The Bioshock Remastered Edition is literally the worst bait and switch in gaming history (hyperbole).

     I was really excited for the Bioshock Remastered edition, until I played it... I cannot begin to fathom what the developers were thinking as they showered us with pretty trailers and screenshots of upgraded effects and fancy new textures. Sure some of the textures are better and the lighting is nicer in parts of the game, but what I want to focus on is the opening.

What you see in the main menu

What the game actually looks like

     The opening moments of a game are one of the most important parts to get right.  Bioshock had a fantastic opening and from what we saw in the trailers (and the main menu!) they did a fantastic job of updating it with shiny new particle effects, a more detailed lighthouse, and a brand new super spiffy water shader... Then you load up the game and you get this:

The Main Menu vs In Game lighting, water, and  particle effects

     What...

UE4 Sand WIP 2

My desert environment has come a long way since my last update. It is a little hard to see in the gif but I am working on improving the animated sand texture. I think I might take a break from the desert environment and start blocking out the jungle.

UE4 Sand WIP

I decided to take a break from working on the Ocean shader to work on the sand VFX.

the ground texture still needs some work but everything else is starting to look the way I want.

UE4 Water WIP

I am working on an environment in Unreal Engine 4 and I have started making some progress on the water.

I am happy with the way it is turning out so far, However, There are two problems I am running into that are keeping me from progressing.

First, Unreal has some problems with the way it handles transparency so I am stuck with opaque water until I can find a good way to fix the transparency issues.

Second, I managed to get the waves to crest but I cannot seem to get them to crash back down in a convincing way. I have tried using a few different methods but non of them look the way I want it to.

Here is a bonus picture of my nightmare shader that I use to test new ideas.

And this is the cleaned up one...

Grass!

The last two months have been really busy between traveling to California for my brothers wedding and work.  It will take some time before I can post any regular updates since I have a lot of pictures and video to sort through. in the mean time here is a work in progress gif of a grassy scene I started working on.

Dark Souls x Limbo

I have been playing a lot of Dark Souls and last night I decided to make a Dark Souls inspired environment in a Limbo art style using Unreal Engine 4.

Environment gifs!

Here are some gifs of the environment I am working on.