Technical Lighting Artist. Or maybe VFX and Material Artist. Also Optimization and some other stuff. Changes from project to project, really.
Technical Lighting Artist. Or maybe VFX and Material Artist. Also Optimization and some other stuff. Changes from project to project, really.
— PROJECT
Raw Data
— PLATFORM
Windows PC, PS4 (PSVR)
— ROLE
Lead Technical Artist
— DATE
2016
My first shipped game. I had been working with Survios on the prototype, (inexplicably named ‘Bullettime: Apex’) since early 2015, as the nascent company was preparing to wow investors for its second round of funding. I was originally hired as a 3D modeler and texture artist, but soon took on more roles since the art team was minuscule and I was the most knowledgeable about Unreal Engine specifically. I made a few of the mesh assets and some of the effects that are in the final product, but the most significant contribution I made was in lighting, material effects, and optimization. I was responsible for lighting every environment in the game, and keeping the GPU times under vsync for both mid-spec PC and the PS4.
All shots are in Unreal Engine 4, as they appear in the game.
Raw Data’s main hub is the ‘Show Room.’ It was a huge undertaking for a first-time lighting artist like me. When the player first enters, the entire place was to be powered-off, dark, and with the window closed. The player was then to turn on the power, which also opens the window. Given our performance constraints and reliance on baked lighting, this took a lot of planning and compromise to get it to work in-game.
An additional lighting scenario – with the morning sun gleaming in through the window – was later added for players who beat the game. I’ve never learned more on one project than I did working on this one environment.
Shots are in Unreal Engine 4, as they appear in the game.