As Thomas prepares to make the pilgrimage to the Annecy Animation Film Festival and MIFA to present Norman’s Island to potential financiers and distributors, he’s happy with his choice to create in Unity. “For me as a small studio, it makes complete sense to be in a real-time environment. Roles can overlap because of streamlined tools and the time savings are huge.” This is particularly useful when you’re a two-person creative army.
The director worked his camera and character magic in a DCC software, and nearly all other tasks were handled inside the Unity Editor, including the set design, lighting, visual effects, and post-processing.
From a lookdev perspective, “getting everything to work inside Unity was very easy,” reported his partner, Sorochka. They created all the textures using Substance Painter. From there, the team used both Marmoset and Painter to bake maps (AO, Normal, Position, etc.) before creating basic materials like rust, scuffed-up paint and dirty glass.