Instead doing a total retexture, we only needed to replace select sets with respect to game designer's vision. Shadow of Chernobyl, however there was still a lot of room for refinement. Clear Sky features improved textures compared to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Other graphical enhancements include stunning new lighting effects, natural daytime/nighttime transitions, vivid sunsets/sunrises, redesigned emissions, a new high resolution nighttime constellation map, a full moon, and many other aesthetic improvements too numerous to list.

Once we returned to the studio we applied our graphic design expertise to edit our real-life environment captures to closely match the fictional in-game Zone environment. The original photographs used in this project were captured by our studio during our travels to the Russian industrial town of Mednogorsk, which represents how Pripyat once was. The most notable feature is the introduction of the brand new set of distant scenery textures that put the player in the middle of a large open world, rather than the previously “enclosed” map. This gave us a solid foundation for further enhancements, letting us focus solely on the design elements of the games’ art style and aesthetics. Clear Sky is a graphically improved prequel that integrates newer visual technology that we introduced in our previous mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Stalker clear sky complete