It’s time for a new dev blog - and this time it’s all about the visuals!
Our team has grown quite a bit since our last update, with three talented artists joining our creative team last month.
After releasing the Valley of Sand update to Project Existence, we wanted to focus more on the art aspects of the game and continue evolving that visual narrative. In this post, I wanted to dive a bit deeper into what we’ve been working on, how the process has been, and show a bit of what you can expect to see soon in our live prototype.
Let’s start with our vehicle asset.
We previously had created some 3D models in order to explore the visual style that we wanted to go for. One of these assets was the RTV truck, and while this solidified the design we had in mind, we wanted to iterate on it and improve the quality of the model.
Enter our new environment artist, Alexander!
The workflow we used was really old fashioned, so the in-game asset itself was using a lot of memory. Although it was using 4k textures, a lot of objects on the vehicle lost all of its detail, and the final asset looked blurry when up close.
Alexander brought a lot of very efficient new ways to the workflow, and after a lot of cleaning up and polishing the model, we ended up with a more crisp texture besides the file size being eight times smaller!
The solution involved using tiling textures and decals at a lower resolution, baking masks for the entire vehicle to introduce grime and scratches that can be controlled with parameters, and increasing the triangles for edge highlights.
The old model was using 16 individual 4k textures and had around 60k triangles, while the new model has around 92k triangles but uses:
- Three tileable painted metal texture in 1k
- Three decal normals texture in 1k
- One decal stickers texture in 2k
- Two scratch/grime texture in 1k
- Two tileable pattern texture in 256
- One unique mesh mask in 2k
The results are like night and day!
This way is much cheaper while the quality of the textures are sharper. All of the new textures can also be instanced on other vehicles and objects which will let us keep a higher and consistent visual across the entire game, plus saving us the time from having to uniquely create textures for each and every object!
Designing the Character
We’ve been doing a lot of exploration when it comes to the design of the playable character. The art style we are aiming for is a hopeful second dawn for humanity. After a catastrophic event, humans have been forced to live in extreme shelter for a long time, and are finally returning to the surface to explore and rebuild.
The world is hostile, with extreme weather conditions and harsh environments, so it was important that the character’s clothing and equipment would reflect that. The current state of the landscape and environment is very bleak and lifeless, with snow and sand stretching out as far as the eye can see.
To introduce some contrast, we wanted the characters and the things they build and make to be very colorful and bring more life to the world.
For the base layer, the idea was to design a futuristic, but simple utility outfit that serves as the clothing worn when not in hazardous environments. This would also be worn underneath the more protective gear, and provide extra protection.
The second layer is what you will be seeing in Project Existence - the Exosuit. The main purpose of the suit is to function as protection against extreme weather conditions as well as serving as an underlayer for additional equipment.
The connectors at the hips, knees, shoulders and elbows allow the attachment of armor pieces or an exoskeleton, while the large plug on the back is for a detachable backpack.
We're super happy with how everything is turning out.
We'll be releasing a new update to Project Existence this Friday (July 2nd) where you'll be able to see the new vehicle and character in-game! Another WIP that will be added this update is a new settlement mode and resource harvesting, along with a first iteration of a Social Hub area, with outlines of buildings and factories that players will be able to use in the future.
Be sure to join the Discord for more news and updates!