Uncharted 3 - Environment Art Dump - Anthony Vaccaro
polycounter lvl 15
Hey all, I updated my website and finally got some of the work I did for Uncharted 3 Drakes Deception up there. Perfect timing as the Uncharted 3 GOTY edition was just announced so if you haven't picked it yet now is a perfect time 
In case you are unaware, we do things slightly differently at Naughty Dog. For every level we have 1 Environment Artist and 1 Texture Artist. The Environment Artist handles all modeling/scene assembly and the Texture Artist creates the shaders and textures for said models. There are generally 1 Environment Artist and 1 Texture Artist per level/per look. This rule of course gets broken when its like OH SHIT the game needs to get done and we havent even started the last level! ha
Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I contributed a small article to the Polycount PDF but looking back and at some of the other more tutorial articles I think mine sucks ha so feel free to ask anything and I will answer it to the best of my ability. Also dont hesitate to point out things that suck and can be improved
-Anthony
My main responsibility for Uncharted 3 was the Caravan level. 100% of the modeling/scene assembly/technical crap was done by myself. All shaders and textures were done by my shader artist, Brad Smith.
I also worked on (slight spoilers) the very last level of the game, the Collapsing Sandlantis section. The look of most of the architecture was already established so I was creating new assets with those ascetics in mind and creating them to be destroyed.
In case you are unaware, we do things slightly differently at Naughty Dog. For every level we have 1 Environment Artist and 1 Texture Artist. The Environment Artist handles all modeling/scene assembly and the Texture Artist creates the shaders and textures for said models. There are generally 1 Environment Artist and 1 Texture Artist per level/per look. This rule of course gets broken when its like OH SHIT the game needs to get done and we havent even started the last level! ha
Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I contributed a small article to the Polycount PDF but looking back and at some of the other more tutorial articles I think mine sucks ha so feel free to ask anything and I will answer it to the best of my ability. Also dont hesitate to point out things that suck and can be improved
-Anthony
My main responsibility for Uncharted 3 was the Caravan level. 100% of the modeling/scene assembly/technical crap was done by myself. All shaders and textures were done by my shader artist, Brad Smith.
I also worked on (slight spoilers) the very last level of the game, the Collapsing Sandlantis section. The look of most of the architecture was already established so I was creating new assets with those ascetics in mind and creating them to be destroyed.
Replies
Here are a small section of breakdowns of just a few of the many assets I created to build these levels.
-Anthony
Did you do the lighting too ?
Also, I've not played uncharted (gotta watch that fan cut movie mode that came out recently!) - how did these transition between each other?
I dig that you were able to show the wires. Thanks for the dump.
I've always been fascinated with the method you guys use, having an environment guy and a texture guy.
Good job man.
is about the modeling progress , in the wireframe shot look like when you start modeling
you build all the level lowpoly first .. i'm right ? and then start creating hipoly models for baking details .
so in your workflow do you work ( lowpoly >> hipoly ) ? and for those broken building , same workflow ?
i hope to get some idea about your workflow.
thanks
Cant wait for your Expanded breakdown in the book :P
For the Polycount book, my article isnt a breakdown/tutorial of how I modeled rocks and such. It is more of an article of me just talking about my thoughts on how I went about making this level and the pros and cons of the reasons for it.
@Erich - most of those rocks are just 1 material, the really large ones are 2. The material set up is 2 different texture sets blending together based on there height maps with a 3rd texture set (sand) that uses our slope shader and to fill in the cracks with sand.
@Strkl - We have dedicated Lighting Artists. We had 2 main lighters work on this level and you can see in one of those screen shots different lighting:poly122:) I only worked with the original lighter to set the sun angle direction so I could build around that to give interesting lighting to specific places.
@fearian - The skybox is only the sky. The sand dunes are all modeled out and have depth to them so no matter where you go you will see they are 3d and not just janky card dunes. As for your second question, in transitioning between what? Do you mean parts of the levels? If so for the most part the entire thing links up, there is only 1 part where we have to warp the player durring an FMA (in game cutsceen)
@ayoub44 - For modeling everything was modeled with traditional modeling tools. No high polys were made for any of the rock assets. The work flow is more like....quick blockout, more detailed blockout, texture artist makes textures based on the style of rock(lots of talks about this) UV's model, I make more changes and final detail, texture artist dose final pass of UV's and blending.
My texture artist sculpted rock tiles in Zbrush based on the style of my models since all models use tiling textures, no unique. To break things up we use blending.
Same for the broken buildings, some of the buildings were created based around the texture details as the textures were already created. Broken tile parts were modeled by cutting along the tile texture.
@dtschultz - I will try and get some of the wires of the broken platforms up in the next day or two
@luke - Yes the textures are tile based. There are at least 2 textures blending together based on there height maps to break up the tiling. Blending is painted by texture artist. Our shaders also have sand based on slope in there too.
Brad, my texture artist, also wrote an article in the Polycount book about textures. Not sure if he will post up his textures but he has 2 or 3 in there. Plus we have to heavily watermark our textures
A question I get a lot. Do you sculpt your rocks/make high polys for them?
The answer to this is no. All the rocks were created with traditional polygon modeling tools within Maya. And no high polys were made for any of these rocks.
Are rocks all based off tiling textures and utilize blending to break them up and make them look unique. (I go over this a good bit in the book and more in depth reasons why) My texture artist created high poly tiling sculpt of rock details and used those as textures. No baking of High to Low was involved.
Also, great work on the texturing and lighting too. This whole game looks so cool.
What kind of Tri counts were you working with both overall and per static?
They looks like some realistic photos.
There are some lighting issues in last images which are looking over burn. but some are really great
seriously though the art work for uncharted never ceases to amaze the absolute shit out of me now if only I had a ps3 )=
thanks for posting
The palms could've been better. The Fronds dont come down smoothly, and seem to defy gravity on the more bent palms. Also at a distance all the little leaves (dunno what theyre called) that the frond is made of kind of just melt in to a solid plane. Not sure if this is because of the engine's alpha test values or what or if its just the alpha in the texture thats wrong.
heres an example of the palms in battlefield 3:
http://smacko.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/battlefield-3-7.jpg
as you can see the individual leaves of each frond are clearly seperate even at distance (the palm on the left, behind the Humvee)
everything else is simply superb.
Aaaaand your breakdowns are super helpful
Thanks for answering, that's exactly what I meant. The combination of texture blending and smart modelling really looks great even without high polys!
I assume this will be mentioned in the book (Looking forward to it!) but how long did you tend to spend on a 'section' of this level? This workflow sounds quite speedy.
Also, how sick are you of modelling rocks?