recreating Australia in ue4

Over 15 years ago Andrew left Australia for Europe to chase his dream of becoming an artist in the games industry. Today he is the Art Director at Embark Studios and has worked on many exciting projects throughout his career. Join us as he breaks down his incredible recreation of his Australian memories leveraging Photogrammetry in UE4.

Intro

My name is Andrew Svanberg Hamilton and I was born in Western Australia, growing up in a small country town a few hours south of our ‘big’ city, Perth. My childhood was spent growing up in a wonderfully calm environment, nature on our doorstep, and an amazing family surrounding me that fully supported my dreams of being an artist. In what field of an artist however took a sudden and unexpected turn halfway down a path I thought I was heading. I’ve been creating art for as long as I can remember, working with different mediums, both practical and digital, all through my childhood, schooling, hobbies, and career. I was very much on a path of traditional arts and print media as a career goal in Australia, drawing and painting during the day, but found myself spending very late nights and weekends playing video games and as a hobby, creating all kinds of digital media. I found that what brought me most joy was the creative work behind a computer, a hobby that I couldn’t wait to return home after studies to jump back in to each night. An interesting footnote here is that these collaborative hobby projects I worked on online in this spare time as a kid were with amazing and at the time very young artists that eventually moved on to work at companies such as Valve, Blizzard, Weta Workshop, Ubisoft, and other great creative companies. At the time it was barely a thought that I could combine both my spare-time hobbies and professional life in a career that allows me to work creatively every day, but here we are! Right at the end of studying Fine Arts and Digital Media in 2005, ready to jump into a vastly different career, I was contacted by a company called Splash Damage in London, and was on a plane 2 weeks later to pursue the world of video games. 

Over the following 15 years, I’ve worked at a handful of great companies, where my role has shifted wherever it’s been needed most. Very much a generalist, I’ve always thrived in tackling a vision from all angles, having worked with VFX, lighting, UI, but most importantly Environment Art. Environment Art, and in particular recreating nature has been my biggest passion. It involves tackling creation from all angles to create a space that feels alive, a space you just want to dive in and explore.

In 2007 I moved over to Stockholm, Sweden, which is an ever growing major hub of video game development. I worked at Grin, reuniting with some of the talented friends I spent late nights working on game-art years beforehand, then to Starbreeze before moving on to DICE where I spent 9 years making amazing games and working with incredible talent. My time there started on the awesome Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, where I created all the landscapes, on a number of Battlefield titles (3, 4, and 5), as well as Star Wars: Battlefront (as Lead Environment Artist responsible for building Endor) and Star Wars: Battlefront II (as Art Director).

And now, 15 years later, I’m here at the amazing Embark Studios in Stockholm still living the dream.

Scene

For my personal project ‘Memories of Australia’ I had initially set out to create a small confined scene built from an Australian biome I was piecing together, with the plan to have it wrapped up within just a few weeks. As the content started to take shape however, it quickly outgrew those ambitions into something much bigger by incorporating more narrative elements and sweeping vistas.

Maintaining scope on the smaller scene I could comfortably pull from my experience with developing photogrammetry workflows over the years with many Battlefields and Battlefronts, but as the project grew I began to plan particular shots and establish a flow to the narrative. Finding that flow early was key in ensuring I stayed on track, allowing me to keep focus on what is important. Easier said than done of course, as new elements and shots crept their way into the plans along the way, which is hard to resist when you start to enjoy the process!

The biggest challenge for this project, or any project in fact, is less on a technical level, and more focused on finding the motivation to create. As an artist it can be challenging at times to find the inspiration or drive to begin or wrap up a project, no matter your level of expertise or time within the industry. In particular with being in the industry you spend all day working your creative mind, that creating art when you return home (or in our current work-from-home times - when you switch over from your work PC to your home PC while still in your pajamas at 6pm) it can be difficult at times to maintain the creative momentum. I find that having a clearly defined goal when setting out on a project really helps to align myself on the ambitions. Goals on the purpose of the project, whether it is to learn new tools, create a portfolio piece, or simply to scratch that creative itch, I find helps to stay on track.

How did you plan the shots of the video? What was the story behind the video?

