Vlad Oancea - Game Technical Art Showcase

Insoundiac

Overcome your greatest nightmares on the beat of the music in this Boss-Rush Rhythm-Shooter, Insoundiac, developed in Unreal Engine 5.

Enter the dream world as an Insoundiac agent, a unique kind of soldier trained in Dreamscape combat, traveling through the minds of comatose patients, in hopes of waking them by helping them defeat their inner fears and frustrations.

Channel your energy in sync with the tempo, as each mind pulses and operates on its own rhythm. Defeat the embodiments of their nightmares, represented by the Bosses, to free their consciousness!

This is a team project developed by 2 people, where I acted as director, programmer, technical artist, and game designer. I was responsible for programming the entire gameplay logic and systems within Unreal Engine 5, handling the procedural animation configuration and implementation, as well as contributing to the gameplay design of the project.

The game can be downloaded and played here: https://wantcha.itch.io/insoundiac

Overgrown

Overgrown is a Sci-Fi puzzle-exploration game, with narrative touches, following the quest of a small drone rebooting a century after the fall of a highly technologically advanced society, only to find the mechatronic world around it overtaken by nature and time. The player has to navigate through the debris of the environment and solve puzzles by manipulating the ancient machinery around, as well as using technological parts to either upgrade themselves or interact with the environment in various ways. As the player reaches the top floor of the factory they've been exploring, they finally see the true wreckage of the city, and the game ends with a powerful earthquake hitting the building.

Within this team project, I have had to wear many hats, handling the general and technical direction, the game/level design, the programming, the shader development, lighting, custom tool creation, as well as the cinematic work. I lead the team through the whole game development pipeline and took care of assembling everything in Unreal Engine 4, from the gameplay logic to the procedural animation, UI, audio, VFX, and assets. The rest of the team was responsible for the preproduction as well as most of the environment art asset creation process.

I have also created documentation for all of the aspects of the development process, describing asset creation rules and indications in order to create optimized and game-ready resources as efficiently as possible, as well as creating custom tools in Houdini to save time by making use of proceduralism.

The game can be downloaded and played here: https://wantcha.itch.io/overgrown

Houdini Procedural Destruction Tool

Houdini Engine Vine Generation Tool

Level Lighting

Blindspot

Project Blindspot is a first-person action-stealth game demo, where you play as a blind operative trying to use their enhanced senses to escape the dangerous environment they found themselves in.

The project was developed solo in Unreal Engine 4 with the logic programmed in blueprints. All the effects and assets were created by myself from scratch, with the exception of the sound and the enemy soldier animations.

The demo contains 2 playable levels and bases itself around the sound visualization mechanic. The player has a throwable weapon that will bounce exactly 3 times before returning to their hand, each bounce generating sound to scan the area around. Enemy soldiers patrol the environment and will investigate foreign activity or engage the player if spotted. They can be avoided and sneaked past, by choosing to be stealthy or use the weapon's sound blast as distractions, or they can be faced directly, thus allowing different play styles to complete the levels. Additional powerups that aid with sight can be found throughout the areas.

Lightweight OpenGL Loader - Custom Realtime Render Engine

This is a 3D standalone software programmed in C++, using OpenGL as graphics API, and Qt as a GUI framework, allowing the user to quickly manage, render, and save 3D scenes. It serves as a lightweight render engine, using the Physically Based Rendering shading model, and supports features such as:

- Mouse picking, 3D transformation gizmos, and selection outlines

- PBR shading with customizable textures and parameters

- Directional and Point lights

- Multiple shadow casters

- HDR environment lighting

- Scene saving and loading

- Rendering images to disk with custom resolutions

The source code for the project can be found on my GitHub at: https://github.com/NCCA/cfgaa22-Wantcha

The models used in the presentation videos have not been developed by myself.

Robotify - Houdini/Unreal

Procedural Mechanization Tool

Robotify is a procedural hard-surface modeling tool made inside Houdini and made available to use directly from Unreal Engine 4 through Houdini Engine.

The output produces a game-optimized model, ready to be used in-engine, or exported for texturing or further refinement. It is designed with the purpose of quickly generating Sci-Fi or robotic parts to be used as props in the environment.

The tool aims to provide the user with a customizable and robust interface that allows them to turn any base mesh into a mechanized version of it. Using the input mesh, you can specify one of 3 different styles of mechanical designs to use as a base, after which you can add and configure an indefinite amount of layer overrides to customize the details, features which can either deform the mesh, such as insets and extrusions or simply place extra geometry on top, such as wires and other shapes.