By adding a lerp between two values for the Radius, Paul created a way to fade levels in/out.

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Global Parameters can then be used to set the location of the sphere mask for portal transitions.

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We relied heavily on UE4’s sequencer to give us the flexibility we needed to create this seamless load. The transition is composed of three sequences:

Intro – Falling into the bed.

Loop – Falling through the black dream space, we needed variable length to accommodate for load times on slower machines.

Outro – Landing in the new dream as it materializes around the character.

To do this visually, we first needed to wipe away the world using animated global material parameters. These material parameters were hooked to the world mask, so changing one value would wipe out or in all the materials in the scene.

In the background, Rob did a lot of heavy lifting to build out the systems that would utilize Unreal’s level streaming tech to support our procedural generation. Here you can see the loading that is occurring in the background as the Dreamfall sequence plays through during level generation.

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The goal was to leave the game and rendering threads available to run the sequences and effects needed to let us create what you see here.

This was one of the more technically challenging and collaborative pieces that we worked on. All of us had large parts to deliver in order to achieve the effect we wanted.

VFX

Generally, the VFX is done fairly ad-hoc. In the beginning, we spent some time trying out different styles until we landed on a more particle heavy, ethereal vibe. Much of where the VFX styling comes from is through the world that Paul has built.

Having a strong visual touchstone has helped inform the other visual elements of the game, like the VFX and UI.

But ultimately we didn’t spend too much time getting the VFX styling perfect in the beginning. As a small team trying to work as fast as possible, we haven’t had much time to frontload the visualization process for VFX. Instead, we looked at it iteratively and have continued to update and tune the styling as our game has grown.

That being said, having some core pillars to hang our hats on, so to speak, have helped guide the direction throughout the process. For instance, we knew we wanted the VFX to pop because it was important that the game feels really satisfying and VFX is a large component of that. We also knew that we wanted it to fit with the dreamy, more ethereal styling of the world, so there was some balance that needed to be done there.

We make heavy use of UV distortion, transparency, and smaller, softer particles to help define a style that feels otherworldly.

Lighting

Lighting has been a relatively straight forward process with some caveats for our procedural levels.

We wanted our shadows to be soft and ambient and objects to feel grounded in the world. UE4 makes this very easy. Using a directional light with Area Shadows gave us soft, diffuse shadows.