Sj J . Eben aa) io ae MONSTER Discover how to produce better-quality models more quickly with Codemasters’ step-by-step guide to the concepting and design processes for this fearsome creature from its upcoming online game Pee ee ee ee eee Serene een ee tet Whilethoroughly preplanaing AD content,allofwhich must be built toa unit SE ee eee ees arene een ee sit re eee eae Srgesantt ‘making sueit follows the agree styles and principles, ero err tt een ee een sy Beare rec cen ne Pest cee Senet ar JOLYON WEBB ern reer Pee eatenStage 1: Concepting Concepting should produce as many wild and exciting idees as possible, but aways keep your project requirements in mind Nhough we all know 3D modelling sar our ore ‘Th two ketchos on thi ‘reat fan, it isn't actually the best place to page show aorest start anew 3D project. Instead, grab a ye eae {ce and body bet pencil or Wacom pen and get sketching. lemente ofboth tose Drawing is still the fastest, most effective zwngamade Rito Drawing is stl the f effect oS tool for testing concepts. It enables any 3D artist 10 {quickly and effectively prototype a large number of ideas, and to judge thei relative values. Every Dragon Empires creature goes through an inital brainstorming drawing session. The alm ofthis isto produce a lage a number of ough concepts. Remember, these don’t have to be beautiful, perfect drawings - they're Quick, working sketches where we try out as many exciting seas as possible, Some ofthe ideas may be awful but that doesn’t attr, Ivs much better to find out that an idea ‘CONCEPTING IS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS, GATHERING AND BLENDING AS MANY IDEAS AS POSSIBLE SO WE CAN PRODUCE ‘THE MOST INTERESTING CONCEPT FOR OUR CREATURE” Se as) ‘doesn’t work after five minutes of sketching than after a whole week's modelling, The important thing Is generate as many ideas as you possibly can, As we move on, these initial drawing are reviewed. ‘The weaker ideas are culled and the stiongest ideas refined and then combined with one another. Concepting is aa evolutionary process. We're gathering and blending a= many Meas as we can s0 well be abe to produce the most nteresting concept for our creature. The final aim is to produce a single perspective view drawing that clearly shows what the Bat will be lke, RULES AND REQUIREMENTS. Tye concepting process i very fre a still not working without rues. We've already spent some time making absolutely certain that we know exactly what the fixed requirements are for out creature before any’ drawing and creation starts ‘Our very frst work on the Bat actually involves defining what technical and stylistic requirements it must, meet. stylistically, it has been decided that our game requires a smal, fying creature that has four eyes anda rusty personality. Technicaly, specifiitions for this small, polygon budget of only 1,600 faces, and creature give a total texture sizeof a single $12256>pixel map. The scale to Dull to, and the fame fate to animate to, arealso fixed before any work begins All this may appear obvious, bat many 3D artists fll to fix requirements early on and this can stage It might seem that planning and rules make things restrictive and uncreatve, bat the reverse Is actually true, If we follow our famework of fixed requirements, we an then concept as wildly as possible, knowing that all the {Ideas we generate are potentially useful. Knowing what rules must be followed means our artists can focus all of ‘their creative energy in those areas that are still up for arabs, and produce the most imaginative designs possible. all 2 project ataStage 2: Model sheets Creating a model sheet will alow some final refinements to be made to the concept and will also prepare the way for effective modelling Scene iene Neer ibe «mow have a cea isa of what i our Bat wil look like, and this shed concep: image ha been he - Producer and Art Director. Being : eens able to show a finished concept drawing is vital. Ie means that everyone can cleatly see what they’re expecting to get <0 they can raise any concerns they might have Aclear model sheet should show a sid, front and top ‘view of the object. These orthographic views ofthe Bat ‘ve opportunities to further refine our concept. In these extta drawings we can show any detalls or shapes that werent fully clea on the perspective view: Supporting sketches might sko need to be added for any tricky deta, such as showing how a creature’ jaws are going to open. ‘What a good model sheet does i use drawings to quickly resolve potential 3D problems, These drawings ren’ engineering blueprints, but they do need to be reasonably accurate to be properly wesful. The Dragon Empires team generally works up the modal sheets in Photoshop. This enables us to place guides over the image co help check that key features, such as eyes, accurately Peery line up in all tee views. Our alm isto produce a seties of —— plans that will contain all the information needed to make the modelling of our creature as fast and efficient as possible, wnile keeping 1¢ tue tothe approved concept. ‘THE 3D TEAM TO PRODUCE AN ACCURATE MODEL OF THE CONCEPT, WITHOUT