Star Citizen Live: Conceptualization - Spaceship

14 February 202001:10:541,479 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:01
concept artist from CIA Guk none other than the illustrious Sarah McCullough Sarah how you doing I'm doing very well thank you very much and hello everyone I know yeah we were it's weird you get you got to do the Star Trek viewscreen thing is you want to look at the screen but to look to make it appear as if we're seeing each other through Star Trek reviews yeah look at the camera and just like see I can look at the camera and see you're wearing your you got your wipeout jacket again that's the this shirt from the the the bar citizen we had a couple years ago it was a good really good event really really enjoyed that is FOP need to do it again so if you're just joining us or if this is your first SCL you ever seen welcome star citizen live is our weekly live
00:00:52
stream where we hang out at the end of the week and we explore a bit of process we check out a little bit about how what we're doing in stars is and how we do it some of the thought process behind it sometimes we have roundtable Q&A is it varies from week to week this week we thought that we would take some after the a recent announcement in yesterday's Valentine's Day promotion commlink that the Crusader industries mercury star runner is be is being added to the roadmap for a half a four point one if I'm remembering correctly we thought we'd take some time and sit down with Sarah who was the principal concept artist for the star runner Jesus and go through and explore a little bit of that process now this is the we're gonna look at we're gonna look at the original
00:01:39
concept process so this isn't the work that's going on right now this is the work that went along in the past what will go through that process and then if there's time remaining maybe we'll look at some other stuff yes please we won't mention right now just in case we don't get to it all right so Sarah with that let's jump right into it we've had enough rubble copping to beginning so you can go and share your screen we'll get rid of our pictures and we'll just look at your lovely lovely pictures so right off the bat before we get into the energy things this thing that we're looking at yes what what is this is in general so with the mercury we we tried out a lot of different varied shapes of this this
00:02:30
was just off like just off the back of the hair Hughie's so we kind of knew what direction to go in but we also wanted to have a little bit of a different spin on it so we took that and just run with it and we ended up with quite a lot of very different shapes and ideas we always had an underlying feeling like this this this for us is our you know our next step in Crusader industry so and it was like a courier craft so what what do we want out of this ultimately and when you started this we had only we'd only shown to Crusader industry ships before we showed that the originals Genesis Starliner go Genesis if you're a fan of the Genesis
00:03:18
Starliner and you're in twitch chat give me a G put a G in chat if you're a fan of Genesis Starliner because that's my actual favorite ship and then and then we followed that up a couple years later with a look at those geez you're all a bunch of geez everybody well not you you're naughty what are you doing and then we followed that up with a Hercules star lifter which we which we showed in early white box on yesterday's ISC and if you haven't checked out yesterday's ISC I checked it out for the first white box images of this stuff the star lifter so you had those two Jim'll images created at different periods in our development and the start list our liner was 2015 the star lifter was 2019 yes remember so so so four years of game development in between you have to start
00:04:09
concept in a new one how do you reconcile those two well we looked at the base shape of the the Starliner and how had this like well it had a like a almost like a hump in in the middle section and then it it kind of had like almost like it looks an anvil from the very top so that's what we did with a few of these is like we had this midsection that's slightly raised in the in the middle and then kind of just spread out further towards the back so kind of give that yes so it kind of gives that same appeal as the this the Starliner and it and the Hercules had these sort of like air
00:04:59
intakes and we got the some of the inspiration from that from like real like life aircraft so that's yeah that's what we that's what we did for these ones but as you can see we did quite a lot of Investigation work with these because originally it was gonna go really far out and have because it was it was also had in the back of our minds like asymmetry as well so there's a bit that's why there's a few of these that are asymmetrical and because it's what we wanted to go for and then we did a few more now do you remember why you wanted asymmetry it for me personally I love the asymmetry but for some people
00:05:47
you know they they it's hard it's hard to get past it like like Elwin for instance Elwin doesn't like the asymmetry and he's going to kill me for admitting that but but but you know it's different for every person how did we how did we get to asymmetry do you remember uh well asymmetry I think silhouette wise it's a good thing to stand out from from the rest of ships as which which is quite nice because I know the caterpillars like quite a nice example because that's slightly symmetrical and I have a a real eye I absolutely love asymmetric a symmetry and and also it was you know it was just like just a point of interest for us to
00:06:36
just investigate it and see actually how it looked and as it turned out it looked it looks quite nice it's gone on a lot of these now the this this thing that we're using right now it's called a Miro board it's it's it's it's kind of like those it's a digital version of those giant art boards whoa hearing some audio stuff is that you know JJ are you pushing something yeah and so as I say with with the asymmetry in mind we were just trying to experiment as I say as much shapes as possible and I'll just zoom and we had an idea actually like this could be like
00:07:23
like a like a undercarriage section which sort of had a vibe of the Millennium Falcon but we thought it might well it's also might have been a bit too close but then we we sort of toyed around with this idea as well where the main canopy would be in that this middle section and then it would have this in this in case in around its engines just to differentiate between the Hercules and the again the Starliner right that the the circle the circle on the right if I'm trying to remember those those meetings that was like some kind of weird broadcast thing or sensors picking up data maybe some data that you
00:08:12
