Star Citizen Live: Effective Visuals

14 August 202001:04:181,794 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of Star Citizen Live affecting visuals. I'm your host Jared Huckaby. And if you've never seen Star Citizen Live before, it's where we take an hour out of our week and bring some developers onto the show and we we take questions from the Star Citizen community and pose them directly to the developers. Usually over some manner of video conferencing, especially in our new work from home era. Today we have uh three members from our esteemed visual effects team on the show. Let's let's go ahead and introduce them. See who we're talking to today. Um we will start we'll just go clockwise from the top. Leo, tell us who you are and what you do for Star Citizen. Hi. I'm Leo. I'm a VFX programmer. Um so I work in the VFX team. I help the VFX team with like
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producing tools and uh implementing systems that will drive VFX um in the game. I'm mainly focused on on the gameplay side of um VFX. So when uh certain effects should trigger, how uh like different systems try to trigger uh VFX. I provide tools to other programmers to um add VFX themselves to their uh systems and so on. So that's Uh what are some short. What are some of the things that you've worked on personally? For for for for Star Citizen so folks can uh know what you've touched and what what what to ask. Um I've worked a lot with uh ship VFX. So thrusters, uh atmospheric entry, uh
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trails, uh like wing chip particles, and contrails. Um I've done some work on the weather, um like all the wind uh implementations. That's something I've been working on. Mhm. And recently I've been working on fire, Uh which is in very early stages, but yeah, it's an ongoing project. Yeah, we we've really enjoyed following along with your with the process of it in our in our sprint reports. It's been a big hit among the community. So, I think we're all very excited about the possibilities of fire down the line. Moving immediately clockwise from Leo, Mike, you probably need no introduction at this point, but we're going to do it anyway. Who are you? What do you do for Star Citizen? I'm Mike and I'm the VFX director. So, I I direct and run the VFX team.
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That's it. So, you don't do any real work. Uh, not really, no. I'll leave it to these guys. All right. Uh, and you already know who I am, so we'll continue on clockwise. Teo, who are you and what do you do for Hi, I'm Teo and I do visual effects on a visual effects artist. Uh, I generally create particle systems and textures and work with the tools that Leo and the rest of the programmers provide to uh, populate the world and make things like impacts. Recently I works worked on the atmospheric entry effects. And yeah, environments, um,
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clouds, smoke, smoke vents, all that kind of stuff. Cool. Well, this week's show is a generalized question and answer show about VFX. So, we will be taking questions live from the Twitch chat during the show. You can submit your questions for consideration by posting them with the word question in capital letters surrounded by brackets. That'll help our community management team pull them out from all the other chat and send them on to me. We also, as usual, put up a thread earlier in the week where we allowed a lot of folks to post questions in Spectrum and vote up which ones they wanted to see answered most. So, we'll go ahead and start with those. Just a general reminder that these are the visual effects teams. So, while there are certainly some gameplay elements related to it like Leo said and stuff like this. In general, if you're if if the question is how do
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you create weather? We're on board. If the question is how will weather affect my spaceship when I do this? That's the realm of designers and stuff like that. So, so I Again, just as we're cultivating questions, you want to try to stick to the actual effect itself in the creation of the effects that you've seen throughout Star Citizen. So, right off the bat, the number one most voted question we just we we always start with the with the number one right off the bat. Mike, lots of people want to know how the work on the new shield VFX are going. We've been talking on and off about new shield VFX for for some time now. It's been progressing steadily, really going well I would say. We've recently I guess come to the end of our what we call the pre-production side of it. There's been a lot of We've we've
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recently started to invest more time in in concepting these kind of effects where there's not really any real world reference. So, yeah we we've got a guy in our team who who does the concepts for VFX and and it's fantastic to have that. So, that that side of it's done. We've had We've had Simon, our lead VFX programmer, working closely with Caleb, our principal VFX artist, on the pre-production. So, actual in engine code side of things, shaders, looking at the the kind of graphics options we've got. Um kind of slightly wackier ideas as well. Stuff that's not necessarily the concepts that kind of just ideas that that come when you when you see this kind of thing. So, yeah I mean I'd say we're we're I would say we're pretty much close to wrapping up the pre-production which means that we're going straight into the production phase
