3d Artist: Daniel
Delgado
When I joined RAS I was
finishing my university degree in Technical and Artistic Architecture and I
liked playing with programs such as 3DS4. I also used to be not too bad in
drawing and knew one of the guys in Rebel who asked me if I wanted to try to
perform a trial to enter Rebel and I tried and I entered. That was about 4
years ago, in October 1996.
In the screenshot I am working in one of the Kinematic scenes in the
game. We have been adapting all of them so that they look right for every
character in the game, giving each of them their own distinct personality, and
style of moving and behaving during these scenes. This is one of the beginnings
to a level.
Blue lines mark the
trajectory of any of the objects we want to have marked. In this case it is
showing the motion of the centre (main node) of the character. Each of the red
boxes means a point in which the centre has a position keyframe and is exactly
positioned in the point through which the centre has to pass. We have developed
a plug-in to convert the architecture of the maps made by the level designers
to a 3DS-Max mesh so that we can create these scenes and make the characters
respond to the real architecture of the place in which the scene happens.
I have actually modelled
three or four enemies in the game. I have created the troll (design and model),
the lich (design and model), the "little thing" (that is totally mine,
I suggested to the MC actor how to move, and I cleaned the animations for it.
Only the design is by Jose Luis) and the golem which is the first one I made
and has some new skins made by Luismi.
The first one was the
most difficult because it was the first and all of the problems that can happen
when modelling happened on it and it was the first time I faced them. I have
been very miserly about polygons when modelling and I wanted that my meshes
have as few as possible so that the enemies that I created could appear in
groups of a higher number and be more fun, so that was the challenge I imposed
to myself.
Getting them to be
functional was the greater difficulty I found. The little thing for example has
no more than 400 polygons and has its mouth articulated. The problems are very
similar for all of the meshes. Maybe the difficulty stands more on the
texturing than on the modelling. The troll may be the one that made me work
harder to get what you can see.
As for which ones I
enjoyed working on the most, I guess that's like asking 'Who do you love best,
your mother or father?!' Both, no other way to answer, though there are things
that sometimes make me wish I was working on the other thing. Modelling usually
is more interesting because it involves combining different techniques (to
work, that is). We draw with pencil first; we discuss it with our artist boss;
we model the mesh and then work with a photo editor to make the texture. Then
again turn to Max to apply this texture. Its more diverse and changing from one
thing to another is nice. Animation on the hand is more difficult and requires
more attention that gives it an exciting taste, a higher challenge, but its
more repetitive and even routine sometimes. High polygon modelling is great fun
too, maybe the best, or not... well, I like 3D the most.
The characters come
about mostly by the combination of one idea by Jose Luis and development by
Luismi (some are exclusively by Luismi). Some of them (the skeleton for
example) were created and developed by a modeller and designer who is not here
and works in Pyro Studios now. Some are mine in combination with that guy. The
"little thing" is, as I said, design of Jose Luis and my development.
There are many
techniques to model a character and I am not a fanatic for any of them, I like
to get from each of the techniques the good things they have to solve the
different problems that can be found when modelling a low poly mesh. There are
parts of the body that get their shape from a primitive extruding, moving vertices
and tessellating faces until the shape shows; others can be more easily done by
having previous images of the front and side of the object to model and
creating vertices from zero and then building the faces that they form.
This mixed technique has
the problem of joining the parts once done that have to be sawed carefully so
that the mesh looks right. Any modelling has to be started by having the most
exact possible image of the model we want. That means drawings, notes, etc. not
only for the general things but for all of the details of the models, belts,
scars, rags they may wear...
This is the normal
sequence of events in developing a model:
Design drawings, sketches, all that may be
needed for a complete definition of it. Sometimes related and based on the
behaviour that is expected to develop that char.
Mesh: work on Max 3 days modelling and
definition of stretchable faces and pivots for the animation.
Texture: 1-2 weeks creation and applying
of it. We have developed little tricks for developing skins using the
tools in Max and Photoshop so that some of the actions that at first we
had to do manually and without precision can be precise and mechanized so
that the work is finer and more easy. We could write a book telling the
different and implausible tricks we have tried.
The multiplayer game will consist of different skins for the main
characters but there is the possibility of adding enemies to the list
later once the game is out. Anyway I can assure you will like the skins
and they will be very different.
Definition of helpers and dummies so that
the character has the capacity to inflict damage with his hands and feet,
how to grab his weapons, where to gather them at the back, point of view,
collision model etc. Time varies.
Motion Capture: made with an optical
system has been carried out during three or four visits of 1 or 2 weeks to
the studio for all of the characters.
Adapting the MC files created from a human
to the human (but different from the actor) meshes we have (not too
difficult) and to the non human ones... (you can guess not so easy). We
have our own MC importer and the meshes stretch in a different way than
Character Studio.
Creating a database of information for the
biped system so that the engine knows for each of the 1500 animations we
have when the character is leaning its weight on one foot or the other,
when it releases the weight, when it starts an attack, so that damage is
activated only during the attacks, when to release an object that is being
thrown away or dropped and many many others. This means we have to write
lots of lines of never-ending script files. You can see this is not
our favourite job.
One of the versions of
the amazon had a moving pig-tail but changes had to be done, the design of the
amazon changed and we had to keep a coherence of pivots skeleton for the four
playing characters with the same number and structure of pieces. The one you
can see now (in the video) has a "compact" hair and if it moves its
because one of its "edges" is (let's say) linked to the body, and the
other to the head so the faces in between get stretched whenever the head moves
relatively to the body.
That is the same thing
that happens to the knight's tunic in the early scene in the video; one
"edge" related to the waist and the other divided into both legs so
the faces follow the relative movement dragged by their "edges". It
is a little more complicated but the essence is that. The meshes have over 1000
polys but not many more. That is a game sequence and uses the standard Knight.
I was asked if when you
are in the middle of combat and perform a combo and get hit by an enemy, does
the animation sequence (playing out the combo) stop. Yes, that is the way it
works, and personally I hate it when going to get a MegaCombo I get hit and lose
it. I prefer when I do it myself to an enemy or other player!
When you advance a level
and get a new combo it appears noted in the Travel Book, so I recommend taking
a look at it from time to time. It tells you how to make the combo. You have to
try it to get it.
At the moment here what
we do is "what is needed to the game". Generally I work on
animations, but they have just finished and now we have to touch up little
things that may look weird sometimes, look for small mistakes in the database,
make any test that is needed by programmers to work right etc. As a background
work we are creating the intro and outro and making renders of the characters
for the magazines and marketing.