Hollow Hills is a first-person exploration game where the player explores a national park after a mysterious disaster.

Hollow Hills was inspired by the look of cheap commercial printing techneques. I wanted to capture the feeling of being in the Mojave desert with a slightly blown-own, sunburnt and dusty look. The look relies heavily on a complex post-process which compresses far away detail and sharpens close-up detail with a thin outline.

The lighting is heavily stylized, not relying on any global indirect or directional lighting. Instead various custom lighting setups are transitioned between depending on the player’s location. The lightning is more ‘theatrical’ as a result, highlighting important elements or locations.

The sky and clouds were a particular focus. Along with the post-process, custom layered cloud shaders and instanced geometry work together to create a dense, painterly look.