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which is what people care about cuz that that's where we actually start to make the effects a reality and put them into the game. Um so yeah, going well. Okay. Now, the pre- pre-production phases often vary in length. Some some pre-production phases are only a week or two. You you hit something real fast and some pre-production phases take uh quite a bit of time like this one has. Uh was some of that due to waiting for various SDF tech coming online? Yeah, very much so. So, we we we knew from quite an early stage really. I know I know that the backers have been aware of this for a long time that the the SDF signed distance field, we knew that we were going to be using them to to generate these effects and and to have the effects kind of driven by the SDFs. So, we knew there was a lot of work that was upstream. We we sort of used terms upstream and downstream where where one of the teams that are downstream from
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other teams. So, we knew there was a lot of work that was going on with the vehicle teams and and the physics teams that that was necessary in order for these SDFs to become a reality. Um so yeah, that was that was a large part of it. That that was not really why anything was delayed, but that that was what we needed to be able to to have in for us to do our thing as well. Um so yeah, yeah. Okay. Uh So, the next the next most popular question uh had to do with planetary clouds. So, my question for you I'm going to rephrase it first before we go into it. Are planetary clouds a VFX thing at all at all? Uh no. Well, the actual gen- creation of the clouds is is not uh not our domain. The work that we do, similar to what I've just said with signed distance
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fields again, the work that we do will come in when when those clouds that are that are that are kind of the the domain of the the core engineering team really. Once that side of things is is is is there, then that's where we come in and we'll start to care about the actual the rain that comes from the clouds, the lightning, and all them kind of things, and and probably like the interaction of of the of the of the player within that a as well. That will probably be something that that certainly Leo would would be involved with, I think. But, the actual creation that that the the physical creation of that cloud is is not our domain, no. Got you. So, it it's like like like a like a like like props on a set dressing. Uh another team will create the tech that develops it and then and then you guys will come in and dress it up and make it look Exactly, yeah. it look the way they should. All right. Yeah. I mean, we're we're we're involved
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in the process like we we we collaborate with the people who are who are actually implementing the tech. So, like I've got good visibility on on what it is that we're doing for it. But, yeah, we we don't actually make the thing. Well, I know it's a I know it's a popular hot button topic with the community as we've seen in multiple question threads. So, the what I can offer to the community right now is that when the appropriate time comes, we will have we will have a feature on the creation of planetary clouds, volumetric clouds, and all that stuff as soon as it's ready at a point that's ready to talk about and show you. So, I can't tell you when that's going to be. It's when it's ready. Um moving on, we do have we do have a number of weather effects in the game today.
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Um what can you tell us about what's next? Well, yeah. I mean, so so it kind of does depend on what we've just spoken about with the clouds themselves. Um we're obviously going to be anything that you imagine would would be happening is going to happen. So, we're going to have rain. We we need to have that. Um one thing that I'm more interested in or more excited by is like more localized types of weather. So, storms, tornadoes, whirlwinds, little dust devils, those kind of things. Lots lots of That's the kind of That's the kind of the effects that that I kind of look forward to cuz it it's the whole collaboration of the whole team. So, it it again, it's like it's it's the VFX programmers and it's the gameplay implications and it's the visuals that we have to provide to to show what the game show those game play implications
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so the player can see that if they go towards a tornado you probably shouldn't do but I'm sure that people would you know would enjoy doing that in a game. To see that like the map the visuals match what is going to happen to the actual shape or the player if they're if they're not in the ship. But yeah like lightning storms as well. Snow just anything you can think of like weather you know if you can think of it as weather then it's a pretty good guess that we're going to be wanting to implement in it in the game when we get the the clouds. I think I tweeted at you yesterday the day before that this phenomenon that somebody was photographing the the weird I can't remember the squid thing that happens. I'd never seen that before. It was like a jellyfish in the sky if I had seen it I would have thought I was in some kind of Stranger Things moment. But apparently it's a real thing that happens and I never knew about it
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so Yeah. Let's let's let's move to quantum to quantum travel. We got a lot of questions about about the the quantum travel effects specifically. While there are several variations of that like when you fly a an alien ship you get a slightly different quantum travel effect. The core QT effect is kind of been in place for a while now and some of our backers indicated in the question thread that that maybe it hasn't aged as well as other things have improved or that they're simply tired of seeing the same effect for the last for the last while. Is there a possibility for some kind of dynamic generation in those effects? Something that can happen where on any given time the effect would change or or
