A great challenge in this project was that we wanted the world to be able to extend very far. A lot of assets needed to be shown on screen when you zoom out, thus posing a big challenge in how we optimized the sheer number of art assets shown. Clever LOD:ing needed to be used for this.

Material examples. We put most of the complexity in the Normal maps and Height maps and kept Roughness/Metal/AO and Color very simple for this art style. The height map determined how different materials blend together in-engine, where high points could break through other neighbouring materials.

Here's a closer look at these materials in-game.

Very early in this project, we leaned more towards a realistic artstyle, in which we were aiming to use PBR shading on all the art assets (Every asset needed to be composited 2d sprite-renders with Normal/Color/Roughness/etc.). In the end, we kept the PBR-workflow, but made everything full 3d in a slightly more stylized look.

Here I was looking for the proper mood and lighting for the game world. We went away from having a global light source, and opted for point-based, darker lighting. We developed tech to have dynamic, shadow-casting point light sources. And thus this became one pillar of the final art style.

This was around when the style and mood was where we wanted it to be, but we struggled quite a bit with readability, and guiding the player. Clutter and too much fog and atmosphere became a challenge for us.

Rooms and all 3d assets for the game was sculpted in Zbrush and retopologized in Maya. Then brought into Substance Painter for texturing. My goal was to make everything feel a bit sculpted, like things are made of clay.