AION2 Art Director Explains Building The World And Characters For Flight
AION2's art pipeline was designed around a camera that spends long stretches behind the character and above the ground, which is why the studio tuned Unreal Engine 5 lighting and rendering for flight rather than for static ground-level views.
Reporting from 3 sources: 4Gamer.net, Denfaminicogamer, Automaton.
AION2 launched free-to-play on PC via Steam and PURPLE on October 5. The sequel to The Tower of AION is set in Atreia 200 years after the Tower's collapse, with a world NC says is 36 times the size of the previous game. Art director Cha Bong-seop told Automaton that free flight shaped the art: players see the back, hips, legs, and wings up close, so characters and terrain are built to be viewed from many heights and angles.
Cha Bong-seop, the art director on AION2, said the team adjusted Unreal Engine 5 lighting so characters and backgrounds blend with their surroundings instead of reading as separate from them. The world is built to look continuous into the distance, because players can climb high and see far. The studio did not run UE5 features such as Nanite, Lumen, and VSM at default settings, instead reworking the rendering pipeline for the game's wide fields and flight. The stated goal is a middle ground between reality and fantasy, so costumes, wings, characters, and backgrounds sit together.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 3 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.