Constructo Shotgun Maps, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
The Constructo Weapons were a huge team effort. Designed to be 3 weapons (pistol, shotgun, bomb glove), each of which had three slots with three optional parts each. So, three guns, each one requiring the art for 3 assets plus a new custom shader and UI. Each one could be configured 27 different ways! Players loved these.
Here is a bit of the behind the scenes. Color map is grayscale. This is so that the player can choose the colors of primary, secondary, trim, and light colors. We also made and named some combos out of the box so players had quick choices that looked good (always a fear that when you let players make art in your game, that it'll be ugly and they'll blame you for it--see Bethesda's character creation systems and player whining). The super saturated map is the mask that told the shader where to apply each of the custom colors in an operation on the grayscale map to create the final color. Lots of work.
Constructo Shotgun color map. This was the base, and the player selected a color in the UI for main, secondary, trim, and lights.
Constructo shotgun normal maps. They were all cast on one huge sheet, and then I cut them into the in game maps at the proper size.
Constructo Shotgun specular map.
Constructo Shotgun incandescent map.
Constructo Shotgun mask with UVs overlayed. This was the map that designated which areas were affected by the custom colors the players chose. Thanks, Abdul Bezrati for the awesome shader.
Here's what it looked like all rendered in game. The colors are much richer than a tint would have been. Abdul's shader was better than that :D