‘Memories of Australia’ carries my quite personal memories of Australia on its sleeve. It’s part nostalgic tribute to the sounds, sights, and feelings of my childhood growing up in Australia, and part to my family, both cherished memories, and missing pieces. Having lived outside of Australia for over 15 years now, these are emotions and memories that are ingrained into memory. I’ve been longing to create a kind of tribute - a love letter to Australia - and I finally found the moment to realize that after having captured a range of photogrammetry content on a recent visit to Australia.

Each shot I planned out derived from a memory; the sounds of crickets in the dry grass of a hot day, the calm of floating down the river hearing the oars bump against the side of a canoe, the kookaburra call echoing from afar, each one was quite a clear image in its conception. From there I searched for defining references that aligned to the content I had to work with, collating and curating the references in PureRef, piecing together these ideas and finding a flow that created a subtle narrative, a red thread. That red thread resulted in a kind of journey of brothers on a day out in nature.

Would you be able to break down the composition and lighting of one or two of your shots?

As I’m still fairly new to Unreal Engine (spent most of my career in proprietary engines), my knowledge of the lighting tools at hand were quite limited, so there was some exploring of various lighting techniques and features to be done. One of the major goals for this project was for it to be real-time game art, not something that needed a beefy computer to run. Working in the games industry as an artist you’re constantly finding the balance between quality and performance, and quickly realise that in order to find that balance, there are a lot of shortcuts, hacks, and tricks required to give the illusion of expensive features and quality. This project does not utilise any raytracing features or other expensive solutions, but instead relies on cheaper alternatives, running on my ageing GTX1080 graphics card.

The shots utilise the basic Unreal features including dynamic lighting with a Directional Light, Distance Field Ambient Occlusion, SkyAtmosphere, SkyLight, Sphere Reflection Volume, and a PostProcessVolume simply to lock the exposure. For bounce lighting, there are 2 or 3 shots that use Screen Space Global Illumination, however most shots ‘fake’ bounce lighting by enabling ‘Lower Hemisphere is a Solid Color’ in the SkyLight, and setting its ‘LowerHemisphere’ colour to a reddish tint that represents the bounce light from the red dirt seen in most shots. This cheap solution works great in this context, as there is generally always a strong red bounce in the biome.

Here are the various render modes in Unreal that make up the final image:

For composing each shot I relied on common principles, some that are engrained and arrive naturally, others that require careful consideration. The Rule of Thirds, Golden Ratio, silhouetting, etc, they all have their place, and really do create more balanced and readable images when considered. In most shots I consciously separated foreground, midground, and background, adding depth of field, and darkened silhouettes to provide focus and depth. The camera movement further enhances this, creating parallax along these planes, often moving in a direction intended to lead you through each composition with motion, with the goal of giving the viewer a sense of travelling the same journey as the subjects. I always review the shots at certain stages in a thumbnail view, being the most unforgiving way to validate if an image is readable and maintains interest even when very small on screen, ensuring composition and lighting is clearly enhancing the key elements.

Here are a few example shots that present these key principles, showing the focus always on the midground, in most cases following a Rule of Thirds, and a camera path that follows the flow of the content in each image, or leads towards important features.

How did you plan the different lighting scenarios? Would you be able to explain key aspects of each day vs night lighting?

The goal with the lighting was to take you on a journey of light, from morning to night, an adventurous full day out in nature. I wanted to capture the variety that can be experienced within a day, from the scorching heat rising as soon as the sun is up, the sudden thunderstorms that roll in, the idyllic after-rain sunset, and the starry night skies free of light pollution.

Creating the day lighting was all about the bounce lighting, and often the almost over-exposed sunlight. It’s a memory of an often blinding light, and by exaggerating the bounce light (Lower Hemisphere Colour) and sunlight a little beyond what should be seen through the camera helped to convey the feeling of a burning day. To help these sun bleached areas feel even hotter I made sure to contrast them with darker silhouettes in the foreground where possible.

The night lighting used a little movie-night magic, with a subtle white-blue moonlight that provided some clarity that otherwise would have been blanketed in complete darkness. The night light out of the cities of Australia are entirely pitch-black providing incredible views of the night sky, but wouldn’t have provided much of an interesting image to look at, so here I made some compromises to authenticity by giving some needed clarity. The direct light being a darker blue, and the Skylight providing a very subtle generic HDRI was enough to catch the shapes of the trees and important features.

You have a beautiful rain effect in the video, would you be able to breakdown some of this effect?

