While Lost Legacy was by far the largest production we had to tackle in the shortest time, it was both a thrilling and challenging experience. The game was a spin-off of the Uncharted series. Set in India, the game follows Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross as they search for the Tusk of Ganesh in the Western Ghats.
Unfortunately it would become our last full project before 2019's sabbatical.
Environment modeling by Rogelio Olguin and Henry Chen. We Implemented spherical harmonics, post effects, and meticulous color adjustments to refine the lighting for the "Uncharted: The Lost Legacy" Homecoming scene featuring Chloe and Nadine in the Jeep. The scripting involved seamless blends between interactive elements and the background, requiring precision to maintain consistent color values for the Jeep, characters, and their interaction with light and shadow. This process aimed to eliminate visible discrepancies or seams. The chosen color palette focused on warm earth tones juxtaposed with cool greens and blues, contributing to a tranquil and wondrous atmosphere.
* In Western Ghats, the lighting and post processing extends the established color palette from Homecoming. Focusing on maintaining visual continuity, conveying the ongoing story, adventure, and player progression became a primary goal. The color palette, defined by warm earth tones complemented by cool greens and blues, takes a pivotal role in evoking a sense of ease and wonder.
A large runtime light in the vista with a shadow shaped gobo faked the illusion of sunlight, giving the vistas more depth and variation than a default directional light. It was a pain to optimize and quite the hack but it worked and resulted in a better look and feel. It can take a long time and great deal of iteration to get right.
In order to blend all the foliage with the environment, another script was written to auto-detect their placement in the environment, importing their locations to generate a blending node for each since they were also dynamic and had to appear as one with the background geometry. This way, even if the environment changed, bounce color and shadow for the foliage would update accordingly. Given tight deadlines and the scope of the work, it was honestly a miracle but it worked out!
One of the levels in the game was titled "hub-plot-waterfalls" and one night during a long dev session, the title just got to our head. For some reason there was something catchy and rhythmic about those words. Given it was the holidays, it reminded of that Christmas song "here comes Santa Clause". We sang it to our supervisor Mark Shoaf, who then contributed to the lyrics. Below is the song we came up with:
Hub-Plot-Waterfalls (to the tune of Here Comes Santa Clause)
Written by Gabe Betancourt and co-written Mark Shoaf
Note: This is what a couple of late nighters do to developers.
In the Axe Statue temple there was a lot of back and fourth about the lighting direction but we came to a compromise so that it would come from one side yet from the outside exposure still be omnidirectional so the room would have a top-down/bright-dark effect. Each statue had meticulous reflection placement to make the most of this directional look which is what really makes their spec highlights pop out. It was important to also do the same for each platform given how most of the runtime objects were huge and in the beginning blended poorly with the environment.
By strategic placement of runtime lights and reflection probes, we were able to create a seamless blend between dynamic objects and the environment. Kudos to material artist Matthew Treyvons and the environment team for their polish work with shaders, textures, and environment details which helped a lot in making these seamless blends happen.
The towers within Wester Ghats hub level were a challenge since it was one of the largest levels, if not the most massive in the game. Tools had to be written on the fly to help with the automation of reflection, harmonics, and post processing to unify multiple assets in various locations in one. Some of the door towers had to be scripted as they opened and closed to blend brightness with exposure so it would fit with the environment as much as possible.
The biggest feat of all was the creation of a system that read the sun and sky info as far as color and direction and have them batch update on the fly across more than dozens of files to make a massive level with major changes and interdependencies appear as though they were one.
There was a joke in the studio if two people in were struck by lighting and died, there the entire water system would be in jeopardy. We were lucky to be half of that team as well as to not get harmed by bad weather. The look of underwater was a challenge but was built on similar approach from Uncharted 4. Starting with the color palette, it had to match reference found from actual rivers in India near that region. It's typically colored by moss, foliage, and soil, therefore we borrowed a lot from the environment and decided on a muted cool blue with a hint of green.
The base later was cool blue but with second and third layers were turquoise and green. When the player would dive deep or rise to the surface, each layer would activate accordingly giving the illusion of exploring a large body of water. Rain particles were reused to recreate plankton and bubbles. The biggest challenge was the lighting. We had to fake the look of light rays from the surface by using a combination of volumetric fog and a directional light with a gobo. When combined with some post-fx vignetting, as well as subtle glow and depth of field, it gave the illusion of being underwater. Dynamic lights were scripted on and off as the player approached the surface or dove in.
The secret to aa good underwater look at runtime is to think in layers and build color based on depth. Objects change color and visibility based on distance, therefore it's important to think of the water as a volume and build the look from there.
We can't reveal all of the tools developed for the project due to propriety reasons but can share the thought process behind the tools written to make the massive undertaking of Western Ghats possible. Most of it was predicated on the idea if it takes 100 steps to accomplish something, we should be able to reduce it as much as possible. In many cases we were able to iterate on lighting with just a few steps meaning we could hit a few buttons and update 20 to 30 times a day what would normally take hours and multiple steps to get one to three iterations at a time. It's what made the creation, update, and maintenance as the team rushed large collections of geometry into the game possible to keep up with in a timely manner.
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