![]() I focused on key focal points to add more contrast to these points. A soft round brush and lots of patience were key for painting them correctly.Īfter working on the clouds, I felt the skybox needed more drama, so I added backlighting into the skydome. Rendering clouds is tough because they are very soft looking, but making them too soft makes them blobby. Christian Davis helped me a lot to separate the cloud layers to improve the depth in the scene as well as showed me some tips with blending. Layers are also incredibly helpful when working on a skydome, to help you distinguish features that are closer to the viewer versus far away. With SMITE being a stylized game, I had a lot of freedom to push the silhouettes to further emphasize the composition, so I added a lot of clouds that looked windswept to lead the eye around. I searched for a lot of cloud references to keep their shapes organic in appearance. Do find images of the sky and clouds during the time of day you are hoping to achieve, as it will help you render clouds better depending on their distance, height, and size. An important thing to keep in mind while painting a skydome is to always look at real-world references. This was more technically straightforward, as it’s just an unlit diffuse-only material applied to a half sphere. The next step for Assault skybox was painting the actual skydome. Using a similar material set up for the auroras, I tackled the VFX for the chaos base, which is the blue energy that flows out of the rocky monoliths. That led to a more believable look, while still being stylized. I ended up adding a few more auroras that used a different material, set to a much lower opacity (around 30%) to complement the main auroras. Once placed on the map, the auroras really help to emphasize the composition of the environment and lead the players towards the bases. I wanted to work on the aurora borealis first before the rest of the skybox because I was the least sure how long it would take compared to my other tasks. Because of the eclipse we have going on and the map’s Nordic location, we wanted a colorful skybox to break up the frozen environment. I was tasked to develop the skybox and foliage for the map. We have since then updated three of our most played maps to this new art style.įor our season 6 update, we completely revamped the environment for the Assault game mode. When I first joined the studio, the environment team had been pivoting their art style towards high stylization, with key points being clean and distinct shape language, low contrast textures, and a more deliberate and thoughtful use of hues and values to lead the player through the maps. SMITE as a game has evolved a lot since its initial release. I personally really enjoy playing the game and have logged over a hundred hours on my SMITE account. Out of the games our studio develops, I’ve been primarily tasked on SMITE, which is a stylized 3rd person MOBA. Since my last article on 80 Level, I worked as a CGI lighting artist at Armstrong White in Detroit, then accepted an environment artist position at Hi-Rez Studios and moved down to Atlanta.
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