Pinnit4

Yes, hahaha... YES!


hi there again!

I'm a gamedev at Brainwash Gang,

making Friends vs Friends and other
nice stuff.

Way too tired to be active anywhere

Maybe not so tired after all, huh

https://pinnit4.itch.io
https://pinnit4.bandcamp.com

the coolest duck in history


obscureenvironments
@obscureenvironments

It might be a little obvious to start with a triple-A game, but folks. Sometimes in games they have the budget to splurge on rocks, (whereas smaller games sometimes buy them from the asset store), and I wanna talk about SoT's rocks. Because they went LAVISH with their rocks.

(little sidenote: nothing bad about buying pre-made assets from stores! they're equally gorgeous AND time saving. i just wanna highlight a game with a variety of rocks!)

There are a lot of things I'll talk about this game-- I'll split this first game in two-ish posts so it doesn't take forever. This post will be about the rocks and the sand textures in the game!


For a lot of big sized teams all things go through multiple hands, so it's hard to pinpoint the exact artist, but regardless: these folks have made so many rocks its nuts. Multiple rock kits!

You've got flat rock faces for cliffs, with huge indents in it so they are interesting to look at and pick up lights from most angles. You've got column-shaped rocks, you've got pieces with pointy bits that you can put on top of your formations so it's a nice triangle shape you can look at from afar and be pleased. It's great!!! It makes me very excited to see that they went this hard--they're communicating the vibe and feel of the different islands through rocks even! That's so cool!

Just look at the shape language they employ with the rocks.

A closeup screenshot of rocks in a beach in Sea of Thieves. They're a group of small and medium sized rocks, mostly soft, with some hard faces here and there. Friendly rocks.

These are some rocks you find in the friendlier outposts. Despite having flat faces and edges, their overall silhouette is soft. Even their edges have been softened--they're not 100% sharp, but rather beveled to smooth the transition. You could say these rocks are friendly. I look at them and go, ah! Shaped like a friend. I am safe.

A screenshot of a rock arch and cliffs on an island in sea of thieves. The sky is darkening, and the rocks are menacing, jagged, and sharp. They cover most of the island.

Found this island by accident--this was my first time navigating a ship and I had no idea what I was doing, ended up going in the opposite direction and found this very scary island that tried to fuck me up.

Now compare our friend rocks with these spicy rocks I found in an island. Aside from the moody ominous lighting, the planes are sharper and easier to differentiate. The hard edges are accentuated both by the light and shadows, as well as the edge highlight in the color itself. They're chipped away in places, and they point at themselves and around the island that's almost engulfed by rocks. This place is scary! I probably should keep an eye out.

It's super effective!! These little details add a lot to the mood, y'all. That's why I'm a little sad when people say that just one rock is good enough. It CAN be, but going the extra mile when you can is fun AND adds to the overall experience. Rocks can tell stories!!

A screenshot of a rock face in a cave in Sea of Thieves. It's a flat rock with rectangular, jagged edges.A screenshot of a rocky formation in a beach of Sea of Thieves. It's a larger, jagged and layered rock with smaller rocks nested on its sides. It's dynamic!
made with @nex3's grid generator

Look at how the rocks are constructed here! This is a pattern that repeats in a lot of the rocks of the game. They have straight edges, for the most part, and even the cracks and the differences in relief are straight-ish. There isn't a lot of crazy angles and face changes.

In my view, this serves two purposes: the first one is that it's a stylized game, and stylized art favors clean, unambiguous silhouettes with a lot of contrast! If you start adding a lot of microplanes and cracks, you end up with a harder-to-parse silhouette bogged down by details. This way is cleaner, and you can add extra subtle information in the texture itself-- there are notches and smaller lines carved in the rock face.

The second purpose: it's infinitely easier to retopo rocks that are mostly straight. Polygons are 1. straight and 2. square. If you make the planes straight, it's just a matter of placing a few polygons without much fuss. For rounder, or more complex-looking rocks, it'll be harder to make a functional and clean mesh. I know I have trouble with that myself! Simple is often best!

