I was responsible for creating the Environmental Shaders on the Deadspace Remake, along side an amazing Rendering, Tech Art, and Art Teams. Everything shown here is a collaboration of many individuals and our collective blood, sweat and tears to make the visuals as amazing as they turned out to be.
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We wanted to build an in-engine non-destructive workflow whilst allowing for as much control over both macro and micro scaled detailing. We built a POM decal + Tile Texture + Contextual Detailing System for all of our architectural needs. So we created a layered shader containing all potential types of materials we would want to see in the ship, and used both baked masks and volume based signed distance field masking system to reveal different layers directly in the editor. A live update was important for fast iteration time.
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The ability to define biomes to change the look in different sections of the ship on a macro scale was important. On top of that we created a World Masking system that allowed us to place localized volumes that would influence parameters and act as dynamic masks directly in the shader. For example adding in more dirt/damage, making it look frosty in zero-g, corruption spreading around the world, etc...
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This allowed us to change the look of the biome on a macro scale, Or on a per room scale, and also on a micro-scale with a tiny portion of the room using these volumes. These volumes would also influence all of the props as well to make sure that if a room looks more dusty than others, all of the props within that room will also appear more dusty.
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This workflow ended up becoming a huge hit internally and gave the artists the ability to change an otherwise generic room to look a lot more unique with environmental storytelling. The workflow was also non-destructive allowing for endless amounts of iteration on the ship's geometry without having to update anything else.
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There is a lot more to this than what I've shown. And of course a huge shoutout to the entire rendering and art team for all of their parts in making this system and workflow a reality!