shouldn't actually acquire but Jason on the less so so so so originally we were thinking it would be something that was recessed and then when you needed it it would it would raise up from there yeah it deploys yeah exactly just so it doesn't get in the way as well too much okay so we just so yeah we have to say we just quite a lot of options I'm looking at those ones and scroll back to the left a little bit the ones with all the wings and just we are we up then you know one of the refrains that we hear from star citizens over the years why does they have wings this is like all the wings look at look at all these wings we do so many wings like what is that seven he has like six wings yes like a beautiful butterfly
00:09:05
[Music] yeah it's like insects a lot actually quite a big inspiration for me actually and when it comes to in like interested in shapes because they're so varied in shape and they fly as well which is quite incredible so it's quite a good point of reference that I use as is insects what insects were you thinking here well it well it's mainly am to do like beetles and because they also have their wings encased in like a well an exterior and then they're deployed outwards so like this one which is like a sweeping um wing I use a lot of like I say like lady birds as wings which are quite delicate but they fold out into
00:09:54
such a as I say such a cool shape just say which is quite a cool yeah now for those who are asking in the chat like how you do all of these like these these are what we call thumbnails they're they're little they're little they're the trend how would you describe thumbnails because I know how I would describe it but I'm I just realized you're here so so if thumbnail is is just get it on the paper as quick as you can it's like you have first thoughts of like what you're what you're thinking inside in like an internally and these are done very quickly in 3ds Max and then I put them into Photoshop and just literally doodle over them and as you can see there's like this is number 73 so these are very fast but they
00:10:47
just initial ideas just formed off everything else that's come before it and then we obviously get feedback and then they change just to find that initial silhouette we talked a bit about that the last time we had you on the show and I was there in whatever month that was November you know it's fine finding that silhouette read folks historians might remember the old spotter cards from like World War two when they would just have the silhouettes of planes so that soldiers on the ground could identify which plane was overhead whether they were friendly or foe the silhouette is your first read of a ship and thumbnails are super important to to just get that or that initial first glimpse like yes that's that's what we that's how we want the
00:11:37
ship to feel before you go into all the crazy detail that comes throughout the process of building the ship yeah and that's why asymmetry works quite well as well because you'll know instantly even if it's in silhouette but that's exactly what ship it is and that is a that's what I want I want to instant reads even if it's miles and miles away I want people to know exactly what it is when it's cooked you know when it's approaching here because that way like you said it you can identify its its purpose as its approaching so so now just to get there there's we've obviously gained many star citizen since this was first introduced you just mentioned its purpose what do you remember the purpose for that for the star burner data Korea as its main
00:12:26
objective however I I like to have little surprises on my ship so I give it a like a ventilation system as well with em compartments in the ventilation system for sensitive data or if you've collected anything in particular that you want to you know stay hidden shall we say evolved actually into a much more complex complex and like for me I want it to be like a really fun experience when you're when you're on a ship so it's almost like a like a level so you can like run around and actually you know if you're getting hijacked or wherever you can actually get out of that situation by what you've
00:13:15
got on your ship in terms of like placement of objects and how will the flow of the ship is which is what I did with this to address Maximus Primus is question what is a data runner and why can't every ship run data that that's an excellent question it's something that's still being developed it's still being worked out by our game and systems design teams when we have more information on that specifically will of course do a segment of that stuff but I would encourage you to check out the original promotion page now which I'll have someone from that will have the available information we have on those game systems there luckily for concept artists they don't have to worry about things like like how the game systems have to work yeah it's it's it's got like a lot of avionics on board a data runner and it's got data
00:14:07
pods as well so that was something that we have to factor in and for a date aronia I see some more pictures we've been looking at these pictures for nothing these pictures aren't beautiful so we developed this and after all those thumbnails we basically come up with this site idea with where it was actually on the side carriage section here and and the radar data scanner would be this middle section and then we started to started to block it out developed it a little bit further again made sure that the dimensions were correct with what we were given off the brief and then zoom in on that one with that with the dimensions the box there
00:14:56
it's box yes so obviously when we get given our brief you have to make sure that it conforms to the dimensions so that they fit on the London pads and this is how we work out our initial 3d is is basically you have to stick to this box no matter what because otherwise you know it won't fit and then what we can do with this is whatever volume this fits we can do another box inside of this and then wake up the interior from there and to make sure that everything will fit inside the ship also for good weather gaming go to send your brother to cloud Imperium games dot-com slash jobs any any positions available are there if your brother wants to be a concept artist now talking
00:15:43
about restrictions you were you just said you have to make it you have to make it within these metrics we just talked with a Jeremiah Lee on is see a couple weeks ago about happen being forced to work within restrictions and how it can be simultaneously frustrating but also the source of inspiration but you know it what's the phrase adverse adversity is the mother of all creation yeah it's very true because you you want you want the most bang for your buck right so you want to fit all this fun stuff in but it's like right okay because of the size of it it does pose a and you know an interesting challenge and I that's that's where the fun comes in because you're trying to plan this
00:16:32
