Visually deliberate — no shared DNA with Ashfall
- Palette
Deep green body, one gold focal
Cool green everywhere except the shrine, so the eye lands on the offering table without a single UI-style prompt.
- Light
Canopy as the light rig
God rays are authored by cutting the canopy, not by painting decals — the shafts move when the wind moves the leaves.
- Foliage
Scatter with intent
Geometry nodes scatter density by moisture and slope, then I hand-place the readable clusters around the path.
- Story
Someone still tends this
Fresh offerings, a swept step, a repaired railing — a maintained ruin, which is creepier than an abandoned one.
Greybox to dressed
GreyboxFinalSame camera, same focal point — only values and dressing changed after this frame was approved.
Readability passes
Foliage workflow
Species are authored once as three LODs, then distributed with geometry nodes using slope, ambient occlusion and a hand-painted moisture map as inputs. Wind is a single shared material function, so a change to gust timing updates every plant at once.
The readable foreground clusters are placed by hand — procedural scatter is for coverage, not for composition. Anything the camera lingers on gets art-directed.