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or be different based on how you've tweaked the engine or environmental effects or or basically the all the questions combined into one sort of like what are our thoughts about changing the the standard quantum travel effect and providing some visual breakup for for folks who who quantum travel quite a lot. Yeah, so so for sure you kind of nailed it. There's there's there's a I think there's a bit of visual fatigue that comes in when when it's one of the earlier effects that people just see a lot. Like, you know, I've I've seen that quantum travel effect a few times myself. Um and yeah, it it it we use the term rot like some some things rot over time. It's just It's just that the tech the tech that's driving the effects might have changed. So, certainly with quantum travel there have been fundamental changes to the back end work like what is what what is the engine doing with with that actual process of
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of quantum traveling which which does change how the effects are behaving. So, I won't say they're broken, but they definitely don't look like they used to and and and um the timings get changed as well. So, from a design point of view it's really important that um they care about like the spool up time and and they care about all those kind of those kind of hooks that that we then use to drive the effects. So, uh I get I guess what what I'm saying is we're we're aware that they are due an update and that is that is planned and scheduled and actually uh our VFX concept artist Rob, he's I think next week in fact. I think that's his next task. He's he's going to be jumping on to uh concepting the the quantum travel. We've got some really good We've got some really good information from uh people like uh Nate Nate the
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Squad 42 art director and Hannes the cinematics director. So, those guys have got a really clear idea of what they want. So, we're going to use that. We're going to we're going to sort of feed that into our concepts. to address your point about actual kind of like the dy- more dynamic element of it and and variables and things changing. I think absolutely that that's something that we we always love to do with our effects. We I've talked in the past about emitter strength. So, particles have like a strength curve and that can weaken Leo can can probably elaborate on this, but we can actually use that strength curve to to uh we can map that to other variables. So, if your let's just say the quantum quantum drive was getting damaged, we could actually visually reflect that. We could we could show a much more chaotic-looking effect. Um So, yeah, there's there's all kinds of things that we we could do with that and that we we would like to do as well.
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There there was also some possibilities of using the SDF tech. Um When I was exploring the look of the atmo entry, I also um tried it with what a QT effect might look like and there's a lot of possibilities and a lot of really cool uh dynamic um things we could do with it. Absolutely. Yeah. And for I got it. I got Okay. For for like a tech point of view, it was a while ago like implemented the QT effects and um one of the limitations we have right now is that um the effects are set up on the ships. So, if you change your quantum drive, the the effects will remain the same. One of the things I'd like to do at some
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point is is move that we don't have those limitations anymore. So, like with a few changes to the system in the back end, we could actually implement uh per drive effects rather than per ship effects, which I think is also one of the things that um people have been mentioning. So, somebody could take the the quantum drive from like an alien ship. Uh like like the scout has a very different quantum effect and bring it over to and bring it over to a a misc ship or an Aegis ship and put it in there and and get the change in effect kind of thing. If if design like if the design of those quantum drives allows that, of course. But, yeah. Yeah, that would like It's something something we'd like to pursue. Mhm. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And as you you mentioned the the different styles
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as well. Obviously, the the most the most common one is the the default as we call it, the kind of the blue the streaky blue one. But yeah, we've we've got different we've got different visual styles for different alien races. So, we can't and we've we've always talked about like having high and low-tech variables as well. So, maybe a cheaper drive would would look different. It's a bit like, you know, putting a putting a nasty old big exhaust pipe on your on your car compared to something higher high-end, you know. We we like to be able to reflect that visually as well. Right. So, the the this sounds like the first step towards doing that is is is untying it from the ship and tying it more to the more to the actual quantum drive item itself. Now that we can see other ships on re-entry,