all out and make sure that it it works but you also want a great experience as well and it yeah it is all it is a lot of fun but it can be frustrating at times as well because you just want to put in thing you want to make exactly exactly for as I say you have you have to make sure that it fits London fits on the London pad that the London gear fits there's there's so much to take into account that has to work on this are the various metrics the different docking ports yeah exactly yeah ramp angles so it's it's it's it's little things like that that you have to account for but but in the ultimately you end up with something that's quite fun this was actually another block out
00:17:23
that we did so again from the the thumbnails that we did we did this this other one another one but this one was symmetrical and then this is where we plan out exactly what we can can do with this block out initial block about with that we did and again it's just planning and making sure that everything fits even at this what we would consider a very fast concept just to to make sure that we're on the right track and then you know make sure to get it front to Chris and make sure that he's okay with it and again from that initial top one we did more block outs making sure that
00:18:15
everything that you need will fit in there is one of those lessons we learned the hard way over the FIR over the first couple you well it's when you're concepting for movies or television or comics or whatever even video games most video games you don't have to do a ship one one not everything has to fit inside the ship very famously you look at the Millennium Falcon the interior the Falcon does not fit in the exterior of the Falcons you know it's from the outside you walk up a ramp that starts at the exterior and puts you into the middle of the ship and then when you the camera cuts inside the ship people are entering from the exterior ring of the ship I mean the inside does not fit in the outside but we don't we don't have that you know our ships have
00:19:02
to work 1:1 and yeah it's it took a while to figure that process out because many concept artists were not used to working with those with that level of restriction with that level of reality in detail and everybody get ready to drink fidelity yeah it was something that I've learnt over the years here and it was just it is our first difficult to just get your head around because there's so much that that's involved it's a very complicated process but once once you've done one ship you start to get into a flow and this was my very first one that I had ever done so this was literally me go in there solo on it and I really did learn an awful lot on this one it was
00:19:51
incredibly fun and it did actually push me as an artist as well which I cook which I really really loved and because there is a tendency to become stagnant for not on this this is this was a lot of fun I had a lot of fun on this so I'm seeing a phase go back and forth between some symmetric like the last one was symmetric this one is asymmetric yep that's it so this one was an asymmetrical one I mean we did do a little bit of further work and investigation on the interior of this one and this actually helps us plan out and what you'll see a bit later on and just basically of the ship enhance in remember this was a concept layout which before this gets screenshotted and
00:20:41
shared all over read it and whatever remember that this was a layout at one potential layout during the concept phase of a concept that it wasn't actually chosen so please before you screenshot this and put this up there remember that this is for an optional version of the ship we didn't use yes and this was this actually helped us quite a lot because this allowed us to see the flow of a ship and as you can see at the moment it's quite it's just a straight line basically so it's very it's very boring really I you know it's like it gets to the point a and B with everything that's required in the ship and then we just quickly blocked out cargo area
00:21:29
this was the bedroom areas from different angles this was going to be the data extraction pod and in the as you can see the avionics are here and then you there's your data pods in this section where you'd collect your data and then it was just like yeah exterior forms which is what we call this and it was just I say this is just a very initial quick block out of what it used to look like and then again as I say the dimensions of it make sure that every single component fits because that's again another really important thing on these ships is that all the components fit and also fixed rosters and if it's got the VTOL as well to make sure that
00:22:17
that was also accommodated for and again this is just stripped-down version of the ship without the exterior on so this is the interior layout from again from A to B the view from the cockpit and then yeah this is how we basically plan out visuals of when you're looking for word house is exactly going to look and I was quite adamant and having a area where you can actually see below you so you can see when you land and because I don't know how many times I've crashed just to the floor so I was I I did want to actually make sure that you know you did have good visibility and again it was just blocking it out okay so this is
00:23:09
where we got into what we now have which is this form so Chris gave us feedback and this is what we took from the feedback is to basically change it up a little bit and so we ended up with this asymmetrical side and this actually this section here has the bedroom compartment and this section here has the but what is now the chess room and this is the the window that you can look out of interesting to me as I look at this version I look at the one that was previous really you almost had in the previous version you just have to just cut off the she you cut off the little forward wings yeah sometimes that's all
00:23:58
it takes is that really it's just like a nip and tuck it's it's nice to have the little backwards and forwards because you get a lot more out and you can see how far you can push something as well and which is which is why we ended up with this one and I can say all this initial layout and planning isn't lost and because as you can see here when we came to this initial stage this is very roughly blocking out again flow and also player interaction if someone as I said we're to hijack you you've got options to escape safely or not if you want to you know face them head-on or as I say just hunker down into certain rooms and stuff I was gonna ask you scroll to the right a little bit we're in the top view
00:24:48
what are these scribblings of a crazy person there so like I was saying before we wanted to make sure that you had an actual nice transition and flow to the ship so if someone was to come in here you've got multitude of options to basically escape and this is also was planning out I think we've got it on here yet so you can just see the beginnings of the ventilation underneath and this is what we were saying is maybe if we had a ventilation in this room you could sneak on there and come out of this room and maybe there's an area in here which is the cockpit area where you could pop out and and this is I said oh here we go so this is the ventilation that you can see underneath at this very early stage and this is what it's just what I want ultimately is a really fun
