Lighting

Moonrise was very different from our previous title, State of Decay. It was a mobile creature battler for iOS, Android, and PC, and as such had a much tighter set of performance constraints than what we were used to on Xbox 360. The art style also differed from SoD, being much closer to that of a Studio Ghibli movie than the gritty stylized realism to which we had grown accustomed. As the only lighting artist on the team, I was responsible for developing the visual style as well as managing lighting performance.

After the first few environments were created, I ran some tests with different lighting treatments to allow for greater reuse of assets without users getting bored with visiting the same locations over and over. These lighting treatments were a big hit with the team. Altering the lighting dramatically altered the mood of each setting, and breathed additional life into each of the settings. There were plans to trigger game missions and events based on the lighting treatments before the game ultimately got cancelled.