Darksiders 3 | Environment/Tech Art Dump

Progg

I've started to post some of the work I did leading the Environment Team on Darksiders 3. Most of my tasks were tech art related for materials and tools near the end of production, but early on I did a lot of exploration and look development for the different zones in the game. I'm not going to re-post every shot to this thread but I will be updating my Artstation page over the next few days. Hope you enjoy the work, it was a ton of fun to work on. Kudos to our very small art team.

https://www.artstation.com/stevenskidmore

Here's a few shots:

Asminae

Absolutely fantastic ! May I ask how the rocks were made ? They are super sharp and detailed, how did you get that result ?

Progg

Asminae said:

Absolutely fantastic ! May I ask how the rocks were made ? They are super sharp and detailed, how did you get that result ?

It's all in Zbrush. I usually just start with a really blocky base mesh from any modelling program and dynamesh it at a medium resolution. Then use a clay brush to add and subtract large forms until the approximate shape is there. Dividing up to a higher resolution after the forms are all there I use trim dynamic brush with a hard alpha on the flat planar surfaces to really sharpen up the edges. Using trimsmooth border brush on corners is a nice way to get hard chips. It's really about just building the surface up more than you need and using the trim dynamic brushes to carve back against the flat surfaces to get crisp edges.

Justo

Oh dang! I love the chunky, thick feel of those rocks and roots. I remember when I worked on some outsourced assets for this game. Definetly a great artstyle you guys have with Darksiders ! Helluva work Steven!

Niknesh

Insane amount of work dude! That sculpting style is simply amazing!

You also worked on the second installment of the series, if I'm not mistaken?
I imagine that the expectations were quite high for the third part, plus it's a smaller team now?

Progg

Niknesh said:

Insane amount of work dude! That sculpting style is simply amazing!

You also worked on the second installment of the series, if I'm not mistaken?
I imagine that the expectations were quite high for the third part, plus it's a smaller team now?

I started at vigil near the tail end of DS1. Expectations were definitely higher for this one but we were also realistic knowing how much smaller our team was. We approached it from a very different perspective from the art standpoint because of the lack of manpower I relied alot on procedural tools from Houdini and blueprints in unreal

Niknesh

I can relate to the pressure of smaller teams, but you guys truly did an amazing job.
It just sucks that the publisher didn't do much to market the game, I don't recall anything besides that trailer that was shown last year.

How did Houdini come into picture? Were there some specific procedural tools that you used for the environment? That software has a steep learning curve...

Progg

Niknesh said:

I can relate to the pressure of smaller teams, but you guys truly did an amazing job.
It just sucks that the publisher didn't do much to market the game, I don't recall anything besides that trailer that was shown last year.

How did Houdini come into picture? Were there some specific procedural tools that you used for the environment? That software has a steep learning curve...

I started to incorporate Houdini into our pipeline near the end of production, mostly to handle things like procedural hanging cloth stuff and drooping chains/ropes. I also used it to handle the rigid body simulations for cutscene and boss fights and the instanced crowd assets in the Wrath colliseum. I used it along with Unreal's Pivot Painter material functions to handle the force ball animations and the bendable foliage.

Here's some more shots from a few more Artstation posts. More over at my artstation

Emomilol1213

ooh nice

< ASH >

Fantastic job and super inspiring art. Thanks for sharing it Progg !

I played the game during the Xmas holidays and I really enjoyed it.
Art -wise I loved how you guys managed to retain the look and feel of the first 2 games (also building upon it).
My favorite area is definitely the "Heaven": I loved the look of those bulky tree roots and branches.

I do have a question about those tree roots/branches. Can you shed some light about how you created them and how you used them in Unreal?
Roaming around the environments I saw many different shapes and lengths, so I was wondering how many unique assets have you created for those roots? (meaning both sculpting, modeling and texturing) 
I was wondering if you deformed a set of "straight roots" using Unreal spline system, or if instead you created many different "unique roots" (with various shapes and lengths) to accommodate the needs of each environment.
I found some pictures on your Arstation, in the Misc Tech Tools and Animated Materials page, (this and this) that seem to support the theory of the "straight deformed" modules. 
I guess you might have done both things, but I wanted to ask.

Thanks in advance !