The rain is built of a few components – VFX droplets and splashes, shader for the water, and shader for props. The shader for the water is essentially just a wobbly normal map repeated and scrolling against itself to create the illusion of ripples. The shader for props is quite similar, however these normals are blended on top of the normals of the prop, and much more chaotic in movement. You can see in this example how barebones these shaders are, keeping them lightweight while providing the illusion of splashing water:

The rain VFX are broken down into a few pieces, including droplets falling in the air, chaotic splashes and spray as they hit the ground, and rings on the water. The rings on the water is one of the areas I should have improved further, to only affect the normals on the water surface, rather than an unlit texture slapped on the surface that breaks the illusion – lesson learned for next time!

What is it like returning so many years later? Did it change your perception and design of this project? 

I visit my homeland of Australia at least once every 2 or 3 years, so I’m constantly exposed to these elements and memories. As I grow older with each visit my admiration of the Australian landscape and the kinds of experiences only possible in that environment, the more I understand how lucky, and how much I appreciate my growing up there. These feelings absolutely had a great impact on this project, in fact the entire reason to begin was an attempt to capture that emotion, in finding the subtleties of what makes that landscape so unique.

Would you be able to give some tips as to your workflow with Photogrammetry and scaling it to a project like this? Do you have any ideal conditions (lighting etc) and or tips for capturing assets?

Australia is probably one of the most difficult places for photogrammetry captures! I’ve been capturing content in many locations around the world in my career, all with their individual challenges from arctic storms to boiling mud pits, but Australia is close to the top of that list of challenging conditions. Spiders, snakes, you name it, the clichés are all true. Especially during the summer months of Australia there is an abundance of sunshine, with very few days suited to photogrammetry captures. Ideal conditions are naturally during overcast days, but as I had little flexibility in the few days over my Christmas visit, I was restricted to finding objects in enough shade to avoid the very strong direct sunlight, all while avoiding the spiderwebs. It’s the charm of photogrammetry though, being out in nature you develop a great appreciation for it, and understanding of its forms. I've been using the same type of camera and equipment since I began working with photogrammetry in 2012 - a Canon 6D with 24mm lens, colour chart, and a matte blue sheet or board. I like to keep it as light and simple as possible so I can easily jump around, especially in conditions where time is limited.

For a project like this it’s about defining a limited set of assets to create the illusion of a complete and varied biome. Keeping the number of assets in a set as low as possible, retaining only the key ingredients, helps keep the focus and quality maintainable. A lot of the variation can be omitted and rather filled in with the imagination so long as there is a range of content that encompasses the bigger picture. For all biomes I’ve been involved in creating, they consist of just a few variations of each type. A few rocks, a few trees, a few logs, etc. By capturing content that is not overly special or unique, finding the assets that can be rotated and reused as much as possible, you can limit the needs for numerous assets to have a biome feeling complete.

Please take a look at my GDC talk from 2016 talk where we go through the photogrammetry process and steps beyond in quite a bit of detail on our work for Star Wars: Battlefront we began in 2013. Some processes and workflows have improved substantially since then, however the mindset and focus when capturing photogrammetry content remains mostly unchanged. You can find the talk here.

What did you learn or improve while creating this project?

I’m still quite new to Unreal, so there’s been a whole lot of learning alongside this project as I dived into areas I’ve never explored, such as animation. I spent a career bouncing between various proprietary game engines developed by the studios I worked for, never having professionally used Unreal Engine until very recently, in 2018. I’ve dabbled here and there in earlier iterations of Unreal Engine, but it wasn’t until joining Embark Studios that utilizes the engine for our current game project, that I really started to sink my teeth into it.

One particular feature I've made extensive use of on this project is Contact Shadows. It can be enabled in the Directional Light of the scene (I have the value set to 0.04) and you will receive short Contact Shadows from meshes as a screen-space effect. One way to push this feature even further, greatly increasing the illusion of detail, is to set up your shaders to support Contact Shadows, feeding a heightfield (baked from your high poly photogrammetry scan to low poly mesh) into PixelDepthOffset. This in turn ‘casts’ ContactShadows from the heightmap texture, not only the mesh geometry, giving the impression of a highly detailed asset. Combining these sharp Contact Shadows with the soft/low resolution Cascade Shadows, you can start to create the illusion of a shadow penumbra effect, without the cost of expensive Ray Tracing.

