Nathan Phail-Liff – Art Director
Ready at Dawn Studios
Ready at Dawn Studios
- Introduction
o This talk is about doing more with less - finding a passion for creativity born out of technical limitations (instead of lamenting what you couldn’t do)
o Think of classic VFX in Hollywood. Creative people used creative ways to defy the expectations of the time
- Studio Background
o Company was founded in 2003 by former members of Blizzard & Naughty Dog Studios
o 38 people, Located in Irvine
o Games: Daxter, God of War: Chains of Olympus, God of War: Ghost of Sparta (all PSP)
- This presentation is not about this particular project, it’s about embracing limitations! (This is not an instruction manual)
- Art Goals:
o Wanted a more impressive atmosphere
§ Effects and weather systems
§ Making the world more alive – making the background more of a character
§ 50% more Michael Bay
o Higher quality materials and lighting
§ Specular lighting
§ Environment mapping
§ Ambient occlusion
o Sprawling vistas and depth of field effects
§ Went with cinematic goals
- Technical Limitations
o At start of project, were informed that they could not make any new engine tools or tech
§ All resources not going into art were going into gameplay, as well as creating a real time editor
o No loading screens
§ Any 2 adjacent packfiles must come in under 9.5MB combined (everything but Kratos for 2 levels = 9.5MB)
o CPU Board
§ Avoid simulation cost (no particles)
§ Avoid any software rendering processes
- Walkthrough of a level setup: Boat on a stormy sea
o Stationary boat, everything else moves
o Materials:
§ Faked it with vertex lighting – they built “glints” into parts of the environment (gold, metal)
§ Level uses 8 textures. Each was 16 colors, 128X128 pixels
§ Sense of wear and character to everything
· Shader layer tool. One layer was ‘clean’ the other was worn, painted a blend between them (uses existing vertex alpha channel)
o Skydome
§ Much easier to keep the boat stationary and move everything else
§ Added joint to tumble the horizon
· One joint pins the innermost vertex ring of skydome so no clipping
§ Atmosphere: used geometry planes to fake atmospheric perspective
§ Sky: can’t do matte painting because it’s too big. Used 32 X 16 gradient for sky, and then hand painted vertex color of geometry
o Lightning
§ Modeled ribbon strips of the path that the lightning would take
§ Shelled geometry around area that you wanted the lightning to illuminate
§ One single texture
· Black with white blips on it
· Used idea of a player piano, or music box – put those blips in a sequence and then animated the UVs. This way the lighting could have a more natural rhythm to it (as opposed to flashing regularly)
o Ocean
§ For area where boat meets the water – geometry with vertex alpha and vertex lighting
§ Motion: It takes 4 joints to make an infinitely tiled ocean.
· Think of 2 people holding a blanket.
· Painted weights with no relation to joint position, then animated joints up and down
o Rain
§ All scrolling texture!
§ Foreground rain
· Same as lighting
· Game draws 2-3 of these only around the camera
· 32X64 texture for the rain and the splashes where they hit the ground
§ Background rain
· Big plane with texture
· Also made depth of field happen through this sheet
§ Rain running down parts of ship
· Geometry built for rain to travel down sides of ship
§ UVs spread out for acceleration and deceleration (as the water crests over the sides)
o In general, try to come up with techniques before asking for new features!
- Art and tech production philosophies
o Avoid digital ego trips
§ Everything we add needs to serve the player
§ Philosophy was the same as Dead Space 2 – put the right details where they get the most bang for your buck
· In the opening cinematic, Kratos has water running down him
· As the camera pulls back, the water POPS off of him
· He doesn’t have water running off of him in the rest of the level, but you show it in the start and then the impression has already been made
· Since you see it at the start, the player’s mind fills in the details
o Iteration is king!
§ Would much rather have low tech than one-off show pieces (example: don’t let an engineer do a full on ocean simulation for something that won’t be in the rest of the game, have him work on something more useful)
§ Created real-time editor for lighting and camera
· What engineers made instead of ocean sim J
· Eliminates build process entirely. Removes frustration barrier for iteration
· Lets you make tweaks – if something is going to take you 2-5min, you will hesitate (this system worked with lighting and cameras)
o Instantiate data wherever possible
§ Template everything! (Art and design)
§ This lets a smaller team maintain a larger amount of content
§ Example: had an icy cavern level, the torchlights throughout the whole level were too bright. Could change the one master light to fix the content of the entire level
§ Can make global fixes safely
§ Last minute changes far less costly and risky
§ The entire game benefits from lessons learned late
o UI – Markup driven tools
§ Self maintaining: programmers could focus on more important stuff
§ Programmers don’t have to do UI
§ Standardization of UI and editing paradigms, features and fixes always global
§ UI markup files parsed at build stage
§ Default values across game can be edited with a single text entry
o Designers can edit one number – as opposed to going into all maya files
- Q&A
o Did you run into issues with the number of transparency levels? Yes! Couldn’t get away with very levels before taking a big performance hit. Had to count and be conservative
o Impressions of the NGP? Can’t say. J
o How did you handle fire? All the same techniques already mentioned. No particles, all scrolling undulating hand painted textures and pieces
o How many lights could you use per level? 4 light limit for hardware. 3 static lights, 1 dynamic light reserved for Kratos’s blade. (Daxter was 100% dynamic lighting)
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