Star Citizen’s Around the Verse is back this week with a peek into what the UK team is working on: the notorious Polaris, the camera system revamp, and the Ursa Rover. But the highlight of the video is the behind-the-scenes look at Homestead demo, including the art and sound design process behind crashing a Javelin into the desert and tearing it apart in a believable and organic way. Cloud Imperium says that it was inspired by moodboards of abandoned military ships and cargo liners — plus Star Wars Episode VII and Max Max — when creating the setting.
“We had to think how the sand would build up on the surfaces and how you get it to look as though the ship is no longer pristine and clean and it’s been out in the sun for years, kind of rusting away. So we made use the blend shaders in CryEngine to kind of blend from the originally paneling that was already there on the Javelin and blended that into either rust or into sand, and the way we approached it was the exterior hull of the ship, that was kind of sandy and as though the exterior of the ship would be treated so it would withstand the elements as it were, but then everything that was exposed from the interior, that was just rusting away and decaying and that was the way we approached it. So that as you revealed the innards of the ship you could see it kind of dying over time.”
The nifty part starts around 17 minutes in, but the whole episode is below.
