Inside Cloud Imperium Games . Player Character . Mark Skelton

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   [Music] I am the mark skeleton the one and only and uh I have the most awesome job in the entire planet I get to make characters for a living who could ask for anything better we always start with a concept um usually our Concepts have been coming from um uh Rob McKinnon who fantastic character artist character designer um 2D stuff so usually we get like a front and a back and that's usually um reviewed by Chris Roberts and Chris Olivia and they usually come to an agreement as far as how um the character

2. 00:00:49

   should look as you know again they work out a lot of details at that point um once they're happy with it um it comes to me and you usually what I do is I'll take um a basic character into zbrush which is a um sculpting program um and just kind of block out like the general structure of it in 3D at that point usually I'll take the block out um and run it by um Brian Brewer and um also Kyle has been helping us too was set up so just to kind of get their eyes on it make sure that everything works that how they would expect it you know and we we go through things like you know how does Armor fold in you know how

3. 00:01:38

   does it stretch when he stands up how does it you know when he when he twists his spine like does it penetrate anywhere is there any problems that you see come up you know and also what type of material it is too you know like obviously Rubber and um cloth are much easier to twist and and deal with than metal uh metal you have to make sure that um it's levelor you know kind of like um like a armadillo you know make sure that it folds in on itself if it's got a lot of articulation so at that point after all that is um worked out and all the um the blockout looks good it looks uh the silhouette is nice the waiting is nice then what I usually do

4. 00:02:29

   from there is I start on the high-res version now the highres version um what I do is I do a technique called uh retopologizing which I'll take the um blockout mesh that I've done and I will bring it into 3D Studio Max and then snap uh polygons to the surface of it and basically make a whole new mesh that is cleaner um on on top of the blockout mesh now what that gives me is is better flow lines um when we deform the character um it's much more um flexible and easy for Brian to use then after I've done that I take it in to zbrush and do the final highres

5. 00:03:20

   sculpt on it um final high-res sculpt is um super detail oriented um you know at that point I've got a lot of the small details in but they're not um 100% so clean it up in zbrush do like the small like nuts and bolts type stuff the super small scratches things of that nature then I'll take it back out go back into uh 3D Studio Max and then do what's called a bake and what that does is I transfer the detail from the high reses model to the low res model that you're going that you see in the game um so that uses um normal Maps which normal maps are a type

6. 00:04:11

   of map that is um X it's basically XYZ so you have um it it gives you a more complete representation of the higher res stuff uh but it's it's it's a it's a flat map so it gives you 3D information like on a flat map which gives the illusion that it's um it's more detailed than it is but the high-res is detailed but anything smaller than about an inch or so you know on the on the character is usually normal mapped cuz there's really no reason to to actually build that in so once we got all that once we got the normal map and everything baked down um usually at that point I'll hand it off to Brian and then uh Brian and

7. 00:05:01

   Kyle will start to rig it and make sure that it works and if there's anything you know from there on out that is a problem they'll bounce it back to me and I'll adjust it let's see from there I go to texturing so I'll start texturing the model um while they're doing that um I'd put UVS on it so it's got texture Maps uh and everything in place I just have to um bring them up to detail make sure they're high res make sure that you know it represents what it's supposed to be metal looks like metal leather looks like leather so on so forth um at that point uh after I've got it all textured and it's all working I put it in the engine and start tweaking from there um

8. 00:05:52

   now the engine tweaks uh I'll start dialing in the specularity which uh the specularity is the you know like the glossiness how light affects the metals or the leather or you know again it reinforces the look of the material that I'm going for um luckily the cry engine has a ton of really uh fantastic um material settings that uh have come in like super handy I mean it's it's one of the best engines I've worked with for sure as far as it's uh just the amount of stuff um that you can do with it is a is pretty amazing on a material Level after I've dialed it all in um Brian is usually finishing up the rig at that point and then uh we've got a finished model and uh there's so

9. 00:06:42

   usually some tweaks involved you know if I'm uh if I'm in the engine and running him around and I see something stretching or I see something pulling or you know out of or penetrating then I'll go back in and do some tweaks to fix it but um usually at that point man it's pretty it's pretty good to go so the most challenging thing I think going forward um is probably making sure that the characters fit um style like style-wise and proportion wise ergonomics is huge it's very important um obviously when we design characters uh we have to think about the spaceship Interiors um when we're doing it it obviously has to fit Within um the structure and the

10. 00:07:31

    ergonomics of of what they're using so um and that's a huge challenge because the suits are so vastly different I mean once we move forward um you have all ranges of stuff you know stuff from like uh big bulky solid metal suits you know down to like almost like pirate outfits you know with the Privateer stuff so all that stuff has to work in conjunction with whatever ship that they're they're using at the time so that's a huge deal definitely is the other big hurdle is the accessories for all the characters I mean you think about it there's going to be hundreds of Trinkets and you know

11. 00:08:21

    different things that they can put on and swap out you know and um there's also going to be things like if you blow off your arm there's going to be like you there's going to be a mechanical arm in its place um that you choose from so all that stuff has to work together um on every model to make sure that um it doesn't break so it's uh it's daunting but I think we can do it I have a good feeling about it it's it's been definitely one of the coolest uh games I've ever worked on