I'm not gonna lie to ya, working on an arcade game was definitely on my bucket list

Unreal Engine 3   ||   Bandai Namco   ||  Really Awesome Arcade Cabnet

The development of these shaders was sparked by Mindwalk and proposed to the client. The goal was to make work as easy for our artists as possible (and ideally not tedious). We were primarily doing work on Endor and Hoth. The idea of adding the moss and snow into the levels through a shader seemed like low hanging fruit. The client had very few requirements,

-- The instruction count must be reasonable 

-- Integrating the shaders must be a seamless drag and drop solution 

Hoth - Z-Axis Based Snow Shader

This shader was the biggest challenge. We wanted a shader that would make set dressing easy and not require the artists to paint in snow by hand. This shader can gradually and seamlessly, at the shift of a slider, change from a light frost in the crevices of the normal map into a mound of snow that obscures the geo. The snow always sits on top.

Planet Shader

This shader is a somewhat complex layered shader. 

- - Ground Layer and Atmospheric Layer are separate. 

- - The Atmospheric Layer has an procedural drop shadow.

- - The Atmospheric Layer can pan in any direction and can be animated.

- - The Drop Shadow has configurable opacity, distance, and color.

- - All maps blend appropriately based on the settings in the Atmospheric Layer

Endor - Layered Shader

This is probably the most basic. The artists found that when doing moss, grass, ivy, and other foliage for Endor that they wanted to be able to hand paint where all of it was rather than have it procedurally placed. A mask based layer system was appropriate here. Everything blends according to the greyscale mask.