00:25:38
experience even like you know why should playing even on your shape and stuff is just you know you don't know it's inari you're gonna end up in so it's good to have as many options as you possibly can yeah I got a play I got a CID advocate here guys zoom in on that 108 SCU total there remember that was a target su during the concept phase it was 96 target su during the concept phase it's not representative of what will actually be there as always stance or subject to change where we as we begin the process of building the ship out ahead of its intended release in 4.1 things may change it make it bigger and make it smaller it may stay the same that's what game development is and that's what exploited so before anybody
00:26:26
takes the 108's ii you just remember this these are early this is this is early in the concept phase take it with a grain of concept salt because I it's one thing to know as well as I always try and get as much in as possible so III I want as you know as much in those as I can possibly fit i like i zoom into my meshes and make sure that I'm as close as I possibly can to something to make sure that every little bit is filled so that I can fit in as much as I possibly can either add extra room more su wider corridors if yeah I'm I say I like to make sure that everything is to the person in Spectrum chat that asked
00:27:17
if I miss when standard cargo units were actually called freight units sometimes sometimes okay so I'm from from this concept I did the initial 3d block out unless you actually can see as well the guns are in a different position ultimately it did move to the frontier because I wanted to what I say I said in my original video I wanted to see them shoot okay so I've just bought some big guns I want to see them getting fired now you make a very good point it's it's it's a there's a if this is a word a visceral 'ti it adds to the visceral experience is probably the more great
00:28:06
way to say that just when you when you're when you're shooting when you're piling a ship if you can see those cannon blasts actually come across your field of view it's it's a much more rewarding experience it's one of those things we've discovered as we develop star citizen yes definitely on like I say this is why as well the glasses you can see all the way down to the floor because I want I want you to be able to see as much as possible including the the weaponry that you've just that you've just bought so at this stage it's just making sure that as you can see here the flow is the same and again we want to make sure that you can
00:28:57
see everything and make sure like I say we're gonna move the guns to here captain Richards already making the Visser allottee mean yes fabulous yeah so these vents were actually a different shape as well and you can see and also we wanted to make sure that you had enough pivot for for the for the thrusters so that yes with there's enough maneuverability and obviously eight landing gears make sure that they have full compression included and also the ramp as well to make sure that can come fully out on the side we're just blocking it out and again refine in it and these are some of the rooms as well
00:29:45
this was the initial space that we had and then we just had to basically cut it down because this was from the older much much older concept that we had but we just did a quick block out of it anyway so this was the data pod section that once you've collected your data it gets stored in these these cubes and also access to your cooler again this was this this room here is for collecting data and I wanted to make sure as well in each room it was again it just had a nice flow to it and had its Crusader Industries mark in in every room okay so yeah that wasn't just in the initial concept which that floorplan
00:30:37
you might have seen back here that is this so as I say block everything out with 3d and make sure that it you know it feels right and then again this has been refined and then this is where we were talking about the the radar that comes out when you're scanning this is this is just a bit of a close-up of it to show how it how it looks he's deployed it seems smaller than it was in those original yeah it's this is no it's not the final one and this was a source when we were just initially trying to think like what do we want to look like how you know how is it deployed and this this is what we were doing at this time
00:31:27
okay so many Chad's pointed out its gonna look like an r2d2 popping up yes yes I mean it's got a little little dome head it just needs to beep yeah this this this set this for us is just basically refining what we what we have and making sure that it looks correct from every angle and then making sure that deploy stages and then this is what I really like to have fun with this for me is like I love it so much it's just planning every room and making sure that again play it experiences fun as you can see this is the cargo area now you don't
00:32:20
do the layouts completely on your own you're working with one of the designers and John and yeah design basically making sure that it's correct and it will be you know a fun experience overall so this is what what I call like my initial floor plan and this is that room with the data part data pods this is what this is and that's the cooler there this is a ship item room and then as you can see underneath here is the ventilation shafts with the little compartments in for well whenever you want it to be really so to you without telling you you had to smuggle not telling you anything what you have to do know exactly and again as you can see this is just to help us plan and make
00:33:12
sure that the flow of the ship is correct and fun and again this yellow section here you can see is the entirety of the ventilation shaft just making sure that certain areas join up to others and also yeah the cache sections are in the right places so it like we talked about par citizen some of these are going to be risky to go in and get so this one which just has a particularly long like like shaft really you could put something quite valuable here and someone would probably know that you're sneaking around trying to get this object in here whatever it may be and could come in after yeah which
00:34:01
would be quite a terrifying experience and but it might be worth the risk or not basically for those of you who may not remember or weren't around when it happened we there was a live SCA there was I was called the RTD back then but there was a live show much like this one where we had a panel of folks who worked on the ship and we revealed it at a at a bra house in in Cologne Germany and that's with a big round table conversation questions from the community that's available on our YouTube channel maybe somebody can link it in twitch chat for those who are watching life but there's a whole bunch more information about our intentions for the star runner and what we want of it in the precision universe there so
