Role: 3D Generalist • Studio: North Star Video Games • Period: Oct–Nov 2024 Platforms: PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch
Overview
When my initial work on Spray Paint Simulator, funded through the UK Games Fund, was completed, I was asked to stay on for an additional month to work on the Submariner DLC, this time funded directly by the developers.
I was responsible for creating the submarine model and designing the level, including developing the submarine and its different stages. I was also tasked with planning the wider environment, creating an initial concept for a dry dock and Maine-inspired fishing village surrounding the submarine.
The environment progressed through blockout and look development, but the direction of the DLC ultimately changed and the final release adopted a simpler underground submarine base environment.
My responsibilities
Submarine modelling – Designed and created the submarine as the central asset for the DLC.
Level design – Designed the submarine job and gameplay space, including the different stages of the painting process.
Environment design – Planned and developed the original dry dock and surrounding coastal fishing village.
Environment art – Created custom buildings and supporting environment assets based on Maine coastal references.
Look development – Established the visual direction, composition, scale and overall presentation of the original environment.
THE SUBMARINE
The submarine was the first DLC asset I worked on for the game, although the DLC itself wasn't released until some time after launch. I was responsible for designing and building it, taking it from the initial concept through to the game-ready asset and integrating it with the painting system. The original idea was fairly simple: paint a submarine yellow, taking inspiration from the famous Yellow Submarine without directly copying it.
This gave me some room to play with the design and push it towards something tangible, cartoonish and toy-like… the kind of small submarine you instinctively picture. Finding good reference for that particular silhouette was surprisingly difficult, so I used some of the early AI image-generation tools available at the time to explore silhouettes and proportions before developing the final design myself. I built the submarine initially as one large mesh before splitting it into construction panels, with each panel able to be treated independently by the painting system.
Technical
The painting mechanic had a significant influence on the technical setup. The submarine was built from 325 mesh objects and around 57K triangles, with three UV channels: one for spray-paint coverage, one for lightmaps and one for the standard texture workflow. The spray-paint UVs were laid out to maintain consistent pixel density across the paintable surfaces and accommodate the different stages of the job. I also created a separate masking system consisting of 277 objects and around 45K triangles for the paper and tape materials. To manage the UV workflow across the asset, I created Blender tools and scripts to automate unwrapping and switching between UV channels for Substance Painter and Unity.
Final Result
By the time the DLC was released, there had been some minor changes to the original job setup. The brief evolved from painting the submarine yellow to allowing the player to choose any colour, and the original four-stage painting process was removed.
In my own playthrough, I painted the submarine using the colours I had originally intended for the design, so it was nice to see the original idea come together in the finished game.
Final Result
Environment Development
The Dock
The original environment was planned as a small coastal town in the American Northeast, centred around a dry dock where the submarine would be located. I started by creating the dry dock itself, then built out the surrounding landscape and iterated through several different landscape layouts. With feedback, we settled on a more vertical town that stepped down towards the harbour, giving the level a stronger sense of elevation and making the dock the natural focal point.
Once the overall layout was established, I built out the town using a mixture of existing assets and new work. I reused buildings from the suburbs level and other existing environments, then created a number of custom buildings specifically for the harbour area. These reused the existing trim sheets and texture sets, with colour variation handled through the shaders. The new buildings were also set up to be paintable by the player, keeping them compatible with the game's core mechanic.
Final Direction
Although the environment progressed into a developed look-dev pass, the direction of the DLC changed during later development. The final release moved away from the coastal town and dry dock concept in favour of a simpler underground submarine base.
The work shown here represents the original environment direction and look development I created for the DLC, including the dry dock, harbour and surrounding town.