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uh what are your thoughts on meteor showers? I'm going to let Teo take this one. Take it away, Teo. Uh well, I have tested this um and it is on the VFX side, obviously, completely possible. Uh it would just depend on the design requirements, um perhaps story element elements in Squadron. Yeah, things like that. But it is on our side, it's possible and it looks it looks pretty cool. I I imagine it's one of those things that's easy to make it look cool from a distance and then but then you have to figure out the gameplay implications of what if somebody goes to that meteor shower and flies to that you know, now there's now there's it's more than just looking cool. Now there has to be gameplay implications to it. And that's a much more complicated
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conversation. Yeah, in a normal game you can use meteor showers as like backdrop, but for us we can actually like how do you spawn a meteor right in the sky? Like where does it come from? Will it just like pop in existence or like does it come? that's a very good point, Leo. It's it's it's that that's that's the challenge. Yeah, it's like that thing's got to come from somewhere at some point. so you know, where? It can't be is it hidden behind is it in a gas cloud is it hidden? There's always possibility that someone could be at that place where the thing spawns, so yeah, that's quite a unique challenge to our game. NPCs in in in games have monster closets. Do with are there such things as meteor closets where they can spawn and come and come from? And again, they have to be visible from like every angle cuz you you can't control where the player is
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going to be when they see it, so. Yeah, that's an interesting that's an interesting challenges there, but uh If you want to see how it looks, just get a couple of friends to all come come down more or less at the same time at the same speed on a planet and then you'll see that that's kind of how it look. How do you guys anticipate the switch to Vulcan will affect your work? Well, for me, I mean again, Leo, you can probably provide a more technical answer to this, but for me in theory, aside from the fact that it's it's kind of time out the schedule for the programmers to do their work, it won't really make a huge difference to the likes of me and Theo. We won't We'll get like big performance benefits in the game from it, so I guess we can throw more particles at things, which is
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always a good thing for me. But yeah, it's not like going to make a fundamental change to how we work or anything like that. Yeah, for for me personally at least, I think it won't make much of a big difference because it's not really the code I work in that much. It's it's more Simon our leads who will be doing most of the work there. Uh but yeah, it will be quite a big big of chunk of time to to get it all working and tested and um But it's it's quite exciting because I think it will allow for some some more particles and better features and yeah. It wouldn't be a It wouldn't be a VFX
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show without a question about gas clouds. So, Mike, where we at with the gas clouds? How How they coming along? They're They're coming They're coming along well. I mean, it is I guess it's similar to the to the shields topic that it it's it's long been talked about and shown and and the backers will you know, our very patient backers will have seen lots and lots of updates on the gas clouds. Uh it it's we we still have weekly syncs with all all the people that are involved in it. It it it's it's I would say it's going well like um earlier on with the gas cloud work, it was we were kind of more focused I guess on Squadron in particular, but we we've more recently at least this year been been discussing options with the PU team as well. So, you know, there's there's there's lots of nice looking gas clouds for the grain points. Um The actual tech itself I again, that's
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more of a graphics thing and that is pretty much the the the tech itself the gas clouds that that's pretty much all you know, in a good state and and looking pretty solid. There's lots of we've started to do a lot more thorough testing in terms of like let's get a gas cloud in in an area. Let's get loads of ships in there. Let's have dogfights. Let's get bigger ships in there and let let's really try and break this thing. There's lots of work that comes from that just more boring stuff but like bug fixes and lots things that we didn't really anticipate previously. From our point of view like the actual I guess things like the the different like the different space loop effects that we want to have themes to the gas class. So, we want we want a designer to be able to take a a gas cloud that the artist has made and we want to be able to just have that same gas cloud if you
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placed it five times in a row, be able to change all the properties so that it actually looks and behaves in a different way and the experience inside that is different you know, in each of those variants of that of that same thing. So, all those kind of loose ends that we're trying to tie up, I guess. We we want to We want to We want to make sure design is as far ahead as they are. So, the whole kind of thing syncs, and then that's when we're going to feel confident about putting it in there and letting people see for themselves. Uh so much of what you mentioned so much of what you do uh depends on the on the work of others. Like I it well making a video game is a collaborative effort between multiple teams, but with VFX uh is absolutely no exception. It's It's you got to work with the engine team in order to give you get you the