00:34:52
yes so these are just more shots just dead quick you know like at this stage as well and we're planning shots of it for render for like finished renders that you'll see on like our promotional pages and these are the computers that that we use the avionics for the the data sections of our ship which is why that in the same area and long shot of the carriage on stuff when you write needs a better angle is that is that just being passive-aggressive to yourself it pretty much yeah I'm just like I want to get the best angle for the ship and I want to show it like its best light so it's like you get a good overall shot
00:35:41
and I think and we actually went with this one because it shows the avionics and then another room here and then this door is open and so you get to see right through down into the into the which is the bedroom on this side and the chess room is here so you get to see it all instead of just data pods which are fine but I just wanted to you know have that oh okay so that's another section of the same corridor and this is the bedroom so again I wanted to make sure that it's an like this floor I I wanted to actually make like a like a rubber so that when you coming into this section it's a bit more quieter than the rest of the ship
00:36:28
because it's quite hard and you'd probably hit footsteps yeah toilets there you know you little sink and of course you little Kiwi holes for towels and things which is super important don't wet hands yet so yep to the chest room of course which this actually deploys down into the floor and is a entrance to a shaft underneath and it actually has the cache right underneath as well so if you're doing anything dodgy again not saying that you would but you can literally deploy this table away get down into the the shaft and you know get out so for that for the ship
00:37:20
team that to build this do you think they're going to be appreciative of all this that you've done or do you think they're going to her shirt your name like what the heck I mean from from feedback I've got enough team they would rather have more than less so I like to give as much as possible because you know it's fun right I like my idea is to just flow in you know I grew of you know lots of sci-fi stuff that I want to put in and you know it's fun it's an interesting dichotomy here because with with ships having more concepts and more images and
00:38:10
more things fleshed out in this phase is so essential and so helpful but with things like the planets and the moons in next week's I see you'll see part two of our our moons feature that that's covering the development of microtext three moons this quarter the guys who the guys who build actually have to build the moons they built an entire moon with three images like the concept gave them three images that go from there so so they get so they work with far less and make something much bigger it's interesting it's just it's acting dichotomy the way that the way the process changes between ships and planets or moons for instance yeah cuz I really like his well on a ship there's so much in one small space even when it comes to like door locks and you know
00:39:03
how something moves mechanically it's it's such a interesting and complicated sequence of events in one small area and that the more I think I can give someone the the better it comes to life it like just you know it looks like it should function that way it looks like it should have always been that way and you feel comfortable in in essentially I'd quite a small space really because these ships are your avatars you know you want to feel comfortable in it and I love figuring out how to actually you know traverse this space in the most comfortable plate in the most comfortable way possible and in the most fun way as well so I want a little bit of both make the back seat of a Volkswagen yeah well the back seat of a mini you know it's one of
00:39:53
them so the next stage that we did was actually skin investigation at the very bottom of this you'll see something that wasn't released before which was the alternative skin if the advocacy hadn't won so this is again which are saying about insects this is actually an investigator my gosh you guys are both wrong it's not clerks or chasing a man its Mallrats we've just photos like for if this is like the most fun bit for us it's like investigating of just skins and this was actually the Alex skin that we went with for the promotional side
00:40:43
quest I guess that went along with and tried to track down the mercury so yeah that was just our base version and then we did a series of different types of skins and then I think this one was already shown before however this was but what was called at the time the magpie and this was would have been the skin people would have got if this advocacy hadn't hadn't of warned basically but this was just us going through different skins for advocacy and of course the magpie it's going to get both both on one shot there from the
00:41:33
right that to the right that the two different Wednesday so yeah for those who might not remember you were in here or it's just been a while there was a there was a competition when the when the concept was first revealed players could essentially vote through participation about which additional skin was provided the one that one is the one on the bottom is that my correct the dark darker one is the one that that one the one above is the one that could have been but did not yes so from there again this was this is what we call our final layout of everything so our final review am so yeah it was just making sure that everything would fit to dimension
00:42:23
landing gears we're correct and with London gears as well we have to hide them because it's it's just overall breath and processor and so that's what we do again as you can see all the ship items what we wanted to get feel wise for the for the rooms let me ask this question real quick let's go back up to the one just above the this isn't wireframe what what is what is this what you're doing here where things where the ship is kind of translucent ok so this is what in 3ds max we call an x-ray vision and this allows us to see the entirety of the ship but we highlight certain sections of the ship that of that are of interest so this is what
00:43:12
this is how we we work out essentially where certain things are and as you can see ship items are actually in one contained area which is which is easier for players to access instead of them running around different sections of the ship won't fall from one end to the other we we saw through this x-ray that this is actually just better to contain the more than one section and as I say we can also showcase that everything does fit as well I don't think they the last time I used 3d max was like 1999 oh I don't think they had that wow that's a I think that the earliest I came on was 2014 I think it was called 2014 so