NEEDING ANY ADDITIONAL EXPLANATIONS’ With al tree vews complete, we drop an outine ofa ‘man onto the model sheet to show appropriate sale. At this stage we often produce an extra model shee that shoes design variation on the main model in this cae 2 range of difeent stinger and fils for the creature Final, the shee is led and any production comments ate added Is now ready to use ne ts ofa good model sheet is that it should be clea enough to enable the 3D team to produce an encoa vert sccanie modal ofthe concep without needing any We creature re nacional explanations. This is good practice to aim for SERS, in any project rodecing such mode ees kel 10 Sct ementalpetioms —yecome increasingly important on lrg games projects as rise batbosne tore and more of the 3D model building i outsourced. >>Stage 3: Test rig (Ona difficult and complicated beast like the Fortitude Bat, it often makes sense to build a test rig before building the actual model ur final Bat concept shows wiggly, flexible creature with a ‘reversed scorpion-lie tall. It should make fora lively and interesting monster! However, before we model the Bat, is safest to check it can move the way we want without necding design tweaks, and this is where a test rig comes in Bulding an eatly ‘proof of concep’ test ig isa good principle. We can use it to check for movertent problems and if we discover a problem, we just keep adjusting the rig until it works. This may mean the shape or proportions of the rig have to change, but it makes sense to only build model when we can fit it toa rig weve tested. On any project, having to rework a finished mesh to fit a bone structure that has had to change i a waste of time. ‘Our rg is built using the template box as a guide for bone placement. The bones ate simple mesh boxes built in ‘3s max 4.2 and linked together to form the Bats skeleton, 0 your creature animatio ‘A tomplate box provides {8 goudguldeforbone iteememtane wt stand {Ss ingood steed when te even socom nett ‘Bogie, You can tnd the NX fee forte resting Aeatrgenour cover €D “THE PROPORTIONS AND LAYOUT OF THE TEMPLATE DRAWINGS. ‘ARE USED TO GUIDE THE PLACEMENT OF PIVOT POINTS AND TO. DECIDE ON THE BONE LENGTH OF OUR CREATURE "ond than ate Base bbut this method works in any 3D packags. The thickness and width of the boxes are adjusted to follow the shape of te Bat because this wll give a useful visual guide when animating, The proportions and layout of the template drawings are used to guide the placement of pivot points and to decide on the bone length of our creature The rig we bulld doesnt need to match the template ‘exacly. This difference between the drawings and the rig | because our creatures are always concepted in a natural and relaxed pose. This makes it much easier to judge pleasing proportions and natural lines, but i n't always the most effective pose for bone placement, For example the wings will be hard tori in the pose they’te drawn in To make things easle, well flatten out the wing and create all the wing bones on one plane. The curved spine could be dificult too, so well straighten this out. We aren't changing the proportions here, just the bone rotation,Stage 4: Troubleshooting We can now troubleshoot the rig and use the fished version to guide our modelling and check for any mesh deformations in the Bat model ey Se Um ql eee eee Mo Seen tears ce the rigs finish we can testa full range of movement on the bones to see how our Bat wil perform. Unfortunately, ee cour Bet tums out to havea fatal problem, olen ipl oa bere is Ao oy 1 we make t angry, i will lash out wing - nena its polson barb. The trouble i, Ht tabs itself in the chi, ‘The shape we've concepted for the batb cuves too far saprlaendatrecetaretor beck on itself, As a result, it won't work as a weapon, atonereneer ‘We experiment with some new shapes and soon find Meeps that by straightening out the bar» and pointing it further safety backwards, we gota shape that allows proper attacks. Our : moan Bat can now function as the vicous little beast we wanted. ‘What this tet has done Is save us from wasting time by modelling something that couldn't work. Since the proportions of the tested rig act as a modeling guide for ‘the barb, early tess like this can save a lot of frustration! The rg row gets passed to the animation team to ‘make sure they’te happy with the way t behaves. They usually have suggestions forextra controllers to add, and for adjustments that the Expressions need. These fefinements are worth spending tune on because with better controls, the animators can work more effectively teat arough welding on and can spend more time concentrating on creative imesh Ths coor oan decisions, rather than labouring with a difficult eg teat this, the sooner The 3D attists can now get to work actualy building the Bat. By using a combination of our tested rig and our template box as modelling guides, we can be pretty confident that anything we build will both function and meet our stylstic equitements. The Rat is modeled using standard polygon tools, mosily a combination of box modelling and extcuston of faces and edges. It's a