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underlying tech you need before you can you can color something. Uh if anything you do is going to be a missive, and a lot of VFX are, you got to work with the lighting team to figure out how that's going to you know you know affect dynamic lighting. Uh of course if you want these things to actually have knock-on effects and and and stuff. I I I think there's actually a question we'll get to this next one about about explosions actually being physicalized in the in the world and and having knock-ons. You got then you got to get with gameplay design and stuff like that. Uh it's it's definitely a collaborative uh process. Hugely. Yeah. Well, let's let's see what we can do touching on that one right there. Explosions. Has there been any talk about making explosions have uh area of effect you know damage detonations? Absolutely 100% yes. Yeah, absolutely. the again I guess yeah, the fit so the
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physics team and I forget I forget the name but basically of of the team but like Rich Tyree you know everyone everyone be familiar with Rich Tyree. Um active feature team. Yep. Yep. So so there's a lot of work that those guys have been doing, and I'm sure we've been showing it uh and updating the backers about it regarding like physical like physical reactions um like impulses. So, yeah, an explosion should should if you're if you happen to be standing say someone fires a grenade like from a grenade launcher, um I'm looking at you too. And that explosion happens over there. Absolutely, it should it should knock the player kind of sideways and stumble. And that that's all kind of planned and a lot of that work is very far ahead as well. Uh well, you guys you guys they'll actually see that on
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ISC in about 2 or 3 weeks, depending on uh b-roll availability. So, that's actually when it's going. Um So, yeah. So, I that's you're talking about force reactions and the ability and the ability and the ability of of transferring uh those physics from the things that create them onto the players. And yes, coming later this month, maybe at the beginning of next month. It all depends on when the visuals are ready, people. People always like, "Why don't you talk about this?" or "Why don't you talk about that?" It's like, "We're waiting on the visuals. You want to see it, don't you?" Uh I don't know what that voice was I did either. We're just going to move on. Uh let's let's let's let's go from let's go to the live chat here for some questions. Uh uh right off the bat, what special effects have you had the most problems with? What what have you get What what's been your big problem effect? Oh god. I will Someone else go. Let let
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someone What's been your al wapa? What's been the thing that's just driven you crazy? I mean I mean some So, new effects perhaps that have been around for in the environments mostly in like Loreville and Area 18. I think for me what you you probably sympathize with this too, but I think for me one of the problem effects is is smoke from a barrel of a gun. Which sounds like a really simple thing to do, but that that's really really tricky to get looking good. Um two reasons is the the lighting model of our particle system at the moment is it's not it's not fully PBR, so it's not it's not quite like accurate in real world terms. So, again, with our game, you can make you
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have to make sure that your effect looks right on in daylight, You have to make sure it looks right at night time up in space where the where the you know the the glare of the sun is intense. So, what we end up doing is with it you want to kind of a nice subtle smoke emission from the barrel and you always get this from from the art and designers working on weapons how can you know could you just get us a little little bit of smoke out of the barrel and the problem is that you you do that and it looks great but you then you you see someone firing it in in space and it's super bright and you're like oh god it it looks really bad so now I've got to turn it right down and then I've turned it right down so then I get people saying I can't see any smoke coming out of my gun. So, it's really tricky in that sense and also another another side of that I'm sorry if this is I don't know if this is boring or interesting but another one is is the fact that you can
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move around really quickly so you have to have this like the particle count obviously we can't we can't spawn too many particles even with the GPU system we can't spawn too many. So, you get this problem where if the barrel if the smoke is emitting from the gun while the player is moving it around you just get these little blobs like of smoke and that that kind of breaks the immersion that doesn't really look good. So, just a kind of really minor type of effect I guess in the scheme of things but that's that's a really tricky one that always causes me headaches. How about you Leo? Um well the past year I think like atmospheric entry has been kind of a headache as well just in the sense that we had some trouble of like figuring out when to spawn the effects. Um our ships don't really fly fast enough to
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physically uh or physic physically accurately um spawn like spawn the effect when when it should like in real life. so we have to kind of fake it because it's a really cool effect. Um but it's it's it's kind of um we've had a lot of back and forth between different teams but how what we can do to change or like change the experience or change the the calculations. It's yeah. For me it's I guess a bit more of a technical point of view not really like visual but yeah. Janguru, you can send your letters to Leo care of Squad and Crew Games UK Manchester. Wimbleton.