A close up screenshot of a rock cliff face in Sea of thieves. It's multiple rocks stacked together, some more flat, others rounder with deep cracks.

I encourage you to spend a little time inside the game just trying to break down the shapes of the rocks, and identify all the things that make it unique. Is it a single rock? Is it multiple rocks stacked together? Where do they meet? Did the artists color rocks differently in each island? It's a fun exercise!

Lastly, going back to the subtle detail: making simple topology and simple shapes for your rock doesn't mean that they'll be boring. Look at all the micro detail they're packing in: they're taking advantage of the normal map to include subtler cracks, notches, and pockmarks all over the rock surface. They also have subtle color variations: it's not just a dull ochre: they've got splashes of warm grey and even green hues here and there! They're very low opacity and mostly relegated to brushstrokes, but they also take some splatter shapes in darker and lighter colors to give the illusion of graininess and varied texture. It's genius!!

Enough about rocks for one post! What about the sand?!

Screenshot of the sand of sea of thieves. It's got small curved ridges that give variation in its texture, as well as rocks and shells peppered throughoutCloseup screenshot of sand in sea of thieves. It's a darker, wet sand that doesn't shine as much.sides. It's dynamic!
made with @nex3's grid generator

Check this shit out! When I first noticed the sand I GASPED because it's so rich! I wanted to highlight the sand texture in this game because it's so so well done. It's not just a flat color with some splotches. You've got subtle, curved, stylized ridges that add highlights and shadows and the hint of wind blowing, and you've got trusty old flat rocks that blend with the sand grains.

This might be that I'm a beginner when it comes to terrain textures, but. I cannot tell you how much I'd struggle to get something like this--in a good way! Sand is particularly tricky because you can't just hide the tiling details with grass or foliage. Sand is usually bare, and stretches for miles sometimes, so you bet you're going to see the same texture over and over for a while. And yet over here they've done clever layering AND selection of details. Some of the ridges aren't color information, but rather roughness-AKA how much light they reflect or absorb. That means that depending on where you're standing, and the angle of the light, some of these details vanish in favor for the flatter ground. It's great stuff!!

Even in darker hues for stormy weather and wetter sands it still works--despite being mostly flat terrain the swathes of color, they give the illusion of ridges and depth. The curves are sharper here and more chaotic; again, they're pushing shape language to the limit to make it more ominous. Great stuff.

Closeup screenshot of sand in sea of thieves.  In stronger light, the sand has glimmers that pop in and out of the texture As if that wasn't enough, in determinate lighting conditions you get these lovely, subtle glimmers that pop in and out. It's super subtle and reminiscent of that one scene in Journey that completely changed the way we depict sand in games. I appreciate that it's not a static roughness map (the dots would stay the same shape and size and only change in brightness when you move around), but rather a dynamic little texture where grains pop in and out. It's fantastical yet rooted in reality--I see this and go, ah yeah, that's what sand does. It glimmers! It comforts me!

And this is where I'll end this first, very long post. It's part one of two-- on the second post I'll talk a bit about the foliage, as well as some prop details that stood out. Hopefully it'll be a bit shorter but equally entertaining. When is it coming out? I have no idea. This one took me like an hour to write and layout, lmao!

I already have two other game details I want to talk about in the future....

If you read all the way down here and have rocks you'd like me to talk about, say "rocks rock!" and the game you want me to check out, and I'll consider it! Funds are limited but rocks are worth it, and I'd love to check out new rocks. :>


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in reply to @obscureenvironments's post:

ohhhh, i usually spend ages staring at skyboxes in games, so it's very fun to see a passionate look at a different angle of environments appreciation! lookin' forward to hopefully reading more of these!

(by the way, there's a Read More at the very bottom of the post, with nothing behind it, i presume it was meant to be placed a bit earlier in the post?? figured i'd mention that, lmao)