Creating Environmental Atmosphere with Visual Effects

A visual effects artist’s work is most noted when an explosion is triggered, a weapon is fired, or an object is broken. More recently effects have been able to be more than a visual indicator in a cause and effect scenario like the firing of a weapon. I think the most important effects become part of what the player does not notice consciously, those which help to create a credible and immersive atmosphere.
Much of this atmosphere is created with particle effects. Traditionally effects have been expensive to render, and are difficult to use effectively due to costs related to overdraw and CPU calculation costs. With the advent of current generation game consoles with powerful GPUs and SPUs, many new techniques have been implemented which allow for the intelligent use of effects to add feeling and movement to even the most basic scene in any game.

Take this scene; you can find it in many first-person shooters today. The path is a relatively typical dimly-lit hallway which the player uses to travel from one encounter to the next. Through the use of effects, even this simple hallway can take on new life with the addition of simple GPU-driven particle simulations.

The movies shown in this diary showcase the base scene with no visual effects first, then fade the effects in to demonstrate how visual effects can add life to any scene.

Effects are also incredibly effective when it comes to creating mood via natural looking weather conditions. This scene from the Village takes place early on in Singularity where we want to create a sense of mystery and intrigue. The base scene geometry sets the tone with lighting, texturing and general animation; add more GPU driven rain systems, blowing debris, dripping water, and the scene feels complete.

Another example of weather effects giving the world more life can be seen in this movie taken from our E99 Processing level. This area of Katorga-12 has been highly impacted by the extraction and processing of E99 found only on the island. The weather here needed to compliment the harsh architecture and industrial feel. The air is filled with dust and debris, while the malfunctioning equipment produces fires and random flare ups. Again note the difference in the environment once effects have been set dressed in the scene.

Effects are a powerful way to help just about any scene come to life via subtle movement and volumetric depth. Below are two more quick movies showing fire and water effects which help sell a moment in the game via idle emitters which run indefinitely and act more as reinforcement to the events taking place in the game. In scene one a recent helicopter crash, and in scene two the slow degradation and flooding of a cargo ship the player navigates.

Finally, effects often need to work with the environment to create dangerous surroundings. This event happens to be a building fire, through which the player must find his way. This particular series of events presented several challenges from an effects standpoint. First, using particle systems to represent all of the fire needed simply would not work from a performance standpoint. We made the decision early on to utilize an animated texture page with an extremely cheap material mapped to the surface of a mesh to limit overdraw and boost performance as much as possible. We wanted the fire to wrap the surface which is burning, and using meshes proved to be a great way to achieve this result.

First, scene geometry was exported and brought into Maya, and models referred to as “cards” were generated to match the general shape of the scene geometry. The cards used as few vertices as possible to keep the models cheap, affording us the ability to use lots of them. These cards were then exported and placed in Unreal, each model scaled and rotated to give a slightly different look.

The models with the grey checker pattern in the image below are the “cards” which are then referred to as static meshes once imported into Unreal.

In this image you can see the effect when the proper fire material is applied and particles and post process are enabled.

The movie below shows the different elements and rendering steps which go into creating the environmental effects you see in the burning building images.

As you are playing through Singularity it is my sincere hope that you might not ever notice all of these subtle elements contributed by the Visual Effects team. We hope instead you feel the island come alive, and get a sense of what it is like to live on Katorga-12, our home away from home while we crafted the Island.

Tim Elek
Senior Visual Effects Artist
Raven Software