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I'm just kidding. you spoke of you spoke of the re-entry effects. One of the questions we got here when we were showing the development of of that on Sprint Report at one point there was a whole shader that that would would would would make the whole a heat shader for the whole that would make the whole glow if you were doing a bad atmospheric re-entry. Is that happening still? Is that off the table? What happened to that? Was that just R&D? Before you answer, I wasn't going to mention it but one of the things that is difficult based on the previous answer is putting the making sure the effect the the reason for the effect is understood and and seen and on the atmospheric entry effect um
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me and Leo and I worked on yeah that that glow is a is a big part of that. You're leaving it for me to answer then? Well, I mean it is still planned. That's the short answer. It's it's not we certainly we we sort of R&D'd it and and and we showed it. It's we haven't taken it off the table. We're definitely planning on on doing it when when we can. The issue there is that again it's I'm probably just going to be repeating myself a lot but it's it's the collaboration. It's not something that we as a VFX team can implement. That needs to be we need to get like time from the graphics team. So Ali and Ali and his his team to actually work on the shader itself. We then need to collaborate with with the ship people. So you mentioned John
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Cruise. So John John's been in conversations about this. It's just getting everyone together at the same time to be able to you know make sure that all priorities are aligned to actually be able to do that. So definitely still planned. Um I can't commit to when. But it's it's certainly on the table. And we're also going to be needing something similar for for the fire propagation as well. Now priorities can can be the easy answer to almost every when question with regards to video game development. It's just a question of is yes it's it's always a question it's a In its simplest forms, yeah, we don't we'd always like to do it. We'd always love to do it. We'd always love to pursue it. It's just a question of with everything else that we're trying to do and even with as many folks as we have and as many studios around the world
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there are still a finite number of resources. So you have to always direct your efforts towards the things that you know any given individual can work on. It's So yeah, priorities are often the the course there. Um It will be needed for the fire propagation stuff anyway. So the the reason why it didn't really work was that we have to glow on the ship itself with the damage map. So if you shoot a ship, you you get like the glow glowing parts. So we could use that for for making the ship glow, but all the items attached such as the landing gear, the the glass, the doors even, they they didn't glow with it and it's basically we need the same kind of
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glow tech on all those other objects. Um and so one of the things we're requesting now from the graphics team is is is kind of like a more generic glow shader. So that we can use that same shader on the material for fire. So if an object is hot enough for it to glow, then we can use that same kind of system to to make an object glow. Um So it's going to be, yeah, probably a while, but it's it's going to be like something used for different different systems as well, which is which is nice. So you brought up fire propagation. So we let's let's get let's get into that. We we've been showcasing that on our our bi-weekly sprint reports for some time
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now. I personally find it very very interesting, which is why I include it. And then luckily the the community has agreed. Um why is the entity to voxel propagation important and necessary? And beyond that what are the next steps? Like when do we start updating the fire effect itself? And uh um and then the the question actually came from the chat was, will it change color based on fuel? Like basically, how far do we intend to take this? Let's just make it a simple question and go from there. All right. So we prepared a little demo for the fire propagation. So I can go through the demo um and answer some of those of the questions. Yeah. You want to do a screen share? Yep. Can you see my screen?
