#markteare

Skyrim: Alduin Death VFX

Opening up this post with a pics from Ray Lederer’s concept work and Jonah Lobe’s modeling work as a reminder these big set pieces are the culmination of a lot of different people’s work.

The main thought I had going into developing the VFX for this scene was Alduin was stealing souls so he must be a big magical sack full of souls and evil. That idea led me to start trying to have him shed his dry lava looking shell to reveal a putrid under layer.

Once I had that idea stubbed in I started trying to raise the drama in the scene. I added in the meteor storm spell that Grant Struthers had made for him to the script controlling the sequence. I also started fleshing out the sould escaping effect that starts once he loses his shell.

My final addition was an explosion at the end of the soul streaming part that vaporizes the shell bits on the ground. I always looks for the chance to have parts from earlier in a long fx sequence interact with parts that come later.

You can watch a YouTube video of the whole fight here:

And I noticed a few positive fan reactions in the comments as I researched for this post :):):):):):)

?Skyrim: Ice Wraith

As the first creature in Skyrim to get any FX. I had to get most of the tools I needed implemented. For starters I had no way to attach particles directly to the skinned actor setup other than the emit from every bone “Magic Shader” in the editor. In addition I needed a way to have explicit animation control over the effect skins and attached art. The first implementation of this was a bit convoluted where I had to make a new piece of art for each bone I wanted to attach to. A script was required to loop through ad attach each piece of additional art.

Step one while I waited for tech was to begin getting the look down. Ray Lederer (https://www.instagram.com/rlederer/) was the concept artist and he had some cool ideas about them hiding in the ice and snow. I cit out a few shapes from the base mesh and constructed a second mesh to morph to in their cloaked form. In the final version I pushed these meshes out a bit on the center line of the body to give the viewer a stronger visual shift.

Once the tech came online I attached particle trails to the tail and whiskers. I made the original shader transparent and flipped the cubemap upside town to give the feeling of refraction.

Towards the end of production I was aware of some negative combat feedback for the wraiths so I designed a new attack. We lacked the AI based functionality for creatures to decide to use area attacks but I had an idea of a way to trick the system. I scripted the actor to repeat fire an invisible projectile with heavy gravity through the main drive of their heavy attack. These projectiles left ice hazards FX artist Grant Struthers had created for the magic system. As you fought the wraiths this attach would constantly be changing the playing field and it gave them a type of area attack not seen in the game anywhere else.

Nuka-World Lunch Boxes

When it came to Nuka-World I had to bring back my pet side project from the base game...the lunchboxes (see earlier post for more on them). Using John Gravato’s Nuka Girl art and images of the different flavors from the game I created a variant of the base game lunchbox texture. I also adjusted the drop lists we used in the base game to be more rewarding and include Nuka themed loot.

Just like the base game I decorated some breakout boxed with stickers to add detail to the world and make a special one for each of my kids and wife.

Once Nuka-World was out I created a pitch for the merchandising department. I wanted to sell the new lunchbox and include a sticker pack to customize it just like the game. The origin of the lunchboxes with stickers was the real lunchboxes of my kids so I was tickled by the idea of that thread making its way back into the real world.

Thanks to the magic of Mike Kochis and his department of merchandising my idea became a reality, sticker pack and all. Special thanks to Yan Qin for the cutie version of my characters Bottle and Cappy and Natalia Smirnova for the Nuka-World logos used in the stickers.

Of course the fans do amazing stuff with it as usual.