Artist

  • Alexandre Martin - 3D Animator

  • Ragon Hugo - 3D Artist

  • Rayan Rifai - Programmer

We Play as Morgan delmar, engineer in the abyss, on our way back from some maintenance, your base explodes, sending you in the deepest part of the ocean.

Try to find your way through this underwater world to reach the closest platform and save your life. 

Follow the pipeline, avoiding traps and animals In these abyssal depths, you’ll only rely on the tags to refill your oxygen. Caution  You might not be alone down there …

Sea-Bed     Environment 

The-Garden.png

Goal :

The idea of the Garden was to make an introduction zone where the player could learn to evade the creature in the sea weed and search object in the grass.

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My initial direction for the piece leaned more toward a simple zone fill with rock's and kelp, but eventually, i settle in using a giant skeletal figure to enclose the zone itself and make sure the player do not wander away.

 

A secondary Goal of this environment was to try to practice Zbrush and accomplish the environment with as few assets as i could.

Software :

  • 3Ds Max

  • Zbrush

  • Substance Painter / Substance Designer

  • Unity

References and Inspiration :

Overall, this zone came from an idea in my head about “how to make the game feel more extraterrestrial when it's only underwater ?”. 

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I had sculpted the creature used as the enemies of the game some time back, so my first inspiration were that abyssal creature that i sculpt and how i could make it look more prehistoric.

I then looked at some prehistoric skeleton of underwater animals and how they arrange themselves to work.

The overall piece was inspired by a myriad of concept art of colossal Leviathan / Kaiju skeleton and underwater environment.

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The idea behind it was to make the player ask, “is this the next one coming after me ?” and as a lover of Lovecraftian work and Kaiju, of course you know I had to do a giant monster skeleton.

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Truthfully, my reference organization is a bit scattered, i was mostly looking for inspiration in deep underwater ecological zone and mood.

Blockout, Modelling & Sculpting :

We used a pretty simple block out methods, using colored simple geometry, we proved to make the first test of the area. Then, when the need to expend it to make it easier to navigate in, paper and pen was the best friend to theorized everything before starting the process of putting everything together.

The placing itself of the creature looping was done in 3ds max, to make the group of vertebra easier to manipulate and with less polygone.

Skull and bones

The Most important focus was sculpting the skeleton and make it have an interesting shape and good level of detail.

Using noise, i added some texture to the bone before starting the texturing using Substance painter.

Rocks & cliff

I knew i couldn't create a lot of different rock for the game, so to make it easier i created 4 different modules, 2 coming with coral on them already.
The texture are lock onto the world and to make it easier to use.​

The coral were sculpted on Zbrush, their material was created gray, a script putting random color on them when the player hit play to achieve the colored effect of the deep sea while not having a lot of different textures.

The textures of the rocks and cliffs was made in adobe designer and lock onto the world, making it easier to assemble together to create more detail on the cliff and make it integrate to the sand.​

The Sand was made directly in the unity shader graph, with enough option to make it customizable easily by anyone on the team.

Overall the sand is just some noises, use in different area to make the glitter, and shadow or the material itself.

Sea-Weed

For the sea-weed and kelp, i use plane to create the body of the different plant, projecting the texture we were going to use onto it and doing the UV after the texture.​

The kelp is separated in different height to make it easier to be used as landmark in certain biome (when the game was theorize to be bigger and darker).

  • 54 meters

  • 30 meters

  • 24 meters

  • 12 meters

  • 10 merters

Large Algae is the second type of algae used in the game.
It does not necessarily serve as a landmark but rather as a hiding place where the player can disappear from the eyes of the creature.

Coral

Overall, the problem with the coral was the different color we required to make the environment looking believable and alive. So, to remediate at this problem, we write a script to multiply the albedo of one instance of the coral to random valor that are equal to color.

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Due to this script, we only had to make one texture in shades of gray. To make the process easier and more doable in the time frame of the production I create smart material in substance painter to have the base of each coral, then we just needed to modify some valor and export the texture.

Conclusion

This Environment wasn't the easiest to do, but by using the tool and making sure I followed the production pipeline, it was easier to do. At the same time, I was the Lead artist on the project, and it helps me figure out how to work more efficiently and taking charge of thing when needed to.​

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