THE FINALS - Kyoto - Spring

Working on Kyoto for the THE FINALS was the realization of a long time dream of mine, doing a map set in Feudal Japan, with all what that entails.
Together with Johan Jeansson I had responsibility for bringing Kyoto to life for THE FINALS, although, as always most of the art team pitched in at one point or another during the creation process. More specifically I was responsible for creating all nature related content for the level. Scans, textures, setting up Landscape, shaders and creating all vegetation etc.

Everything was created from scratch using our own raw content gathered at a scan trip we took to Japan before we started working on the level.

Kyoto is a city that is famous for pretty much all of its seasons, the cherry blossom in spring, the striking red colors of the maple trees in autumn, the odd contrast of a snowcovered Arashiyama Bamboo Forest.
So when starting on the content I had the idea of being able to support all of these seasonal changes at the click of a button, so the virtual representation of Kyoto in THE FINALS, could mirror the real Kyoto as it changed with the reasons in real life.

Everything was created with this in mind and I set up a simple Seasonal Shader to support this, changing leaves to blossoms in spring, adding striking red colors in autumn and removing all leaves, adding a snow cover and freezing all lakes in winter.

I will make a separate post to show off each season!

It was a ton of fun to me to do this map, it came with some challenges but in the end I am happy with the result we produced, the fact that we got it to run within budget on the PS4 is proof that we did our job I think.

I am only a bit sad that it has become pretty much everyone's most hated map in the game, but that's life :)
I am proud of what we produced.