The Rusty Speeder

We’re joined by Nathan Alderson as we dive deep into the creation of his breath-taking stylized sci-fi scene, The Rusty Speeder. We discover the ins and outs of Nathans creation process including: utilizing RGB masks for texturing, creating and working with trim sheets, tips and tricks for using ZBrush and how he used it in the creation of his rocks and other assets, working with Runtime Virtual Textures and much more!

Intro

My name’s Nathan Alderson, I'm a stylized game artist from the United Kingdom. I specialise in Environment art and prop work. I started my journey into game art work back in February 2003 when I got into modding Half-Life. I was active on a mod forum and was inspired by an artist who was creating some amazing character artwork. Naturally I wanted to follow in his footsteps! So I tried character artwork, and settled in environments. I started off using the software Milkshape 3D which was a poly by poly modelling tool. Eventually I moved to 3ds Max which is when I started moving more into environment work over time.

I went to University in 2006, and eventually enrolled on the Computer Games Modelling and Animation course at the University of Derby in 2008. This is when I started working in Unreal Engine 3 and have adopted it as my go to engine for portfolio work ever since. By 2010 I was finishing the Game art course and joined Eurocom as a Contract Artist working on the UI for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii versions of the video game “Rio”. I've been active in and around the games industry ever since.

I was invited back to the CGMA course at Derby which I had studied on to teach Unreal Engine 3 and eventually the UDK version of the engine. This involved level design, environment work as well as lighting. Eventually I moved on from the course and joined a small independent studio called Strawdog Studios. Which was a fantastic place to work. The team was brilliant and I had one of the best art leads anyone could ask for. To this day, that job taught me so much about what a team can and should be. We were also the studio that worked on the ET The Green Planet game... I hope everyone eventually gets to work on such an amazing team. This one showed me how incredible it can be to work in games. In this job I was working on Environments – hand painted stylized work as well as some low poly hand painted character work. I was developing on the PS-Vita so everything had to be very well optimised!

After working at Strawdog Studios, I went back to being an associate lecturer at Derby University on the game art course again, as well as being invited to teach and assist over at Sheffield Hallam University on their game course. Since then, for almost 10 years, I have been a mid level artist at Psiclone, eventually moving up to the rank of Senior. Where I use Blender, 3Ds Max, Zbrush, Photoshop, After Effects, Spine2D. My role is a multi specialising role. Meaning I have to work on UI, Localisation, 3D Modelling including sculpting – backgrounds, characters. As well as painting, concepting, rigging (3D and 2D), UV mapping, Particle VFX work and so much more! Its a very busy and demanding role.

Composition

When coming up with the idea of this environment I had just come off of a massive Star Wars binge – from movies, TV shows and playing a lot of Jedi Survivor (Great game!). I wanted to move away from what I had done in the past on my portfolio, I wanted to focus on a more wide and open shot of a diner. I wanted the world to feel alien and the location to feel like this diner is in the middle of nowhere!

The original idea was to create a landscape that had no trees. Incorporating elements of a muddy wild west tavern that was built away from civilisation. The inspiration for the environment was based on infrared photography of Iceland. This worked well for the idea of how I wanted the world to feel alien but also making the tavern area feel isolated from civilisation. It set the ground work for the colour scheme used in the environment. The centre piece of the environment is the tavern. Having been playing Star Wars Jedi Survivor I wanted to make this feel like it could fit in that game, So as a homage to the main hub area in the game I used the tavern as a base silhouette idea for my tavern. Incorporating some of its base shapes whilst working on some of my ideas for its design. Credits to James Catterson, George Rushing, Evan Cwiertny, Matthew Cooke for the original Pyloons design which I based this design off of.

At first, the idea was to have a standard composition of 1920x1080 resolution. However, during the initial block out phase for the environment I started dabbling in more Ultra Wide camera shots which really helped set the scale for the environment. Looking at my portfolio I thought this would be a nice stand out piece. Working in Ultra Wide resolution really helped define the environment. It really transformed the environment camera shots and helped me push the focal points more whilst expanding on that middle of nowhere feel I was looking for. Wide open spaces, large rock formations really helped push the composition and the ultra wide resolution benefited from these objects.

The original layout was slightly different to the final piece. The original shot and layout was more open and less dense. But gradually during the project it felt like something was missing. It had the elements I wanted as mentioned above but it really lacked interesting silhouettes and layout in the foreground and background.

