Grapple Star
by Left Turn Studios, LLC.
https://www.leftturnstudios.com/
Unpublished Game Demo
Role: VFX Artist, Technical Artist
2022-2023
Prototype/demo of a space exploration game with grapple-based movement.
Players pilot a spaceship with only thruster control and a grapple beam. Grappling to an asteroid or space debris allows the players to pivot around it and change direction through an obstacle course.
Contributions:
Players pilot a spaceship with only thruster control and a grapple beam. Grappling to an asteroid or space debris allows the players to pivot around it and change direction through an obstacle course.
Contributions:
- Ship model with custom shader
- Ship thruster VFX with glowing wings on the ship's shader when boosting
- Post-processing effects
- Camera setup including 2 composited cameras to preserve transparency sharpness with depth of field
- Level select screen including UI elements, background, particles, and other assets.
- Grapple beam VFX and state machine
- Reticle UI
Depth of field transparency challenge
Transparent objects with smooth alpha are not written to depth (with limited exceptions), so when applying a depth of field post-processing effect, objects with transparency are often blurred as if they are in the far distance, no matter where they actually are. This creates an issue where you have to make concessions either with the transparencies or with the DoF.
My solution for having depth of field blurring for the background while maintaining the sharpness of the transparent VFX in the foreground was to have two cameras. One camera renders the background with the Post-processing, and then the second camera only renders the foreground, and then Cinemachine composites these together. This is achieved with layer tags on a parent game object, all using native functionality of the Cinemachine plugin.
My solution for having depth of field blurring for the background while maintaining the sharpness of the transparent VFX in the foreground was to have two cameras. One camera renders the background with the Post-processing, and then the second camera only renders the foreground, and then Cinemachine composites these together. This is achieved with layer tags on a parent game object, all using native functionality of the Cinemachine plugin.
Level Select UI
Created assets and composed UI including scripting functionality for the level select screen. Uses a variety of 3D objects, particle systems, and procedurally animated 2D assets. I created everything in this scene, which is based on the below concept art by Rowan Sherwin. I also set up the UI canvas with clickable objects and actions, and script to populate text fields and enable/disable certain objects based on which planet was selected.