00:44:02
back back in the late 90s I was part of a cabal that was modeling star warships you know x-wings and TIE fighters anything and then sharing them online so we could make our look there are little Internet videos way back in the win you used to do as landscape and Bryce 3d and then make take make a ship in 3d max yeah I've always used 3ds max I was taught in it and I've learnt so much since those first started using it because I think the first thing I've amazing it was a cardboard box just like what I would do what are all these buttons yes I am oh thank you jack I am very very old I wasn't no I wasn't always the front man the pitch man I did
00:44:56
I did have my start in development I continued we've got an initial floor plan and then we literally just show every room individually how things are accessed and just yeah just initial floor plans just like the originals but to just make sure that everything is correct and obviously visual visuals are you know how we want them to look so from there we that was just weakened but these are actually how we plan for our promo images so this is actually just a
00:45:51
very quick set off in key shot that I use and so I'll just drag in a few crates and get a tonal sort of feel for the image that I actually want to create and then obviously this is a backwards and forwards of feedback between myself and Paul and but I wanted to eventually go with this muted white and just to reflect the the mercury itself which is this pure white ship it just gives this feel of almost serenity on the planet and we were just again don't say serenity you'll set the fire fire five people are but it's cool use a checking out lovely cargo but I like to
00:46:47
stick in little characters like that it ought to know good because you know this ship can't be quite quite notes if you want some fish there are quite a few things that have been snuck into our concert images that have been released over the years well Paul and I talk about them quite often we have an over under and how long it'll take somebody to defined it and we're often disappointed yeah that's always true and we will always try and sneak something even when we can because it's like like a Where's Wally but spaceships so again this is just our initial no you didn't use brace 3d to create this the canyons no this is actually one of our we have like a repository that we get off I think it's photo blog and we buy loads of imagery
00:47:38
for our promotional stuff and this is just what you can do is you can in key shot you can set a back plate with the light and direction and which is what we did here and then we just add the effects in later this there's a as I say there's a there's a few ways to get around an initial shot that you want and it you know you think this is just the process that I use again this is initially what we wanted to pictures like this may be derelict this ring or jump point maybe and this is flying around but we went through it again a few initial stages and ended up on this one and then again this is just our planning phase of like promotion
00:48:29
actually can see this in key shot this is how rough it is just to make sure that we get the right angle and then we go from this shot that we want over to here and then just start to refine it again to make her cover who says why not show up an engine because this is concept this is before it's been built an engine yeah this is just 3dsmax and then we put it into a key shot but it's why our measures have to be really really clean and 100% like really tight because he shot if your meshes are dirty or you know not very nice all the smoothing groups can end up really really horrible and you'll get artifacts and horrible geometry that you just don't want and also it makes ship team's life a little bit easier when
00:49:18
your geometry is really clean because it translates better over to when it goes into 3d just the things like that like that wood that we have to like bear in mind again this is what I was talking to before about just getting that right shot and this is again key shot without that I thought I used to just light the scene and make sure that the mood is what I want and then once I've got the angle I want so I just set her up but also again it gives ship team a good idea of the mood that we want inside of the ship in certain areas so this one would be quite cold and cool because you've got your avionics and also your data pod so you want this section to reflect reflect that with it you know to keep these avionics cooler and then as
00:50:06
you can see in here it starts the Oh yellow and a bit more warmer and because this is as you go further back here is your bedroom and there's the chess room and then this is the cockpit area so this is it for me lighting is incredibly important inside certain living areas and also in certain sections what you want to convey across and yeah this is I can't see where I'm going without it yeah and this is the final image and then yeah I think this is just a schematic renders that we do for the for marketing and make sure that again everything is correct and then yeah this is what we call just the the finished schematics in occlusion map yeah I
00:50:58
should pop it on just to bring out shadows and stuff and this was actually we did this one just just because it looked like I was I was on lunch I was like how it's really nice I really want to do that so that's actually how this one came to be because this was just an extra one that I did and but I really really liked it and yet this is the whip and then we were going to do more but obviously time constraints we're a little bit against us but this was a one shot that I wanted to do like it on a dock and it's unloading all its cargo but like I say we didn't really have time to finish that one but you know and then yeah this was the promotional stuff that we were that we did and it went
00:51:49
through quite a lot of little changes because I wanted it to be like you've zoomed in through a camera and you like spying on it but this was the one that the initially went with which was Alex's ship and yet these were the what I was talking about before they're the two possible outcomes for the for the ship and that's that's pretty much it for the Mercury in terms of everything from start to finish well it's it's the zoom all the way out and see the full breadth of everything that's done for the concept of just one ship you can't even fit everything in one screen can you now it's that it doesn't let you out far enough no it's that big all I can do is
00:52:39
