FRACKED: The Skies of Fracked
We extended the hand painted, comic book look of the environments to the skies themselves - a big challenge for our concept artists as this was usually a VFX team task, but luckily we're fast learners! We explored 360 panoramic sky creations, painting them in 2D via Photoshop, maintaining the broad, painterly brushwork you've come to know. We then went on to visualise skies that felt dynamic and vibrant, helping to nail the time of day when combined with lighting, while also having the benefit of being extremely efficient and simple skyboxes to help maintain framerate.
In this section, we look at the various skyboxes created for the game (viewable in pseudo 360) as well as some of the techniques used to create them.
"The Chase" panoramic 360-degree image showing the Sun dropping to the horizon at "Golden Hour."
To achieve this, we start by using a grid in Photoshop to achieve the 360 view, showing what areas to concentrate on for detail to achieve the wraparound effect - which is very tricky!
Photoshop has a great 3D mode to help us paint over the grid lines.
Before we finalise the 360 skydome, we create a mock-up version to show how it would look in VR. Here's a rough version painted using Photoshop.
This is the final 360 main menu background in 2D form.
This is the first skybox seen during the "Another World" level in panoramic 360.
"Ski Storm" panoramic 360, the purples in the sky exude menace.
The "Power Grab" panoramic 360 stunningly captures a stylised halo around the moon, as well as the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, turning what could have been a fairly dull nighttime sky into something truly beautiful.
The "Grand Finale" panoramic 360 captures the dawn of a new day as the light casts swathes of pink across the snow. "Red sky in the morning" though - a bad omen, as the saying goes.