Hello Responders!
Announcing No More Room in Hell 2 at Summer Game Fest was a surreal experience, and we’ve seen you asking to hear more about the creative process that goes into creating our game, and more behind-the-scenes looks. When we brought this to our artists, they got excited to tell our community about how they create the assets using our SMART material pipeline.
For those that haven’t heard the term ‘material pipeline’ before, Art Lead Jonathan Wiley (aka Cenelder) offers this explanation, “For those of you unfamiliar with what a "material pipeline" is, let me explain! When a prop is built in a 3d software, it is initially a flat colour (usually millennial grey). It doesn't have the grit, grime, paint, or colours that you would expect to see on a prop. So we can peel that prop like a banana, colour on the banana peel, and then wrap the peel back around the banana. The "material" is that props "banana peel," and defines how light plays on the surface, the colour, or how rough/smooth/shiny it is. Materials can be very simple, or very complex with built in procedural elements like darkening the ends of the banana. All of this talk about materials is making me hungry.”
While building the Power Plant (the sprawling first map for NMR2), we wanted everything created and placed by hand. It's a key part of our ability to create the most cinematic player experience, and tell stories within our key locations.
In talking to Wiley about SMART material pipeline, he spoke to the limitations that came with last gen tech, and what it meant to upgrade to SMART, a system created in-house by a collaboration between our Art and Tech teams that was built upon UE’s Custom Primitive Data system, for No More Room in Hell 2.
Before we upgraded to SMART, the process was more painstaking. Textures were authored externally; unique for some props, or using seamless materials that looked flat. You could place expensive decals all over the asset to bring some of that realism back, or create complicated detailed texture trims that you had to line the prop up to. “We didn't have enough geometry to be able to vert bake in details for edges, or concave. So things had more unique masks applied to them, or manual vert blending in limited capacity like adding moss to a structure,” says Wiley.
“But now we can bake the verts and recreate texturing tools inside the engine to very quickly modify the look in real time without having to make new materials. So we can change edgewear, grim buildup, and see the change in real time in Unreal Engine.”
What are verts though, and why does it matter when it comes to creating details?
“Basically we need enough geometry to be able to shade each vertex correctly,” says Paul Carstens, Principal Environment Artist. “Kinda like pixels on a screen, the more pixels the more detailed the image and the opposite obvs. More geo equals more detailed vertex shading for the SMART system to use”
Every prop, location, & item is handcrafted with the goal of fleshing out and bringing to life a unique, planned, and designed world, but that takes an immense amount of effort from our artists. Having a system in place to quickly adjust an asset on the fly to suit the place, the style, and the overall filth or grime saves our artists time and helps iterate on concept.
A fire hydrant by the Gas Station shows the effects of the SMART System in action.
Our team spoke to what they’ve enjoyed about the changes SMART has brought to assets, and here’s what they love about this new process:
“The speed at which they can produce fairly decent looking assets. “
“Texturing/Surfacing speed (we can texture/surface an asset in minutes now compared to hours; Ability to change the appearance of a prop in Real-time in-editor (add rust, dirt, wear, etc.); Ability to have variants of surface treatment on the same source object; and Performance (huge performance gains project wide).”
“It has helped to increase the consistency and fidelity of all art assets while also reducing the time necessary to achieve that quality.”
A different angle of the Fire Hydrant showing the SMART material changes, such as the colour becoming less saturated.
Wiley added, “It also helps with art direction and feedback cycles - we can ask for changes knowing that the artist isn't redoing their work, but just tuning a few values on the asset instance. It also lets us quickly swap material types on an asset - so you can take a wooden asset, and apply a burned wood material to it and it looks fantastic. Much easier to "kit-bash" assets into new context.”
What makes this all exciting for players is the amount of incredible detail and variation we’re able to put into each and every part of NMR2’s environments. With one of our goals being to make NMR2 feel truly grounded and realistic - as if you were experiencing a zombie apocalypse in your own neighborhood - this is just one example of how one of our talented team’s production techniques is helping to take the sequel to the next level.
Welcome SMART materials to NMR2, and we look forward to sharing more behind the scenes looks at how the game is coming together.
In the meantime, enjoy a final comment on the SMART system from Wiley. “Also I get to use a lot of big words when talking about it so it makes me look smart.”
(We would argue that he always looks smart.)
Take care Responders, and we’ll see you in August!