Star Citizen: Around the Verse - Crafting Procedural Moons

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:14

   hello and welcome to another episode of around the verse our weekly look at star citizen's ongoing development I'm Sandi Gardiner and I'm Chris Robbins on today's show we'll be visiting various moons and planets to show you how our procedural planet tech works yes but before we go exploring let's head to our UK office for their latest studio update hi everyone and welcome back to the UK for a Wilmslow and diabesity update our focus over the last month has been getting 3.0 to everyone as soon as possible as well as continuing our ongoing work for us 42 43.0 we've been closing down the remaining features and much of the team is moving on to bug fixing polish and optimization tests so let's start with what's been happening on our technical sprints this month on the program exciting you've been helping with a cop experience sprint with the goal of making the feeling of singing your ship

2. 00:01:02

   much more down al uses some of this is incorporating psychological effects such as blackout and read out into the actors data system so it's all controlled by one system interesting such as play breathing and stamina this print is also improving the g-force animations player reactions and ship gets a dynamic impulse close combat can be going very nicely we've been working on some great knife based takedowns and unarmed takedowns as well as working with design and annulation to make it all look and feel extremely satisfying one of the less visible but fundamental underlying pieces of technology is the new active stage system or active 2.0 and we've nearly completed Kemetic all the old player and active code over to the new system whereas previous chatter distant third active States from other variables we now have a much cleaner interface for serializing between the server and all

3. 00:01:49

   the clients all told it makes writing new player features much more straight board and makes the code much more reliable we've also been working incorporating the brand-new patching system into our internal copy build 3 tool that was developed over in Franklinton Austin nice patch Curie's approval we study doing the limited roll out to the dev team to carry fleshing out any issues with it so far it's looking pretty good and the people using are really appreciative reduce time now to grab the layers bill movin on to the graphics team the new roads detector system has been a key focus this month one major issue of this tech is in the hologram system which will be used for mission briefings comms calls mobile glass and many of the situations the rendered attachés system will be used for all our new user interfaces and we're also aimed users for live rendering the video comes calls from other players our exposure control system had an upgrade to deal with the enormous contrast of lighting in space system that takes light from your

4. 00:02:37

   peripheral vision into account and so should no longer overly Bryant the screen when looking into space when you're near bright objects the graphics team also added a host of new features to the GP particle system such as lighting turbulence and anti-aliasing they'll be used as many cool new effects in 3.0 the concept team is firstly been focusing on ship weapons we have worked on by the Iman and Reiss laser cannons s 1 2 s 6 and a class and then a laser repeater s 1 2 s 6 Y with some associated the ethics on a smaller scale but just as important we've taken the Gemini manufacturer and create a slick looking heavy machine gun the iconic cooling system I've seen honor the Gemini games this month we took our 6 member of the concept team is looking to areas of stanchion system and more specifically arising while also supporting additional needs on squadron 42 locations as ever we continue to

5. 00:03:25

   search his universe far away for more talented artists the environment our team has been building some exciting prototypes for procedural cities this will allow us to create vast cities and landing zones and plant services for the stanton system and beyond work continues to flesh out texture of space to provide a greater palette for the artists to make space travel interesting and attach support the narrative in both the persisting universe and squad report to one specific element is our new space two shader allowing is to add large volumes of space to the stanton system for the three point and release yellows asteroid builds also being improved which once again makes use of the new shade attack all the major outgrows archetypes have been finished this includes dressing for different corporate and independent companies the various functions such as mining a Joe panik's habitation and storage we also include some additional

6. 00:04:12

   unique varieties such as emergency shelters abandoned outpost and Ganga and outpost to all our post doors and airlocks have been switched to the door 2.0 system meaning that we can interact with different rooms and power systems oxygen overrides empaths outpost clusters on additional exterior elements have been finalized this includes outpost landing pads paths power modules water collectors weather stations relay stations and exterior lighting the branding prototype has been completed so now outposts are represented by several different corporate companies as well as independence and mechanics finest service integration is ongoing sand dust and frost materials would be finalized to help then the outpost into the moons decals have been used to add an extra layer of dirt buildup and have also helped to blend in the exterior landing pads and props the team have finished all pre polish and optimization work on the exterior truckstop pieces and have

