Systems
This section highlights several major game systems I contributed to, most notably the character creation system, blood buildup, and dirt buildup.
Each video focuses on a system that leaned heavily on art, since the visual result was so important to The Outer Worlds 2. My responsibilities included asset direction, feedback, and quality control throughout development.
Final decisions were always deferred to our Art Director, but we had a very senior team and were given a lot of freedom to take ownership of the final 3D forms. As long as we stayed true to the spirit of the art direction and concept work, we were trusted to find the best way to bring each system and asset to life.
A character creation system is a massive undertaking. It would be nearly impossible to call out everyone who contributed, so I’ll focus specifically on what the art team handled.
While the system still had The Outer Worlds skeleton underneath it, we bent it pretty heavily to our will for The Outer Worlds 2. We revamped nearly every part of the visual pipeline, including eyes, skin, hair, and the overall range of customization options. Every character artist contributed to the final result, working within technical guidelines developed with our tech artist for the different systems involved.
One contribution I can speak to directly is the skin shader, which I authored and maintained throughout the entire project. Getting all of the customization features working together was a huge team effort involving art, engineering, and UI. Once that initial implementation was complete, I continued maintaining and refining the shader through the rest of production.
Another contribution I made directly was developing the head texture-authoring pipeline we used to keep character textures consistent across the project. The entire team adopted that workflow and continued using it through the end of production.
In the end, we used this system to create every non-major NPC in the game—several hundred characters in total. Nearly all of them had speaking parts, so they still needed to hold up visually alongside the major NPCs and companions.
I’m particularly proud of the blood buildup system because it was an initiative I pushed for and helped get into the game. The system was driven entirely by the art team, working closely with one of our VFX artists to build a demonstration that showed the broader team the idea was both achievable and worth pursuing.
To keep the scope manageable, we limited the effect to the player’s hands and the striking surfaces of melee weapons. That allowed us to create the system with a relatively simple blood mask combined with VFX hit detection.
The first two demonstration videos show how we could progressively build up the mask and change its color. In the final game, the blood color could also change depending on the type of enemy the player was hitting.
The gameplay video shows the finished effect working in-game.
The dirt buildup system was also almost entirely art-driven. The effect was much more subtle than the blood system, but it helped ground the characters and make them feel more connected to the exterior environments.
To keep the scope manageable, we limited the number of dirt colors the system supported. Most of the work was handled collaboratively by the character and VFX teams.