Vegetation Optimization, Lodding

Lately I've kind of done a 180 on my scene, and have been working hard to get my vegetation to not half the framerate (and I've nearly succeeded!).

Here are some images of how I'm doing the lodding:

I wanted to make the grass thicker as you moved closer to it, so I added a second layer that only appears when close to the camera,

The shader is set up so as to fade out the vegetation as you move away from the object, until the culling distance kicks in.

Video demonstrating this:

Update

Environment Personal Project Update

Lately I've been working a full time job at Dreamgate Studios, and it's great having a job in the industry as a junior (well, I suppose you could call this more of a soft launch of my career), but I've felt that my 3d skills have been lacking, so here's an update of the environment that I've been working on. I kinda scrapped the last Idea, then started again. Progress has been slow, as it is when you can only work at nights and on weekends, but it's starting to pick up just as my internship/junior position winds down. It's becoming more and more important, as my job is likely to end at the end of the year.

As fun as it's been, I've started to notice my texturing skills are really lacking, thinking of maybe doing some stylized hand painted stuff on a Sunday arfternoon. I've been using dDo to make my PBR bases, but you still need a fair amount of texturing ability to make something look good.

Fantasy Environment Blockout

Some recent block outs in UE4, not sold on the layout yet:

Fantasy Enviroment - Personal Work

I've started making a little fantasy environment to bulk up my portfolio. I've done a little concepting, but most of the concepts come from other people's concepts. Here are some of the concepts I've done (based off of a 3D block out I did).

Light in the Dark Cover Work

Here's a couple of pieces I did for the upcoming iOS, Android and Windows phone game "Light in the Dark". This is background work for a sell sheet (back when we were concepting the game), but some of it might find it's way in to the menu background art.

Here are the actual sell sheets, I only did the art for them, they were assembled by my coworker Adam Newman (http://adamnewmanart.blogspot.com.au/).

Light The Dark Concept Work

Recently I scored an internship at Dreamgate Studios (located in Canberra), making a content pack with a bunch of other interns for their game Light In The Dark. The internship takes over from my AIE course, so I (and the other interns) still have to fulfill all of the requirements from the course. 

It's been my first time working predominantly in 2D, which is kinda scary, but I feel I'm starting to pick up the art style, but it could be closer to their art style by lowering the frequency of what I've got, as there's a lot of extra noise that doesn't quite fit in with the detail level of their game.

Apart from that, plotting out the content pack [in terms of art direction and game mechanics], and learning Unity's texture 2D system has been kinda fun, as well as learning to work with programmers in a more professional capacity. Learning limitations of the engine and Unity's 2D system, and when and what people can actually do (especially myself) will be interesting in the following weeks.

Here are some of the concepts for our 'Ice' environment: