Almost every gamer has heard of Overwatch and I got the chance to play in the open beta in the beginning of May 2016. I admit I was skeptical of the game, but from all the information I had seen it was quite beautiful aesthetically, so I gave it a whirl and had an absolute blast. As a 3D artist and often responsible for turning an artstyle into reality, I was intrigued by how they managed to get that awesome pixar look, and running silky smooth.This led me to start jotting down notes about things I noticed – eventually I had so many I figured I’d compile them and share them with the community. All of this was simply my own observation. I had no part in the creation of Overwatch.

Material Production

I believe (but don’t know for sure) that Overwatch was a testbed for moving into a PBR (Physically Based Rendering) workflow, using modern rendering technologies to reach for the film or Pixar look. Delving into the texture maps the game uses we can see plenty of maps that could very well be metalness or roughness maps.

Blizzard have a long history with engine tech and blending materials from Starcraft and WoW, and they made use of this knowledge here to milk the most out of their materials in Overwatch. They layer different materials together to create organic and natural surfaces – from puddles and dirt in the cobblestones, to sand catching in bricks and moss growing up rocks.

This use of blending is empowering to an environment artist who likely needs to work with tiling textures and a few static props yet cannot afford to let the scene feel stale.