Here is a before and after of the result, notice the sharp detail shadowing from the tree bark, while still maintaining the soft dappled lighting across the tree:

Here is a wireframe of the tree to illustrate a fairly low density of triangles - no tessellation or displacement is used on any content:

And the heightfield (baked from the high poly photogrammetry scan to the low poly tree mesh) that the Contact Shadows ‘cast’ from within the shader:

'This is the shader setup used on all nature assets, which you can see has a heightfield texture plugged in to PixelDepthOffset, and a MaterialFunction leading out of the MaterialAttribute.

This is the MaterialFunction for ContactShadows that is placed within the BaseShader:

How has your role as an Art Director changed your view on your own work or projects? Has it changed your view on 3D art as a whole?

Moving into a role of Art Direction in 2015 for Star Wars: Battlefront II, I quickly found myself really appreciating a view of the bigger picture. Crucial on a project with a large team in order to maintain an overview, but surprisingly found a lot of these learnings incredibly useful even on my own small projects. Taking a step back and viewing personal projects from afar really helps me to keep focus, to establish a red thread that can be carried through, and to ensure that the small details have a valuable place in the larger picture. I had previously spent a lot of time in the details that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, but with that larger view it is a lot easier these days to understand where to spend the effort. That’s not to say from time to time I still find it difficult to resist the fun of diving into the details!

What parts in your career did you struggle the most? What changed or what did you do to continue moving forward?

Making the transition from Lead Environment Artist to Art Director in 2015 was the most challenging yet rewarding move in my career. I was thrust into a massive team of an enormous project that continued to grow in scope, bringing on additional studios, resulting in an ever-growing need for structure and clarity. Very much in the deep end in my first outing as Art Director, I needed to find my way through it by establishing what worked for me in that role, relying on my own instincts and definition of success rather than crumbling under expectations. Establishing processes, communication with external partners, providing direction and alignment with supporting studios, building an art team and culture, pushing for quality, all while maintaining my own sanity was a thoroughly rewarding but massive challenge. It was an undertaking I was prepared for but consistently challenged by. In retrospect I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to experience such a toughening project on day one of Art Director. Absolutely battle hardened beyond that point in terms of having the ability to find some normality within challenging and at times overwhelming situations. I’m extremely proud of what we all managed to accomplish within the art teams over the years, and that I’ve been able to find a path forward for myself where I can consciously lean in to what works for me, and seek to improve what doesn’t, in this ever evolving role.

If you could start your career again with the knowledge you have now what would you do differently? Do you have any regrets about your career? 

I would not want to change a single thing in my career over the last 15 years. We all learn and grow from our successes and especially our failures, which define us for who we have become. There have been some incredible highlights of my career, and equally moments where there are doubts, frustration, or hopelessness, but all have led me to my current role as Art Director at Embark Studios where I truly feel at home. Any single change along that path, success or failure, could have thrown me off course!

What makes you passionate about your career?

I find inspiration from many places that keep myself passionate about my career in games, but often find most arrive from a place outside of games development. Films and music are a big inspiration, but as I’ve always had a great passion for environment art, always having my foot in the creation of art even as Art Director, I find most inspiration from nature. I absolutely adore natural wonders such as the volcanic and alien Iceland (of which I’ve travelled to many times for inspiration!), the lush and prehistoric Redwood forests of California, to the complete opposite in biome of the harsh Australian landscapes. Each time I visit these kinds of wonders I’m reinvigorated and itching to get back into either working on personal projects or finding ways to inject that sense of wonder and exploration into ongoing work projects. These are moments that spike my interest immensely, but there’s always a great level of ongoing excitement just seeing the work of our team piecing together our current project into something special at Embark. It gives me great joy to see the world and all it’s details taking shape day by day, getting closer and closer to the overall vision.

How do you balance your career with your home life? Do you ever struggle? What are some tips you have found that are helpful?

I’ve always been quite consumed by my day to day career work, putting a lot of my energy into the needs of the team and project, leaving little room for personal work after hours. My hobby is my career, which is an incredibly lucky position to be in, so I find the work I do during work hours to more often than not fulfil my desire to create. I am however always tinkering away at bits and pieces in Unreal or elsewhere in my spare time, and from time to time, particularly after those exciting nature excursions, find a boost of energy and a need to create a personal project on a slightly larger scale. I find what works best for me is to not pressure myself into creating art when the desire or passion is not presenting itself. There are always dips in creativity, or moments where it's overflowing, and I try to listen to those feelings so as to not feel guilty or pressure when I’m just not feeling it. I work best when it comes from a place of passion, and when that does arrive, it’s in full force.

