![]() ![]() It made me feel like a small fish in a very large pool.Įven during the most spectacular moments the framerate was almost always consistent at 30 per second despite the density of life on screen. One of the more memorable speedways had me swimming alongside a pod of incredibly large whales. In certain places it speeds up, and high-speed channels function like highways that pick up the pace and push you into beautiful new territory. ![]() And while nothing (including some intimidatingly large sharks) wants to actually eat you, it’s still a fish-eat-fish world down here, and you can observe the convincingly recreated circle of life by meditating at a shark statue if you want.Ĭontinuing on my journey I slowly waded into ancient ruins or completely lit-up, cathedral-like structures, and enjoyed the leisurely pace. I was constantly wondering what I would find around the next bend, and each new area I discovered kept the surprises coming with fantastic architecture and some incredibly large spaces to swim in. I found myself traveling through its underwater rabbit hole into a strange, unfamiliar world full of cryptic iconography and ambient life such as fish, turtles, and whales. This journey feels remarkable because of the way it constantly dangles the next intriguing area in front of you. From seaweed swaying in the current to mysterious sunken shrines, each area shows off Abzu’s fantastic art direction, attention to detail, and an impressive sense of scale as you swim through enormous chasms under the sea. This was key to letting us render schools of tens of thousands of fish dynamically.Each area shows off Abzu's fantastic art direction and attention to detail.Ībzu’s intriguing underwater world is presented with little introduction – you’re a mysterious diver who awakens and begins to explore – but it generates enough mystery to propel you through a series of stunning locations. Most fish in the game were animated using mathematical motion in their materials alongside morph target posing, which freed them from needing expensive skeletal rigs. ![]() We took several different approaches, ranging from traditional skeletal animation running through a complex state machine for animating the diver, to completely procedural motion based on rope simulations and tidal forces for kelp forests and foliage. Our team had no dedicated animator, so we needed to be very smart about how we would bring the world of ABZÛ to life. However, the best thing was that we were able to extend the engine to create bespoke features specifically suited for rendering multitudes of fish, volumetric undersea murk and lightrays, procedural kelp simulations, among other things. Unreal has many powerful tools that we were able to take advantage of, like advanced material creation and rendering capability. Unreal Engine 4 was brand new at the time and after vetting other software we decided that we would go with it. We need to hit the ground running with tech and tools that could support his vision for a dense, vivid world. This approach worked very well in that it help us convey the essence of the creature, while simplifying less important details and reduced the noise.Īt the time that we started development on ABZÛ, the team was very small, it was just Matt. We very intentionally chose what we felt were the most iconic elements of each species and focused our design on those, the outcome being a stylized representation of the actual thing. ![]() However, when we studied them, we realized that each real-life fish is infinitely complex in the way it moves, acts, and looks. The hundreds of sea species in ABZÛ are all based on real creatures from oceans around the world. The stylized look was both aesthetic and also very functional in keeping the image parsable. Making sure that the overall image was still readable was an important factor even when designing the smallest elements of the environment. In many areas of the game, there are an overwhelming amount of things – fish, kelp leaves, ambient particles, seagrasses, corals. Visual noise versus clarity was a relationship that we had to balance carefully. That philosophy carried into the art style, which we tried to use to create the most iconic, memorable representation of fish, corals and other elements of the sea. The goal early on was not to simulate scuba diving, but to communicate the majestic “dream” of the ocean. ![]()
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