just scroll across just to see just to show yeah exactly and while while I was you think sarah for being here and taking the time to do this this is the process that happens with every ship that goes through that goes into star citizen all of our concept artists work in much the same manner exploring these are all the same considerations and explorations that have to be done for for all of our ships this is what we've learned over the last several years developing star says and we need this level of exploration in our concept phase so that week that we can avoid the calamities that happen that can't happen later on yeah when you when you don't have these answers early early on and you're forced to make changes because things just don't fit or things don't
00:53:27
work the way that you thought they would yes it's a so-so it's why we have to do these like fully fleshed out interiors make sure that everything does fit and that you are getting you know the 1 to 1 from concept 2 to 3 D which is you know which is what I want more than anything is to make sure that is 100% correct and I'm quite I like to be quite thorough you're absolutely and you'll often see many of these images and many of this process detailed in our monthly subscriber magazine jump point as well as many of these images show up in the subscriber vault which is another resource of concept work and concept art paths never taken and stuff so if your subscriber those are two of the perks
00:54:15
that you get as a subscriber an exploration of these things in either the vault or the jump point each and every month now Sarah hmm we've only got five minutes left shall we we filled the show we filled the show with the Crusader mercury I know we had something else we were gonna go into you want to show that just go ahead shall we a bit of bit of Pisces well we got a we got a bit of Pisces or scroll left scroll after a quick or epic Eric Carrick got 5 minutes folks okay what do we want we want carob we want Pisces like why am I even asking seriously why am I even asking all right so now the
00:55:04
carrot the carrot was originally concept it back in 2014 bus part of what we're talking about is it was concept that that's before this level of process that we just showed was developed and implemented so you had to go back and flesh out the original concept I did yeah it's so I this was what initially I was given was this was this initial block out and again we tried different ways of getting around this this back end area because we wanted to integrate this section of it a little bit better into to what it was here so this is what we did to just
00:55:53
quickly run through it and so the the flow of it just we wanted it to flow a little bit better and in this back section which is why it ended up like like the waited here and then here as you can see I got a little bit of feedback again off Paul and make sure that you know this had to because it kind of been sort of bends here we want to make sure that this flows round again so that's what I did here was what you can see just making sure that all the lines of flow and trying to get in some of this original detail and that I had on the very initial Carrick and also this front section as well sort of just breaking up little sections and add in detail and which the original had but we
00:56:45
wanted to just make sure that it was a bit more integrated into the front okay so again I tackled different sections of rooms so this was the medical bay room and this was the scanner for the for the person whoever is injured which I thought would you you'd feel a bit exposed of you just sat here everyone looking at ya so what I did was I created this section fought for the machine and again I got a little bit more feedback off Paul and created this it's I wanted already to feels quite sterile because it's you know a sterile environment and also look quite quite modern as well I guess because it's you
00:57:37
know it's the future oh yeah this room this the medical room strange enough it's one of my favorite rooms in the ship we were we've been capturing footage for it ahead of well folks will see some stuff again in next class I see but I actually saw the medical room for the first time just a couple days ago and I was I was very impressed with the little enclosed medical area yeah thank you yeah it's this dis light as well once it's engaged it'll turn from green to red just to know that you know someone's inside there and obviously you've got your MRI technicians in this room and then this little storage section leads on to here so originally it was just this quite bland room that we just did an initial block out for but we know that we could push it a bit further so obviously you've got your sections though that this could
00:58:28
potentially be like if you've brought back maybe a specimen or something from your travels you could pop them in here and you know I don't know I wonder someone don't wanna say experiment but you know okay so another area that I got tasked with was the cartography and the airlock room which kind of leads out into the front section of the carrick and by the bay by the Pisces Bay that oh and this this area as well it was originally like a square table but it was quite tight to get around here so it has this rounded more like section at top now it's just so you can get around it a bit easier than what
00:59:17
you could do originally again because the concept was developed at a time before we had Metrix looking for its it's the reason we showed this entire process today is because it's this is where we've come to over the course of several years of game development it's when you're the metrics are incredibly important these things have to you have to be able to work you have to be able to move from A to B to C to D throughout a ship and when changes are made to something like the carrick which is admittedly which is obviously loved and has as much as the weight of expectations on it the changes are not made lightly they're they're they're they're made for the benefit of gameplay they're made for the benefit of metrics they're made for the benefit of resource
01:00:04
cost and and you know there's a variety of reasons but they're not done just casually or or flippantly know that's it because you do want to maintain you know its original identity in the best way that you possibly can without you know destroy it and you know it's something that you always have to like like what you've just said bear in mind when you do make these changes which is why I'll always try and put in the line work that was there originally or you know try and get some of its identity back but make sure that you know you can get around a certain object book you know without ruin the experience completely so from these rooms that I got tasked we this is the as you can see we did a little quick paint over of the corridor leading to the top section of the Carrick and this
01:00:54