7. 00:04:59

   moved on to finish the interior the main hub is currently being worked on based off concepts from my direction and additional pieces be made to add more the truckstop character props and lighting are currently placed on the side shops and corridors have had a first pass on them the pattern of a shop is having its own building set made for it so it looks more distinctive and an admin office has been created so players drop off packages relating to missions finally an observation room has been blocked out facing the landing pads so players can watch the comings and goings of other players ships from the interior oxidation also admin offices have been added to other Staunton locations such as port olisar and grim hex all the 3.0 locations have been updating the new door and airlocks 2.0 system two new shops have been added to grim hex one is an independent ships by trader and another techno tech is an old electronic store that may house of mysterious character

8. 00:05:47

   on the UI framework has been crashing along on the new mobile Ashi way and all the other various new apps that will become available to 3.0 last month we successfully integrate mobile apps and kiosk GUI to using the new render the text tech and the visual result by promising it further achieving the look that a team is after in addition be working with the VFX to to cut particle effects and lighting to help ground the UI projection within the game world environment as part of this we've been working to drive the second multidisciplinary sprint for the star map app the goals of which are to implement the remaining functional requirements for the 3.0 release as well as improve upon the general visual modality and user experience from previous iterations this involves focused collaboration between art VFX audio and engineering teams to helping together a refined experience we've also wrapped at work implementing the basic functional requirements for the new

9. 00:06:35

   mission manager app allowing players to view information and available missions as well as allow players the ability to accept track and abandoned missions which have been accepted as well as the you'll love with the previous missions which have been completed or attempt along with the work and action 2.0 ship conversion you start with the new pilot multifunctional displays which we found the UI of previous iterations and adds new information as well as capabilities in managing your ship systems we've also been helping with the recent doors and airlock sprint where we helped to design them and you status displays of the various airlocks throughout the system which also utilized the new enter detection tech the audio team has been involved in lots of different sprints and pipelines as usual this month broken audio completed work and weapons such as a rail tent and having made steady progress in derelict ship audio and the interior ship audio for the gentlemen the team is also helping to finish up

10. 00:07:22

    the active status system so that the breathing from the play works alongside dialogue more intelligently and the new outlaw music logic so is completely reflective of the play's reputation system also various locations for the 3.0 release have been revised and improved in terms of environmental and ambient sound with members of the audio team even attending a character-based sound recording Shepperton Studios the animation team has been working closely gameplay programming to continue development and the takedown kill mechanics weapon improvements and tweaking continuous across the board for the upcoming 3.0 release the gem mechanical is receiving some love to get a more flexible system to cope with various environments and gravity states moby glass has being moved from a low post to a named plans to allow increased functionality we've also added in some extra animation to the enter and exit states to make you feel more connected to the play a a combo assets continue to be exported in tests and where possible

11. 00:08:10

    in edge you've also been continuing the export cinematic scenes for design to implement in the Derby Studios be busy in three-point omission givers both are coming along very nicely and it's exciting to see life being added to the vu facial animation still being produced by the team for s42 and future PU releases the mocap guys set up the system for a quick in the office space it's great to see such a quick turnaround of the data from shoot to in-game in a matter of days there was another quick audio head cam shoot earlier in the week for some last minute pickups 43.9 the facial there is already edited and in production as always the ship team is being up to love this past month working the derelict is coming to a close for the stage we have the star ferrant caterpillar constellation and freelancer ready to be used in various gameplay missions but in space and planetary locations the underlying tools to allow placement

