Hello Washers! 👋
Today we’re taking a little deep dive into some van changes with 3D Artist, Rory!
Rory had the task of taking our trusty PowerWash Services van and making it a little more up to date to fit in with some of the other upgrades of PowerWash Simulator 2, and how it made the jump in quality between the first game and the second.
Rory kicks off his van rework journey telling us a bit about how he felt about his task - “The van is such an iconic bit of the PowerWash Simulator world - I mean in the first game it’s the very first thing you wash. It’s what starts you off with teaching you the main mechanics of the game and what you’ll be spending most of your time doing.”
“I was chuffed to be given the task of getting to upgrade it alongside all the other visual updates PowerWash Simulator 2 was getting. There’s only one thing; I had never actually modelled a vehicle before!”
“When first getting the brief, the main aim was to subtly round out the shape. PowerWash 2 was all about curves - curves were nicer. In some way the van vehicle is sort of familiar face in each level you load into, so we wanted it to be a friendly reminder. We also wanted to tweak some colours and materials so that it felt somewhere between stylized and real - a deep saturated blue and some varying roughness and bumps to really bring out the shine.”
“As with all things, it started with a lot of reference gathering and then cross-referencing those references and picking out things we liked with different van shapes, faces, wheels and more. One thing that became quite important was getting that front grill right - these cars kind of have a little face on the front of them when you think about it."
"Some look quite frightening, but ours could be a little cuter and safer. I actually had a few attempts at getting this right - the first model I passed for review ended up looking a bit snub-nosed!”
Rory continues; “After much feedback and trial and error on sorting out some troubling smoothing issues, we ended up with a very clean mesh that softened the original silhouette of the first games’ van, whilst still not losing its entire identity.”
“Because this was my first time making a vehicle, I really relied on a lot of exterior feedback to make sure that it didn’t end up looking like something monstrous or weirdly out of place in the game. That support allowed me to really hone in on skills I didn’t even know I really had, and we ended up producing something nifty together (and a little bit of my work in every scene! Yay!).”
“But the big thing about the PowerWash 2 van was that it could be customised, so colours and skins had to be made. I had the opportunity to do the first few skins for the game, which weirdly enough felt just like digital painting - only instead of a flat canvas it was this curvy vehicle.”
“The orange ‘Luscious Washing’ Cleaning Services van in particular had me hunched over my tablet painstakingly figuring out how to make a nice liquid trail run across the side and front of the van.”
We hope you enjoyed a look into how Rory updated the PowerWash Simulator 2 van and hope you’re excited for any future van-skins (along with plenty of other cosmetics!) in future drops! We’ve got regular cosmetic updates for the in-game store, giving you more to spend those hard earned PowerWash Points on!
ICYMI Adventure Time will be coming to PowerWash Simulator 2 this Spring, bringing 5 new levels to clean!
We’ll also have update 1.2 coming for you all, this will include key rebinds, furniture stacking, thumbstick deadzone sliders, plus some bug fixes and improvements, as well as the first Caldera Chronicles content.
We'll keep you all updated on how things are coming along, feature list and release date as we have more information. Update 1.2 will be releasing before our Adventure Time pack.
If you run into any problems while playing PowerWash Simulator 2, please reach out to our Support Portal ⤵️