symmetrical creature and so we initially build only one’ half and use a mirrored instance to see the whole shape. (Our technical requirement: give usa fixed budget of 1,600 faces to build with. The modeling techniques are really quite simple, but the decisions on just where to spend those polys for maximum effect are considerably harder. Getting these decisions ight is what separates @ ‘00d in-game model from an average one, Testing continues while we're modelling. As soon as the Bats shape 1s roughed out, we do a test weighting on balf the body to check how it deforms. A problem shovrs ‘up with the mesh in the tail area, where we haven't allowed enough divisions, This means that once the tail ‘curves, begins to have too choppy & profile. Adding extta divisions solves this problem. The whole model checked, and where there are problem deformations, extra divisions are added or edges turned, This process of testing and refinement continues until we're happy with out BatStage 5: Final modelling ‘Texturing now adds the necessary extra detail to our low-poly Bat and also makes the surface appear much more complex he inished mesh for elf the Bat snow copied and mirrored. These two halves are then joined to make a whole model. Next, vertices along the central seam ate welded together, and afte agjusting a few points, the mesh is complete. Once the Producer and Ar Director approve the finished model, we can move onto ‘mapping and texturing our beast With a game-resolution model, we don’t have the Juxury of building large amounts of surface detail into the ‘mesh, s0 clever textuting is vital to fill in this deta Fist we must map the Bat’ surface. I's vital to spend time ‘on this because ifthe mapping is poor, textures will smear ‘or warp and it becomes almost impossible to ereite a good texture, I's a good ides to test mapping by applying & ‘check pattern texture since this Wil show any abstorton, Once our Bat has passed this test, we can start the texture, ist we place the Bat ina sky dome of lights, This is an aray of lights that mimics the non-dlvectional natura sky lighting, Next, the light and shadow that falls onto thi ‘model's surface from the sky dome is baked intoa texture ‘map, We use 3s max 5 to bake the lighting, but most professional software has equivalent tools. The final light and shadow map forme a base layer to our textures, Using Photoshop, we paint into the baked map to add structural details for mascles, bones and skin, We're concentrating on surface form, not colour, 10 this layer is sreyscale, We then paint a new layer describing the colour of our Bat. Next, the surface form layer is placed over the colour ayer and its Blend mode i set 1o Multiplier. This ‘combines the structural ana colour information the final imap needs. After afew tweaks, our final map is eady. Each stage of texturing is vital in the creation of our Bat creature, from using greyscale to check muscle placement to adding natural colour and lighting effects for a more solid, reaisticlookee ea Stage 6: Weight & animation “The animation stage is where the Bat's finally brought to life and develops all ofits nasty personally traits... 7 Nero] eT es etre saa and able to move in a convincing m Cas Weare le aa he finished, mapped mesh is now properly weighted tothe Bat rig. This Involves selecting verticesin each part of the mesh and assigning them to the aan acscniceteneel conried DOU ee Sita Obed ta acre ees polenta ‘that part of the mesh. The values of these essignments are (Eero pepe ct rchapl tegeeel eo all entered by hand. Tais is laborious but gives excellent eee ee er control and a very efficient weighting heel eect ‘With the weighting done, the animators can start thelr ‘ork. It makes sense t use a final model to animate with, Aldsough its posible to animate with just a rg, you retest ee mes can't see the mesh then is hard to jxge if the model will perenne eee self.intersect or cip through floer planes. parece “Ths Ree indo sd feed teckel eal stoic ot ee ers requnemen's and there ate qulalentrequtements or Peete reetie ta cmnoe coertn Oren ‘the Bat’s animation. The largest set of requirements covers Sle arenes the Bat om, The largest set of 169 piece CTS Tn ‘exactly what morements wil be needed to enable a FeuienaLemeniipiret Merc) monster to properly move around and attack. The game's pessoa hospice ele ‘engine will control these movements, Examples of the etic penny eTeeinreny ee eet tia pete Seed eer Pome an nent % (seedope iebalonttesr moves required include the Base dle ee Expert is), Hse nore OI otc peonc od walks, uns, turn, deaths, tack and various linking Pinte enters tees animations, Creatures can need as many as several bibles adnan fed sven, and ecg cn Galt ete at Frerachnteplanerie ot technica anal pee ‘The stylistic teqitements for animations can be hard Lillie lo tw pin dover To keep» consistent style, the At Director [epee apn produces a writen guide fr the create’ personality and bivdisanas darlin tow itshould move. The whole animation tea read this Hesiplinreviab cannons guide before any animation begins. 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