12. 00:08:57

    correct in plumbers so the ship components and wreckage or can form nicely has now also been implemented this will allow for some well crafted artist rating derelict sites while maintaining the ability to use those sites on various types of terrain coinciding with concluding of the directors of both fixing paths sorting out any issues such as collision or minor artworks on the whole see the teams finalized geometry on the folding section lovely materials we are currently in a process of finishing the mechanical rig and making sure all operate smoothly without any collisions the front of the interior is now have an initial lighting pattern has been continually tweak held areas gel together the rear of the interior has been locked out and is now getting a modelling pass and a room binary basis where can the Eclipse is well underway we focus currently on the cockpit extensive work has been done on the dashboard collaborating with other departments to make sure that the layout is appealing and the monitors are

13. 00:09:45

    legible in a new item 2.0 cautious important space buttons and switches then the players arms reach to create further interactivity and emotion the landing gears have been fleshed down and work on the wings has begun starting from the outside working towards the center of the ship working the reclaimer is almost complete with only three rooms left to go through final art this month we wrapped the final art on the cargo room as well as the mainland both cases we try to maximize the space to allow for easy transportation to cargo a huge amount of effort is going to make a copy functional in a tight area we've implemented retractable screens which fold around the player when seated and we were hugely excited to see the track that BMC transition from concept to final art I'm really looking forward to seeing people using them universe the team has also been busy within the bridge area the bridge

14. 00:10:33

    lifts which provides access to the lower deck well that's our update for the month where people enjoy seeing with the team here in UK as well as the rest the will has been up to as always thanks for all your support and allowing us to make this great universe of course thanks to all our subscribers who provide for us to be able to do these updates for the community take care and see you all in the rest all the UI is looking pretty cool and coming along nicely searching the star map from your mobiie will not only be helpful but also is a great way to show the vast size of these systems yeah they're pretty huge as you can see from the sort of star map demo and also the mobi glass refactor is coming along really nicely there's been a whole bunch of functionality and apps that you're getting 3-0 that you're happy force and that's cool as well as

15. 00:11:21

    the various finishing touches were putting in on the environments like the out pose to the derelicts which are also looking awesome as you can see from the episode so actually looking forward to the point where all you guys can adventure out in that it's really pretty cool another thing to get excited about 43.0 is the introduction of our planet tech designing the system cameras numerous challenges of its own including how to procedurally placed objects like rocks and flora in a way that looks natural yeah so to learn how the team handled these obstacles and many more we put together an in-depth look at our procedural pilot technology so let's check it out hello Marco corbata and senior technical

16. 00:12:12

    director and foundry 42 frankfurt we are going to talk about planets today so what we are going to look at here today is the planet tag some of the features we are going to include into our first 3.0 really the planet egg is exactly the same tag which we have been using for moons planets Delamar the dalamud planetoid lansky and so on this planet is unique it has some gravity ecosystems object weather atmosphere if you look at the footage here the progress we made since we started working on this you can see the planet from Spain and you can smoothly fly from planet in space without any cutscenes or interaction the major challenge here is that you can land anywhere seamlessly on the planet and then clean the only way to do is to

17. 00:13:02

    generate the planet surface as you are approaching it the terrain is getting generated recursively subdividing objects or procedures scattered on the surface as well as they are becoming visible as well as particles ground eaters and so on when you are on the surface you're able to see object by space stations moons and so on orbiting around the planet in space [Music] for our entering yet in spring getting

18. 00:14:30

    closer to a planning in order to make sure that it looks good on all levels from high up to to the grounds we have different artists driven input on each level so on a global scale we have our like our color map that defines the colors of the planet and then when you're closer we have our ecosystems that is defining where our features this all like fade into each other and become one thing so in the closer you get the more it fades towards like the final is all on the ground we can also transition from a solar system down to a planet surface here we're showing the scale we're dealing with you can see the different level of zooming from a solar system down to the different moons and planets it's very challenging to deal with generating all these different types of environments at all this

19. 00:15:18

    different ski we have a fixed pool of geometry share for all planning and the fixed pool of memories used for text stream since you can land anywhere as mentioned before the only solutions to procedure generate on-demand the planning surface geometry is generated on the fly and textures a procedurally combine a runtime blend in many ways the year allows seamless transition from space to plan soos data useful generation is very small for example on these moons we are using only about 5 unique ecosystems for each planet each ecosystem has different properties and we are all combined with other layers and noise combinations to

