Paperverse Direct 2023
Shaders and Lighting
With quite a few artists of all backgrounds, styles and experience on board, it was a challenge to get really good lighting involved! Since lighting requires a lot of different technical texture maps, one work around was to create those technical maps based off of color data. Going at this aspect with the shader I wanted to ensure this could be re-used in future installments while maintaining the paperverse charm and still be doable from even a new artist!
Transparency is always difficult to get right, especially when dealing with a ton of varying effects (especially with paper doll rigs!), so fine tuning how it renders while depth testing helps ensure everything shows up correctly, including expressions and facial features! Setting up the lights was the easier part, going for a three point system and utilizing lighting layers to really control just how each light and object is effected! Finally adding on some soft color correction in post processing to really tie everything together.
Demo Disk Launching
One huge addition to the direct this year was their demo disk! With over 20 games, I had to work with a lot of teams to inquire, help direct, receive and put in their art and information. The creative team behind the disk settled on a plugin that would get us close to the aesthetic we wanted after collaboration. Utilizing custom code to get the asset the rest of the way in what the production team wanted.
Utilizing prefabs, prefab variants and custom inspectors to ensure any changes done over the course of production could be fast and painless. Making a manager have all the helper functions for buttons to ensure they could be hooked up to appropriate methods and transitions much easier! The launcher was made entirely in Unity.
