There was a request for a pressure plate switches, and gates that would open once the fully suppresses the switch to the ground.
The switch needed to provide feedback to the player indicating they were affecting the plate. The solution I came up with was to add lights to the top and sides of the pad, so I created a shader for the lights which was driven by channels provided by the systems controlling the status of the switch.
When the player was making progress on the pressure plate the lights would blink. When there was no progress on the switch the lights were yellow, and the closer the player is to completing the press the more blue the shader tints. Once the task is complete, the shader fades out to look like unlit glass.
Switch at start
Switch near end
Switch completed
Once the pressure plate is depressed the gate opens. I rigged and animated this gate, and added sparks around the top edge to give the indication of metal scraping as it raises up.
In the Tangled Shore we needed a new shader for the bubble shaped windows found throughout the destination.
The window shader needed to be flexible to create a lot of variety in the environment without creating many unique shaders.
This window contained two main elements, interior depth and interior brightness. Interior depth made the light look further deep back into the area using parallax values, and brightness changes the intensity of the light or if the light is on at all within the room.
By giving the artist's these options they made the various windows throughout the environments feel lived in and natural.
For Destiny 2 Forsaken's Prison of Elder's Mission "Last Call" I helped create various elements found throughout the mission. One of the elements I helped create were machines that are infected by Hive. The player needs to shoot off the hive infestation to repair the machine. The machines also serve as spawning locations for combatants during the combat, so the physics meshes had to be modeled and designed in a manner that allowed the enemies to smoothly climb up from below the machine, while preventing the player from falling down into the machine.
The machine was rigged and animated flexibly so that the designers could quickly iterate to create an activity that has a lot of variety without creating an excessive amount of unique assets. Each instance of the machine needed to be controlled and animated independently, and the height at which the elements would raise also needed to be variable and controllable via script. The machine needed to have three animated elements; central machinery elements, a shield facing the interior of room, and a shield facing the exterior of room. To facilitate the independent movement of these three elements I implemented a layered animation system to play any of 3 animations additively upon one another. Particle effects of steam exhausting from the machine were added to draw the player's eye, give weight to the process of this massive machine raising.
The central machinery element is where the Hive infestation is located. The machine needed to be setup in a manner where the infestation would receive damage while the metal elements would not. The infestation also would not receive damage until it is risen to prevent splash damage from damaging the infestation before it was appropriate. The shields would serve the purpose of blocking certain shot lines and splash damage.
The hive infestation element required shader effects applied on top of the opaque mesh. One shader was a pulsing fresnel glow to indicate the infestation was susceptible to damage, and when the player causes damage the intensity and falloff of the effect would increase to give the player feedback indicating damage was dealt.
The above screen captures were taken from this video, and the sequence begins at 12:12 into this video, https://youtu.be/sPQGm6WWrnE?t=732
I was asked to create a toxic sludge water shader for Destiny 2 Forsaken. To do this I needed to work closely with the designers as well as the concept and environment artists to create a look for the water which met the needs of both gameplay and visuals.
Environment Art by Alex Stockwell
Environment Art by Nate Sartain
Besides the shader requirements I needed to create a kit of additional visual elements for grounding this toxic water in the environment. This included an iridescent decal that could add that oily look to the surface in certain areas. Fizzing debris rising up from the ground below the water, causing bubbles and splashing with normal scaling water ripples on the surface, and ultimately steam rising up from the water. Lighting had to be applied from below the surface, and a volumetric fog was placed above the water's surface to provide density to the particle effects which would be too expensive in overdraw to achieve the same low laying density above the water.
The gameplay also needed to be affected by this toxic water, as the water was traversable and would have different affects on players, and vehicles. The player is damaged with a new damage type accompanied by screen space and third person effects when in the water, while the vehicles do not receive damage but do cause the water to be displaced by the vehicles motion.