20. 00:16:06

    generate a large amount of variations all over the planet surface another interesting thing is that we are using only 1k resolution full of textures created by our environment artists these textures are used for planets generation so we have developed an efficient generation and blending to combine all these textures layers together and still getting good results when you're close to the surface the biggest challenge I think with what we've been working on lately is the scattering of all these objects on the terrain from the last update that we made we have done a lot of progress on the terrain and the textures we could render all these big mountains and oceans and all this type stuff but in the end the planets were still empty personal contents there were no objects no rocks no trees and all

21. 00:16:54

    that with a very basic system but they didn't really work for what we wanted to achieve so most of the R&D time that we had the last couple of months went in - into this object scattering system the difficulty with the object scattering is to get a natural look when you traditionally make a you make a level for a game and you have you can place your rocks anywhere you like on your trees and you can compose the scene where the player comes in it looks you have this nice Vista and these background assets and all this type of stuff but we can't really do this with the procedure level we cannot really place all the assets by hands we need in a way that kind of automates this for us and of course you don't want it you want this to look as natural as possible so you want to have a little bit of control but also want to have most of the work

22. 00:17:41

    you want really taken care of by by an algorithm we developed a system that where you can kind of define you define what assets you have so you want to do a forest you need some trees you need some leaves you probably want some grass in the ground and then you can define certain object groups and say okay I want to have a tree in there and then you can define a certain logic that around the tree you have leaves you can find a particle fix so that the leaves fall down you also can add audio in there so you have like winds blowing through the tree basically these object groups or object presets are like packages which then are assigned onto the terrain on specific areas where you want these trees to grow basically and then the scattering is done in an automatic way but it follows a certain logic so you're

23. 00:18:30

    kind of house still has a you can define like a natural harmony so it's not just completely random or in the grid patterns that would be very noticeable to the human eye you get to define how the assets are arranged so you have like a huge rock you want some smaller rocks around them and then some very tiny rocks around those again we kind of created an aesthetic so it's not just okay I have this big rock and the small rock and the tiny rock and then it just scatter its scratches it over kilometers of terrain we had this in the beginning and we've we added more and more and parameters to change the the visuals and then of course you have them values that to tweak random scaling random rotation alignments to the terrain and all this place as an art team we produce all the content that forms our final planet that

24. 00:19:19

    contains like the ecosystems that define our art our terrain shapes it includes the materials that define the look at the ground we are walking around in first person we built the rocks and assets and the shrubs and the plans that we basically build all these components and it's remix in our procedural planet tech besides reusing and remix in our our textures and materials we also built build them in a smart way when we build a material for our rocks for example we also use the same material in our ground textures to define how the small rocks on the ground look in order to do this we substance designer which really allows us to break down our texturing components into separate modules which we can then let plug in and remix and change the settings on the fly so this

25. 00:20:07

    really allows us to speed up our texture creation process and allows us to quickly knock out like different variations of different colors of sand different amount of rocks on the ground and we have a lot of ground to cover on our planet so we try to cover a lot of space multiple planets so we need to make sure that whatever however we work we do it in a smart way whenever we try to define a material palette for one of our plans or locations what we actually do is we build our set of materials and we applied in a NASA tube where we can puddle the time of day have a view of like what does it look like at a steep Sun angle let us look at it as a 12 o'clock Sun that way when we combine all these elements we noted at least at the baseline everything looks good when feeding these materials into our planets

26. 00:20:54

    there's various elements that influence how the final material looks on the planet procedurally these different materials will be mixed other elements will come in it will sample colors from the global definition of colors look on the planet so wherever you go on the planet it the result of the ground is never the same what we try to do when we build an asset library for the procedural system is to not for example define the final service material so what we try to do is make sure that it's reusable as well we can take this game rock type a raid same rock shape and in reapply a different material on there and then use it in a neighboring moon or system this is making sure that we can put more in our memory because we're using the same base elements but

