MASSIVE TALKING CHAPTER FIVE : GRAPHICS'''
Massive Entertainment Reveals
15, November, 2006
Interview With Art Director Gabriel Odgren and Lead Artist Magnus Larsson.
1. Which version of LW is used? Is LW9 compatible?
We currently work with lightwave 7.5 with our in-house tool, but it also supports some of the new features from LW8. Depending on changes made to the file format, LW9 might work to some extent to but we do not support it.
2. What has been your primary source of realistic models for the units and the landscapes we see in the game?
We investigate in detail to find out what military vehicles were used during the timeframe the game takes place and model them as correctly as possible from both photos and blueprint reference material. The Internet is naturally a good source for a lot of background material, but we also have a huge bookshelf with reference books. For The Nuke we have loads and loads of footage of actual nuclear tests, there are DVDs with this kind of stuff. Speaking about DVDs, we have a pile of these with everything from tanks to choppers on them.
As if this wasn’t enough, we travel to places to take our own photos too. This is mostly useful when it comes to maps and landscapes, but we do take the time to visit different museums while we are on the road. Mostly military museums of course.
The landscapes are basically designed after the same principle; a lot of research, Internet, maps, books, DVDs and then we send a photo team to the key locations too. Needless to say, feature films play a part in all this. We look at the Bourne series for inspiration of Russia, for instance.
3. How many people currently make up the 3d-modelling team and art team - respectively?
We are several different teams for different task: The in-game Art team that makes the units, houses and other props consists of 13 people today. The level design team responsible for the map design and props placement is 5 people, and the cinematics / cut-scenes team is currently 12 people.
Everybody has a solid experience from the industry or a relevant exam. Or both.
4. Do you see your job as trying to primarily feed into the gameplay element, or trying to just make the game as visually stunning as possible? Or a little of both?
Both, certainly. We try to make it as visually stunning as possible while of course we also work together with the gameplay elements.
5. How much of the game are you trying to make realistic versus taking some artistic opportunities? Any good Easter eggs in there?
We try to make the graphics as realistic as possible, keeping the timeframe in mind. World In Conflict is ”hyper-real”, so a lot of effort goes into making things look real and in proportion. For the most part we avoid artistic freedom if you mean ”making things up”, but there is a great deal of artistic freedom in other areas.
Easter eggs are something you will have to find for yourself when you play the game ;)
6. What unit or building or effect are you most proud of in the game (if it's so obviously the nuke, which other one)?
Every artist has his or her favorite unit or building, so it's hard to say which we are most proud of, while the nuke certainly stands out and of course is one of our favorites.
When you work with Art on this level, you may just as easily fall in love with very small details; a particle effect, a texture, a bloom-effect or just a hill with grass on where the light falls just right and the wind blows ever so perfectly…
7. The nuke looks impressive, how hard (and how long did it take) to make the effect?
We have a particle specialist that has probably spent 2 weeks entirely on the nuke, and will most certainly spend several more weeks perfecting it before release. Then there’s code-time on top of that.
8. Will the graphics engine accurately represent in game physics calculations? An example would be the nuclear explosions will there be a blinding flash, shaking terrain, fissures breaking through the ground, heat distortion effects, vaporization of anything close to the epicenter, tanks, helicopters and other vehicles melting under the extreme heat, and of course that oh so beautiful shockwave that sends everything flying into the air then starts pulling it back. Or should we expect just a generic explosion that causes everything around it to explode / die.
Melting metal sounds fun, but we will have to save that for the future I think. However, houses and units dying will react to the Nuke with physics as they do when they are in an explosion for any other reason too. With the Nuke, this effect obviously includes a larger area and more units and houses than with smaller explosions.
9. How many units can the engine handle in one screen?
Numbers are terribly sketchy at this stage of development, and the code optimization process is not yet initiated. I could tell you the number that we have tested with a good and smooth frame-rate, but it will change many, many times before release. Better to be cautious.
10. Does the game use motion captured animations?
Depending on the situation we use different animation techniques, and we do use Motion capture for some parts, while we rely on our skilled hand animators for other parts.
To be honest, this goes a bit forth and back, so don’t take anything for final at this stage. World In Conflict is still work in progress, and it can be very frustrating for us to see in-game films at this stage of development because there are so many details that we know will look better in the final game!
11. Will "everything" be destructible?
Yes, everything on a leverl can be destroyed except the terrain.
12. What part of the graphics are you most proud of?
The level of detail to our world is something that stands out compared to any other RTS out there today.
13. Has this game been tested on the Nvidia G80 GPU at all? If so have you designed anything special to take advantage of this new graphics processor?
We are working closely with Nvidia and have access to all of their latest hardware. They have great engineers that we collaborate with, and yes we are certainly going to include some features that require a super high-end card.
14. Will the death animation for units be exactly the same or will there be several different ones depending on how a solider is killed or vehicle destroyed.
We don’t need to do more than one animation since the physics engine makes it look different on each explosion. What you see in the game will be a mix between animation and the physics at work in the specific situation where the soldier dies.
15. What has proven to be the most difficult thing to get right in terms of unit and effect?
Some details on certain units have been hard to get right, since there are different versions of all military vehicles out there. We constantly discover anomalies and exceptions to Army units. It’s complex to get it right.
16. How many different buildings are there, roughly, and how big is the difference between them (size etc)?
Right now we have around 150 house meshes, and many of these have 2-4 skins. So expect many different houses. And they come in all shape and sizes, just look at the size comparison image linked below!
Click to enlarge
Last update: December 12, 2006, at 08:07 AM