What is the role of Art Director primarily composed of? What is your average day like?

I believe the role of an Art Director varies greatly depending on the team needs, project, and the background of the director. There are some Art Directors transitioned from a concept background that work really well with visualising ideas directly, and some that are from a content-production background that work more effectively with defining a vision and the process to get there. As I’ve essentially been a generalist throughout my career, I’ve always shifted to whatever task is needed, and it’s no different in my Art Director role now. My day to day tasks vary greatly, but all aim to move the project forward in whatever areas are most important at that point in the project.

A day generally starts off with checking in with many of the team members working on immediate tasks that are awaiting feedback. Often concept art is leading the way, visually defining key needs for the rest of the team, so ensuring that the concept team is running ahead is often top of the list. I always have a long list of tasks across the team of various needs. From specific task feedback, vision and reference gathering, to basic alignment and direction maintenance, and by the time I’m halfway down that list the day is almost over. The level of needs and engagement vary from day to day however, some days overwhelming, others with enough time to jump in and help out with some art – a luxury in my current position. With the small team size here at Embark it allows for a very healthy flow of tasks and enough room to catch my breath. This flow changes as the project and team evolves however. At the beginning of a project the team is very small and the majority of the time is spent defining the direction and vision for the art, but as the project moves along the team grows and the balance shifts from establishing vision to maintaining and guiding towards that vision. At some point down that path, if that vision is clear enough, the team hopefully becomes increasingly autonomous, holding the torch.

Has the team ever struggled with motivation?

Absolutely there have been challenges with motivation, as with any creative undertaking. Working as an Art Director on a few teams of various sizes now, one key thing that becomes clearer and clearer as time goes by is that everyone’s needs, motivations and inspirations vary greatly, from person to person, week to week. There is no defining way to work with a team and provide motivation or clarity. Some people work best when loosely guided towards a goal to find the solutions and motivation themselves, while others really thrive on one-sided concrete direction. Working with the team directly is 90% of my job, trying to find the best path forward for each individual person. Motivation is an ever-moving target as needs and projects evolve, and finding ways to keep individual team members motivated on different levels is an ongoing task that is often challenging to maintain consistently, but it’s part of the great charm of working in teams where each person brings something unique to the table. Finding the best possible environment for each person to shine is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle.

What is one way you want to improve as a leader?

There are many ways I want to improve as a leader, with it being a role that is changing on a daily basis as new challenges arise constantly. In particular I’m always striving to find ways to improve my understanding of building teams and culture, and providing clarity or motivation. The day I stop searching for improvement is the day I become an ineffective leader.

Where do you seek feedback?

I strive to be as collaborative and open to feedback as possible in my Art Direction role, with my vision and direction for the art of a project being a fairly large framework to build within creatively at the beginning. I work with incredible artists, and they are in their position because they are truly the best at what they do, so I always aim to provide enough direction and clarity for them to understand the path forward and the goal, but leave enough space for them to bring their own expertise, quality, feedback, and ideas to the table so we can collaboratively build towards the vision. This vision and framework is a defined goal that becomes narrower as the project progresses, and having artists integral in this process, rather than simply painting by numbers, I feel is a great way to establish a level of ownership, trust, being able to feedback towards the goal together.

Any additional tips or advice you would like to share with our readers?

The world of game creation has changed so rapidly in the years I’ve been in the industry, it’s such an exciting time to be diving in. There is such an enormous sea of resources out there to learn and grow as an artist, with software and tutorials accessible to all, that the only thing in your way to creation is motivation. We all struggle with it from time to time, but if you are new to this game I’d recommend starting small, to not construct too many high walls yourself that block your creativity. Find a particular area that really excites you, so the inspiration arrives from the heart, and not the pressure or guilt to improve.

What can we be on the lookout for from you in the future?

Regarding personal projects I’m not sure what the future holds, I’ll just have to wait and see what inspiration presents itself, and I’m sure I’ll have something in the works soon enough! My biggest focus at the moment is the incredibly exciting work we have going on at Embark Studios. I can’t wait until we have more to show!

Artstation

LinkedIn

Embark Studios

Vimeo