More Bits and bobs and a look into the future

This section will serve as an explanation of some of the other things I’ve been working on for ether that didn’t really need a whole section made for them, as well as a look into what I’ll be working on next.

First I could mention Lens Flares. Lens flares were made through textures in Photoshop. In order to save memory, 3 different lens flares were comprised in one image. To do this I simply painted monochromatic lens flares into each one of the image’s channels (R,G,B) allowing me to have 3 different lens flares in one image. Lens flares were also used to simulate Bloom due to the glitch UDK currently has on DX9, where a yellow Bar appears on the right of the screen if bloom is activated.

 The buoys in the sea were made using the same techniques, only applying a Sine wave for movement in the material.   

The next big thing would be the Skydome. With the same idea in my head of keeping everything reusable and versatile, I created a skydome that could be used for night time scenes as well as day time, dawn, dusk, etc. To do this I made a material network that would allow to change the colour of the sky, clouds (and clouds amount) and stars. This material also allows to edit the amount of stars in the night sky as well as their complete deactivation.

As for the future, for Ether 2 I will be creating a lot of Snow systems, as well as making the season changes more interactive and better. I will continue to try and create the most efficient workflows possible so that our small studio doesn’t have to spend too many resources.

Here is a video detailing a few other things and with better explanations:

I hope you have enjoyed my work so far! Until next time!