On House of Ashes I worked as part of team to bring multiple locations to life and was tasked with the visual redesign of the Alien environment in the third act alongside Mike Jeffries. Together we created new assets and a new aesthetic working alongside the Game Designers to accommodate the needs of gameplay.
The Vault
The Vault location of the Crashed alien spacecraft was an area I worked on, starting with a basic block-out for design to work with and give feedback on, developing the visual style whilst catering to needs of the gameplay. I was responsible for modelling and texturing the base floor, ring structures, mould growths and decals and some flat, stepped rock assets. I did all the dressing and asset placement for this section. The elements created by other members of the team include the alien cocoons which were created by character artists and Quixel rock assets which were used to dress the walls.
The Star Chamber
The Star Chamber was a key area of the third act of the game where the main characters realise the origin of the creatures. Utilising a kit of parts, I built the structure of the rooms floor and walls and created areas of mould growths using meshes and decals and dressed the archaeologist’s desk. The kit of alien parts was modelled by both myself and Mike Jeffries. The texture of the alien tech kit was created by Mike and the fungus and stone floor was modelled and textured by me. Mike’s alien Tech texture was reused in places in the floor as well.
Star Chamber Walkway
The walkway up to the Star Chamber was an important area for cinematic gameplay, where the player needed to avoid stepping on roots that would release spores when stepped on and alert the sleeping aliens in their cocoons.
I modelled and textured variants of the spore vine prop for this purpose and dressed the environment with non gameplay cocoons, fungus and rocks. Using Houdini I created an HDA that could grow vines across geometry in engine. A clear example is in the fourth image of the gallery above (right hand side) with the fungal vine climbing across the green glowing mould.
Lower Elevator Shaft
The bottom of the Elevator shaft was an area I dressed up using a combination of quixel assets and assets made by the team. Placing stalagmites and stalactites with mould growths and vines to slowly introduce the creeping alien elements of the crashed ship. I also implemented my Vine HDA to created large sprawling masses of vines around the central spiral. Using a layered shader developed by material artists I created textures and emissive patterns to tie the spiral growth into the rest of the scene.
Caverns
The cavern areas of the game required placement of hundreds of quixel asset rocks to cover the walls. To achieve this in less time I created an HDA that would spread the rock meshes across the faces of a base tunnel mesh requiring minimal adjustment and less time placing assets. All rocks in these images were placed using this tool and adjusted by me.
Alien Spacecraft
I was responsible for the model of the alien asteroid/spacecraft in the vision sequence towards the end of the third act. I created the pockmarked form of the asteroid using houdini and textured it in substance. I modified parts of mine and Mike’s kit to decorate the ship with alien tech and structure.
Look Dev
My early look dev explorations, thinking about texture and form. What the walls could feel like or look like. How the space would be constructed.
My Second pass of sketch explorations, taking on input from Mike and his own ideas trying to unify a cohesive style from both of us.
