With It We Leave is a work-in-prrogress narrative horror game with a planned release in May 2026. It’s our flagship graduation project with a team of 16 where I’m working as a Technical Artist. Stay tuned for periodic updates!
Material and Shader Development
Since the environment is mostly assembled from modular pieces, parametric shaders that other artists can make multiple variations of is key.
I created multiple materials in Substance Designer that I imported directly to UE5 using the plugin. These were then used in surface shaders or decals.
Tiles
Many surfaces in the environment are based on tiles, for which I developed a procedural shader in Unreal. Alongside the common PBR maps, I added an output for an extra mask map in Substance Designer. I used flood fill to generate a random gradient map, and a position map for the tiles.
In Unreal I could use the tile position map as a noise input to generate a random greyscale value for individual tiles without repetition. This is the base for hue or lightness variation, along with a random tile mask introduced later in the shader.
I used the noise generated earlier with the random gradient map and another world space noise to create a chipped or broken tile effect.
The same principle could be reused for a couple other materials in the game levels.
Dynamic Volumetric Fog
For one of the main mechanics, I created a fog system that the player and items in the game could interact with it. I used compute shaders in Niagara to draw to 3D render targets, that I then sampled from a volume material.