The original layout had very different rocks than what I designed for the final piece. The final rocks/mountains fit more with the original inspiration from Iceland infrared pictures.

RGB Masks

The RGB splat maps would be used to drive tiling rock textures through different colours channels. This allowed me to create a master material where I could control the tilling and normal intensity of these tilling maps in engine through a material instance. I also created a UV map and baked out a base texture, curvature map and normal map for the entire mesh which I combined in engine with the above method. This keeps density of the texture high via the tilling maps but allows me to define the edge highlights from the curvature map.

All the rocks where made in ZBrush as shown in the renders. These original details help drive the materials for the base texture and help with RGB masks.

The RGB masks were created inside Substance Painter, where I used different masks to layer the colour channels so that I could then use tiling textures I had created inside Substance Designer in engine using each channel mask with a different tile sheet. The masks themselves use a Mask editor on the texture mask to create isolate the areas of interested I wanted to use in engine.

Once I had created a material for the RGB masks, I created a smart material and reused this material on the other variations of rocks.

This allowed me to isolate edges, depth and other areas of each rock so when I reused the rocks in engine, each RGB masked area could have a tile texture assigned to it that I could control via a material to help keep the resolution of the texture looking good when I was resizing and reusing the models.

RVT Spline Paths

This project was the first time I had used Runtime Virtual Textures and I will be using them going forward! They are a fantastic way of blending objects between each other and the landscape. The really helped with blending the spline paths I had created. It allowed me to use multiple paths that intersect each other and have them smoothly blend without any hard edge intersects. The build it, I had to create a material shader that let me control the Virtual texture height and side blending of the mesh via Vertex Normals. This allowed me to create a Material Instance that let me control the Blending Height, Side Contrast Blending of the mesh, and the RVT Height Falloff.

You can find more information on RVTs here and there are also a lot of great guides on YouTube on how it works and how to set it up.

When creating the initial paths, the idea was to create a tile set in Substance Designer that I could take the height information from to displace a basic plane mesh in Blender. Its nothing fancy but it worked how I wanted. I didn't want to just paint a path on the landscape, but rather have a more 3D looking path with some small details modelled in that I could blend in with the surrounding environment.

The spline path itself was built using Blueprints in Unreal. This was a simple set up that controlled length and scale which allowed me to switch out different path meshes as needed. Dragging out the spline path would add more sections to the path automatically. It was an easy choice to help cut down the work flow so I could change on the fly how I wanted the muddy paths to look. It saved a lot of time!

Splines are a fantastic way to create simple paths, roads, fencing and more. They can help save time as level artist rather than placing things one by one, using a spline lets you draw out the sections you need and adjust elements on the fly. Rather than jumping back and forth to your modelling software. They have limitation, but they are fantastic to use.

ZBrush Workflow

ZBrush is a brilliant too. Sometimes Its far quicker to sculpt out an idea than it is to model – at least for me! Rocks are a great example of this. If I want a quick shape idea, I can just open ZBrush and sculpt a simple design and iterate on it. At the end of the day, a tool is a tool. But you can utilize each tool to how you work best. Some might prefer modelling by hand, others like me for certain elements might prefer to sketch it quick in ZBrush. For this project a good chunk of work was done with ZBrush – such as the base rocks and some work on detailing some trim sheets.

My workflow has always been based around what gets me the result the quickest and what gives me the best result. So when planning the more finalised rocks, I used ZBrush. As this let me start from a basic shape, move and cut away elements, duplicated sections and merge them together to create a fun and interesting silhouettes. Some artists will then decimate in ZBrush their rocks, tidy up the topology in their modelling software and then proceed with them. I decided to do the retopology by hand in Blender... It had been a while since I did this with rocks so I thought I'd do a recap whilst I had the time.

ZBrush Tips

ZBrush doesn't have the most user friendly Interface. So I would suggest checking out a deep dive ZBrush session on YouTube to get the hang of it. Check out people like Shane Olson who does some amazing ZBrush live streams! There are many tutorials around and guides that can help. Jump in, learn a few tools and see what you can come up with. Its complicated but its fun. Enjoy yourself, You don't need to be an expert in every tool the program offers. But check out other peoples portfolios and see how they made things. You can pick it up pretty quickly. There's more than one way to do something in any software package but find the way that works best for you. Just have fun, set yourself some goals. If you want to include ZBrush as a new artist, learn the basics and do them well. A good solid foundation will help you much more later on.