is the antigrav room again we had to fill the space quite efficiently and then this is this room here is this a lock area I think you actually showed that that room actually yesterday in 3d in it and you know translates quite well and so this is the cartographer section that we were experimenting with and because originally we were saying about what if we had all these screens on here you know just some map out exactly where you go in through space and you know you've got your cartographer here and he's you know messing around with all the destination that you want to go to and explore and this is this is actually all the stages that we have to go through in
01:01:44
order to make just so just to plan it out as efficiently as possible loons I got a place the AG advocate here again while this this is a concept concepts our exploration the the cartography room as you see in the character doesn't quite look like this this was a expiration yeah this was just to give a broad idea and as I said it's always good to give ship team a bit more just so that he can you know wet like even nip it back or you know go with it but as I say the category room does look different to this and doesn't have the screens along the back wall no good because like a fatal I played a lot of Mass Effect and like that that map area was always like so like badass you just
01:02:33
like won some a cool vibe in that room so it was actually after this concept what you saw the cartographer room currently it does have that vibe which is what we were after is really cool okay so under section was another task that I was given so you probably have seen this actually in 3d that that's been out and and some of the inspiration that I got was actually the Galactica from know Battlestar it has that exposed rib that has the entire length of the ship I really loved that so I was like what if it has this like reinforced section didn't Ethan is actually integrated a little bit more into the underside of the ship
01:03:21
so my inspiration for that was was basically for this section and this is the landing gear area as well current originally it was exposed but we hid it behind the store which again is just overall better for processing power and also the ramp as well which is in two sections that kind of folds out so that's that's kind of where the level of detail that I would have liked to have gone into on that one and then this back section which again I was having a breakout and having a exploration for this because that's the original that we had and then we had to make flesh this
01:04:08
section out and make sure that it sort of blended with the rest of the ship with these oval sorry cylindrical M engines ki dokie so yeah there we go so again this is more refining and feedback maneuvering full thrust replacement making sure that they're in the correct places sort of you know taking inspiration from the original and then implementing it into the the new mesh again sorry I'm speeding through here though okay so yeah the carrick has this red accent like the like the Pisces does and we tried to incorporate that
01:04:56
all the way into the into the ship some like location as you can see here some shapes were not the correct shape for anvils so we made them more in the shape language that like it should have for angle for anvil sorry again yeah we had a room off after the right which was unused so I changed it so I so I added it into the original room which I say was an unused room and it's like a tool room so you can fix stuff up stuff up and it just gives you a little bit of extra space to fix things and if you bring anything back that you know not quite sure of you can cook you can come
01:05:44
to this section and it's you know it's your work area so yes this is the exterior as you can see this is the old and new so old is on the left and the new is on the right and this is all the stuff that we went backwards and forwards with as you as you can see it's a we're trying to get as I say original stuff in that that we thought was really cool and as you can see this is the more integrated version and this is the skin that has been floating about that we would try and try to push for break up on the exterior of
01:06:32
the of the Carrick yes so this was the the original engine from the sitcom and this was the one that I was integrating at the time and so as you can see here this is it so this was the one that's it con and then we were talking about the engine size the engine shape feedback that we got and I wanted to keep these old this old shape from the original Kerik but just integrate these engines into it like the new shape language for anvil is these circular engines so that's the the reason behind that was I
01:07:23
say I like to keep some old and new and just try and blend the two together and of course the the game was developed at additional five years since the concept we have to take in all the new technologies and all the new metrics and all the new styles you know sandal has progressed since then yeah exactly and as I say with this as well I wanted I did want to keep the original shape but just trying update it to what the shape language is currently but not totally you know destroy what what was cool about it in the first place so sorry no I I have to let you go now though okay absolutely I know I know
01:08:12
you you have bosses who get angry at me and stuff so I've got a litter so we can go ed and start the screenshare now and then go back to our cameras JJ yeah I should probably sit up this I like these podcast shows because this this is how I sit from us the time I'm just like yeah it's like like forever alone but yeah Sarah thank you so much for taking the time to be here on the show with us today what can I say I I think everybody appreciated of course the Crusader Mercury star runner is available right now as part of our Valentine's Day promotion so you can check that out if you liked what you saw you're interested it's currently
01:08:59
available to pledge for right now also for everybody who's been watching us now you may not have seen the save the date for citizencon this year went live on our website we're pleased to announce that citizencon is on October 10th it returns back to star citizen's birthday this year from LA and it is at the Los Angeles Convention Center and take of that what you will we won't we won't tell you any more about that but I think it's supposed to be the biggest citizen gun ever get the Los Angeles Convention Center so yep October 10th 2020 LA Convention Center you can if ticket that's just to save the date as far as when tickets will be available
01:09:46
that'll be at a later time don't have that information for you but yeah so hopefully we'll see you there it's right down the street oh yeah so for Sarah I'm Jared that's JJ in the back thank you for tuning in for starters in life was seeing that watch yesterday is is see if you haven't if you want to see even more carick images and your subscriber to keep an eye out for the subscriber vault later today all those images you saw flash by really quick in your face I see will be put up there in high resolution and maybe a few that you didn't see is long the way so take care we'll see you next week everybody by you

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.