27. 00:21:42

    it also makes like covering this large area faster another big challenge that we adds with the object scattering or how we how we build our frames we can make these environments look very good was that we don't really have any background assets so in traditional games you always have your foreground and your mid ground and then you also have background assets that are basically making up the scenery where you normally never go there for example you Europe you're in your jungle and in the back edge like a big volcano but you can really go there it looks really epic but it's it's mostly just a background assets in star citizen there is no such thing as a background everything that you see on the screen you can go to and this also and then goes into our workflow how we make the

28. 00:22:29

    assets sometimes the things in other games that you see in the background it's just a painting it always looks the same and if you go up close you just see there's a wall in front of your face which never happens because the players space is restricted but in star citizen there is no restriction for the players space for like smaller rocks this is fine because you only see them when you come really close to them but if you have large cliffs and in the back you want to see them from far away you only obviously you see them when you're close up and you want to have them nice in detail and you want to have a nice transition when you come from outer space and these large objects are coming up every asset has to be made that it works first-person it works from a little distance that it works far out in the background and also should work from outer space another major challenge is dealing with online gains and procedural

29. 00:23:18

    generation because the generational needs to be deterministic on all machines so we need to do a bunch of operations on CPU side to make sure it all works on the dedicated server as well usually dedicated service don't have a graphics card so currently all terrain generation is done CPU and most of the visual text is blending is GPU on the client generational results of cash in the fix in the fixed geometry pool mentioned before and the generation is distributed over all available meshing course so the generation is very efficient in this can with the number of available calls the generational results are exactly the same on client and server so there is no need to transmit any information to replicate the

30. 00:24:07

    environment here we're watching a video recorded by our QA of four players playing together and landing on a planet you can see the seamless transition of all of them landing on the same planet surface would make working with our planet X so different is the scale when you work on an FPS level for example you may even if it's a very large map you would cover a lot four kilometers you don't have to worry about what happens outside of the playable boundaries what we do try to do and start citizens basically cover all the elements so you come in from a very far distance fly close to the surface you step out of your ship and you walk around and look at like the rocks and the ground and the details you have to make sure you cover all these different ranges which takes some getting used to it's an interesting

31. 00:24:55

    system to work with for sure and use on the one hand you lose the opportunity to handcraft every single meter around you at the same time you're generating a large-scale environments and the procedural system allows us to set up these rules where the waste of that's this place you get these these situations where love wow I couldn't have like made this if I tried you you never really know what's going to happen how the objects are arranged so every now and then you come to a corner of the Moon which you have never seen before I mean on one hand you don't have the hand place in control but you also don't really want this because it's spent years on just one planet but yeah the nice thing is that every now and then you come to a certain corner of the planet or the moon and you're just surprised by how the objects are or are

32. 00:25:44

    arranged and just works out beautifully and also with the sunlight you never know how the sunlight is because the planets you don't you never know what time it is or you can just say okay I want this in the sunset so every now and then you have these moments where everything comes together and it just works out beautifully in this nice scenic huge environment right in front of you we define the rules we define our shapes that we would like to see but it isn't until everything comes together you actually fly around and just land and just look around Wow all these elements that our team builds right now it's all put together and this is the world that we made to end this presentation we're going to show you a procedure of planned visual effects breakdown showing how the different animals are combined to compose the

33. 00:26:34

    final image thanks for watching and as Pascal said in star citizen there's

34. 00:28:43

    no such thing as a background asset if you see it you can go to it yeah and also what makes the game so challenging to build every asset must be crafted it looks good now it's the distance but also from right in front of your eyes and there are many games that have those demands on them and I think it's one of the things that make starters and so special yes it is and that's it for today's episode we'd like to thank all of our subscribers who support make shows like a TV bug smashers lawmakers citizen of the stars and happy hour possible yeah thanks to our backers we can be building this incredible game without you we could not and until next week we will see you around thank you for watching so if you want to

35. 00:29:55

    keep up with the latest and greatest in star citizen and squadron 42 development please follow us on our social media channels see you soon