ZBrush Issues

Like every software ever made. Its going to break at some point. It could be you've subdivided too many times, causing the program to crash. It can also crash randomly. So be prepared! Back up, save and do it often! One thing I noticed as a lecturer back in the day was people rushing to such a high subdivision count that their models would come out very blobby. I'd really suggest working up your subdivision levels over time. Focus on the details later on and focus early on form and shape. Get these down early and you will benefit later on. But crashes! Beware of them. Backup. Save. And do it often!

Z-Brush is a great tool and is very enjoyable to use. Not everything needs sculpting however. If you are working in environments, not everything needs to a “Hero” asset. Plan what needs to be unique, plan what needs to tile and plan what can be used with Trim Sheets. This will save you a lot of time down the road.

Texturing Process

A lot of my assets make use of trim or tile textures. This saves me a lot of time and I break a lot of the repetitiveness up with additional filler props that also make use of trims and tiles:

I start by setting up a base model in Blender. If its for a wood trim, I will take the base mesh into ZBrush, sculpt it and then use that to bake it down as shown above in Substance Painter. Trims can help improve development time so its great to plan out what can use them before getting too deep into the project.

For this project I wanted to use Substance Painter to texture the trim sheets, so I came up with some materials using the software. The metal trim was textured in Substance Painter and then I moved to reuse my RGB mask smart material so I could recolour it in engine instead. Allowing me to change the main surface colour, edges and grime in engine rather than having a unique Albedo for each type of metal surface I wanted.

Trim Sheets

Trim sheets are a fantastic way of creating and texturing assets. It allows for very quick work to optimise texture usage as well as speedy asset creation. For my Trim sheets in this environment, it was mainly a single sheet that I set up in Blender. This was a simple asset that allowed me to create many different props during the production stage. As mentioned earlier, not everything needs to be a hero prop/unique. Having a few trim sheets allows for a lot of variation and quick modelling of assets. I utilised the RGB mask approach with this trim sheet as well. This allowed me to colour the different sections of the trim sheet inside Unreal Engine using Constant values which assigns a colour based on the RGB mask it combined with. This allowed me to control the overall colour of the base, the grime and the edging. Through material instances, I could use different colours for different props. Creating a lot of variation from a single texture set.

Trim Sheet Tips

Plan out your trims! Get the scale right so it makes UVing easier later on. When looking at a concept, take it into a painting program and assign colours to different areas of the concept – this will help you breakdown sections of the world you are planning to create. This will give you an idea how much work is involved. Assign colours for your tiles, trims and unique assets.

Also plan on reusing the space you have assigned on your trim. If you are using a metal trim, can you repurpose the base model for a wood variation of the same trim layout? That way you could possibly change textures on models without the need to re-UV them!

How Are Trim Sheets Useful?

Speed, Optimisation and variation! They are super handy and very quick to plan out. Check out some game art blasts on ArtStation – so many great examples of how they are utilized. They allow for quick asset development without the need for a lot of unique textures per asset. Allowing for you to create a lot of variation quickly. I love working with them and I'd suggest it for others.

Foliage

The foliage work in this project is rather simple. Its baked from some basic high subdivided foliage sets on to a texture sheet. I'm not much of a foliage artist myself, others do it amazingly well. So I kept it simple. I create a basic set of alpha mapped planes that have their colour driven in engine with a mask that allowed for some variation in colour.

Skybox

Originally the skybox for the environment was using the volumetric clouds. But they didn't give me the feel I was really looking for. Plus they gave light bounces which gave me a headache at time when it came to finalising the lighting. The idea was to create some clouds that made the environment a bit more unique. I painted some textures in Photoshop, UV’d them to a few planes, brought them into Unreal Engine and then positioned and scaled them as needed. Super simple! If I can get away with something simple that looks good, I will go that route to save time.

Biggest GameDev Interest Outside of Environment Art?

This is a good question! My biggest interest would be lighting. I always had a saying when teaching: “Paint with Light”. Contrast is beautiful and there is always a moment when lighting where something suddenly works and sticks. And you will know when you've hit it. Its like a “wow” moment. Though I can also throw in fixing things, Figuring things out and such. I like being helpful in development. My current job role has me tackling so much that I like problem solving. Its not always easy, but the satisfaction from fixing or figuring out a problem is such an amazing feeling.

