A love letter to Silent Hill...

I have always loved horror and some of my favorite games are horror games. But my #1 favorite game of all time, undisputed even after all these years, is Silent Hill 2. This little project is a combination of personal work and class work (for my Game Shader Creation class) whose result is a love letter to my favorite game (and series if I'm being honest). The room model, candles, hall lamp and body bag are all 3rd party and were not authored by me. That said, all textures were created and authored by me using Photoshop, Substance Alchemist, Substance Painter, Quixel Mixer and Megascans. Materials were then built by me in Unreal and applied to the objects and surfaces. I then lit the scene, set up the triggers and SFX (most are from soundsnap but there are a few pulled directly from SH2). Finally, the "Toxic" is a monster I sculpted and painted as a personal project in Zbrush. I integrated it as a means of learning SSS materials in Unreal 4, thus its skin has sub-surface (as well as the candles). In the vein of Silent Hill monsters, the "Toxic" is very much meant to be a manifestation of neurosis and subconscious psychology...in this case, it is toxic masculinity incarnate - backward/twisted, bound/restrained, and regurgitates acidic bile from the wound/orafice in its head. Very much inspired by the "Lying Figure" monsters of Silent Hill 2. In any event, all of this is an homage and love letter. I hope to turn this into something more fully playable in time! Silent Hill 2 is copyright Konami and a bunch of legal stuff. Yada-yada-yada. Done as a student art project and not for distribution or sale.

[UPDATES!!] Finished retopo on the Toxic creature, rigged using AdvancedSkeleton and then animated an Idle and Walk which I then set up in an AI controller in Unreal 4. It now is triggered by a volume in the level and starts following the player once they step into that volume! Also, created another little monster called the Viral. This one was very much inspired by our current situation. This wee beastie was sculpted in Zbrush, painted in Substance Painter, rigged using AdvancedSkeleton, then animated in Maya and imported into Unreal 4. I repurposed the Toxic AI blueprint for this little guy so he also chases the player around! Next steps is to create more unique idles to randomly draw from as well as some walk variants. One big thing is to get these two creatures set up with their own unique AI blueprints so they both have unique sets of behaviors. Ideally, the Toxic is a ranged monster that runs away if too much damage is dealt to it; and the Viral is a swarming creature that just gangs up on the player and overwhelms with sheer baby monster numbers!