Environment Lighting in KSP2's Mission Control
Professional - Senior Technical Artist - Kerbal Space Program 2
Summary
Being hired on as a Senior Tech Artist at Intercept games, one of my first contributions to Kerbal Space Program 2 (KSP2) was to relight the Mission Control scene for the upcoming ‘For Science!’ update.
The Mission Control scene in KSP2 is one players are meant to return to regularly during their campaign in Exploration mode.
The Work
Up to this point in the game’s development, interior lighting and shading had not been needed, so it was not yet developed. I decided to write a new HLSL shader that could render with lightmapping.
And after referencing initial art direction and some earlier work, I then re-lit the Mission Control scene to convey narrative.
Senior Tech Artist, Jonathan Cioletti, got me up to speed with the game’s custom lighting architecture and helped me implement those
The final Mission Control scene in Kerbal Space Program 2. This scene became available after the ‘For Science!’ update release.
systems to the new HLSL shader I wrote for this scene. The initial composition and design for the scene created by Rafael Gonzalez, and the scene art direction was overseen by Mike Sawicki and Kristina Ness. The scene was initially built by Paul Zimmer and Jonathan Cooper.
Lighting Setup Before Re-Work
Original Concept Illustration
The original design and comp was sketched out, in part, for a storyboard.
The original illustration included UI layout. This was a rough sketch intended only to communicate menu layout and what narrative the environment is telling. No direction on lighting or CMF. This illustration was created by Rafael Gonzalez.
This image illustrates the state of the environment before I took over to get the scene to a finished and polished shot.
This screenshot from the Unity Editor demonstrates the state of the scene when I took over the environment. It was lit using only real-time lighting, broken reflections, and there were many material issues and minor performance inefficiencies.