Areas To Grow As An Artist

I'm always looking to improve. I love making artwork, I love making environments. So I strive to learn, improve and push myself with each project. I would love to see myself improving on the more technical art aspect of game development. Really setting myself challenges in that area. To create small tools to improve my pipeline at home. I'd really like to incorporate more VFX in to my art projects.

One area I'd love to get back into is more hard surface modelling. Early on in my career I used to do a fair bit of it in my free time. I was more focused on Sci-fi inspired environments back then. I'd also love to dive back into more traditional painting. More concept work and such. For future works (my next project especially) I want to do more detailed planning, more concept prep and use a wide range of techniques that I used and learned during this project. With all that I've learned making The Rusty Speeder, I can now improve and optimise that for my next large project. And I look forward to this challenge.

Inspiration

There was something my old Art Lead from Strawdog Studios told me – spend 30 minutes a day browsing art, find art that inspires you and puts that fire in your step for the day. I do this each morning before work. Its a brilliant bit of advice. Play games! I cannot stress this enough. Play them. Walk the worlds you are in and look at assets, get close up to pieces in the environment – find the seams, find the micro details. It might inspire you to jump into your software and try to recreate/reverse engineer what you've seen. I used to love seeing people do this on Polycount back in the day. I've always found motivation in hand painted textures. There is such beauty in them and its always inspiring me to be better at texture work.

Feedback

Discord communities, friends and family. Especially those that don't know how I make my stuff. The reason for that is they might notice something that looks off – colour, lighting, composition. I like getting feedback from a wide range of people and then formulating the reoccurring issues into fixes that I can work on. Its very easy to get tunnel vision when working on a project, so looking for feedback can help you see things you might not notice.

Career So Far

My career has been a crazy journey. From UI work, to teaching, to environments and characters, to everything my current role and job has me doing. Each area has had its highlights, downsides and inspirational moments. From landing my first job and seeing my work put into the first dev build I was apart of. To seeing a students face light up when they suddenly understand something. Having a great art lead that left a lasting impression on me. Being laid off due to cut back which led all the way to new job hires down the road. Each stage has left a lasting impression. And I'm so grateful for it as I've learned a lot from each stage of my career so far.

Additional Advice

The industry may feel like its on fire right now. Its scary for those in industry and those looking to make their first steps in it by getting a foot in the door. Stay strong, keep focused. Work hard on your portfolios. Always strive for more and take everything in that you can. The industry is a big sector to work in. But its also rather small. Be kind. Treat others how you would like to be treated and pick those up who might be feeling low.

Inspiration can come from anywhere, so my advice to those looking to break into the industry in the future: Browse portfolios, play games, try learning something new in every new project you do. Put time into your portfolios. Its important you keep up to date as our industry is always changing and new challenges come up. But most importantly, make time for yourself. Burnout is a pain we all experience at some point. It can last days, months or years. Treat yourself well, and take time off as needed. Just make sure you balance your personal life with your portfolio work.

Find the inspiration you need to work on something. Find the time you need to work on something. Every step is progress in the right direction. We all have our off days where nothing goes right or nothing seems to feel like it gets done. But its still progress. Some days will always be better than others. Take your time, enjoy the process, enjoy making art work.

Future Work

I'm currently in the early stages of another large environment! This one is a fantasy environment which is an area I love to work in. I'm currently planning, and sketching – I'm not great at sketching but getting into the designs and sketch ideas is something I'm enjoying more with this project. I've also recently started blocking out the early stages and setting up my initial camera shots. It’s going to be a long road, but I will be keeping everyone updated on my socials as time goes on.

Outro

I'd like to take the time to thank everyone who has read through this article. Special thanks to my friends, family and especially my Girlfriend who puts up with me sitting for entire weekends in my office making artwork. I appreciate all the kind words I've received on my art works and I appreciate everyone who has followed me on social media. As someone who is shy and struggles with imposter syndrome, its been a crazy ride seeing so many compliments.

The industry can be crazy, I hope everyone who lands a job in it has some amazing experiences like I've been fortunate to have. Work hard on your portfolios and don't be afraid to ask questions or for help! See you all around and keep an eye out for my next work which I will be breaking down on my ArtStation blog as I make progress!