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We can see your screen. All right. So uh we got everyone's favorite ship, 600i. Maybe not, but we're going to set it on fire. John Crew, you can send your letters to Leo care of Cloud Imperium Games UK, Wilmslow. Bye. So uh we are going to base our fire on voxels, so you can see the square. Um I can put a debug on with like this. I don't know if like you can see the the green edges, but like those are all voxels with material properties. Um so in those uh voxels we are kind of going to bake the environment. Um and in the environment we have uh material properties. So for example,
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plastic. The the material properties this is all uh prototype work so nothing is final. A lot of tweaking and balancing and setup still needs to be done for all of this to kind of be implemented. But for now this is for example says plastic. So in plastic we have all of these properties which will affect fire. Um in here we have wood stands and plastic combined. Uh for example here we have uh fabric as well. So all of these have these these kind of properties. Um they're physically based. So we're going to start with a physically based propagation system and see how far we can get with that. And then we have an entity as well. Um so what's the difference between an entity um and a voxel? Basically, a lot
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of environment in our game is static. Um it will never move and we have a lot of those kind of static objects. Um and it's mainly for performance reasons. We we can't keep track of the fire state in all of those objects. For example, here in this voxel we have all of these these dirty pillows. They like we we can't really set each pillow Why? Set the dirty pillows on fire, Leo. Yeah, we we can't set them all separately on fire. So so we kind of average out all of these properties inside of voxel. Um so for example, if I uh change the physics or I set the physics on you see this this tool was falling because it's a dynamic entity and it can move in
00:34:39
Uh while the the plant pots it will remain hovering over the table while it's just static it it it it does have like static physics but it doesn't have any dynamic physics or anything. So we we can be be sure it will always be in the same place. we can set these voxels on fire um and we have different effects as well. So um if I set this voxel on fire we'll have um the kind of generic effect that most uh properties will have more most materials will have. Uh but we can also for example this one has uh fabric which is a different um material and a different effect as well. So we'll
00:35:27
have a more kind of low effects uh compared to the high flames from the generic one. And we are work in progress so I I'm still working on them and they'll they'll look more distinct than that. Yeah yeah definitely. So all all the visuals you're visuals you see here they are temporary for the prototype um they're definitely not final. Uh we also got like um this one uh and I set the vegetation. I don't know whether it's very well visible with with the quality of teams but this one has like uh ash things floating uh up up the flames. So you kind of kind of can see like the the ash um so all of these we can also do
00:36:17
uh electrical fires and whatever and in the meantime you see that this fire is is kind of getting out of control. Spreading around. It's spreading around. Uh we also have uh a fog volume. So, you see that the the the room is getting a bit foggy because of all the smoke being released by the fire. Um This is something we'll also add. So, this will be based on the atmosphere of your room. Um your Um so, if there's lots of smoke or toxic gases, your your room will start fogging up to to kind of Um add to the visuals. Um I'll reset this to kind of make it
00:37:05
do well again. So, how do we propagate? So, we we got some very quite fast propagation here in this area. We have a few few ways of propagating the fire. So, the first one is let's go for radiation. Radiation is basically your object shoots ray of energy kind of things at two nearby nearby objects. So, it will kind of heat up by radiation. This is not the most effective way of heating up an object, but it's um kind of simulated anyway. Think Think Think infrared and not nuclear radiation.
00:37:55
Right. Right. Yes, exactly. Yeah, good points. Different way of doing We also have convection. And this is basically the way So, you heat up the air and the air starts kind of moving around in your room. We won't do like full fluid simulation for this, but we will try and add in gravity in there. So, So if if you have a low gravity, then the convection won't be as as strong. While if you have a high gravity, then there will be more and more uh convection. We'll also try to um model in wind so that the the wind direction of your your fire affects the propagation.
00:38:45
Propagation, indeed. And this is important, actually, for visual. Sorry to cut you off there. Um because the particles will follow uh forces like wind and gravity. Um so you would expect flames going up a a wall, for example, to then have more more of those voxels uh above it to catch fire. Yes. For example, if we set a voxel uh on fire near a wall, if I can find one, then there there should be more propagation upwards rather than around it. And the last type of um propagation is damage. So if we heat up an object, um and this will be based on the material type as well. So it will
00:39:32
um not all material types will do this kind of behavior, but um it is possible for that object to um have a chance to ignite uh when it receives damage. Um and this kind of allows us to to model a more random fire uh behavior, while the convection and the radiation is is really it's deterministic. It's always the same. It will go up with gravity, with certain wind direction. Uh the radiation is always like based on the strength. It will always go like just around. So the damage gives a little bit of randomness.
00:40:22
Um and then was one more thing I wanted to show here. So, with the entities and voxels So, for example, if I set this voxel on fire and I move this this uh brush, the static brush, the fire doesn't move because everything is baked in the into this voxel. While if I set this uh dynamic entity on we can move it and it will the fire will move with it. And what this means is that you can kind of set fire around here just because this tool is on fire. I never get tired of seeing this. It's It's It's really cool to play around with it, to be honest, yeah.
00:41:10
Um that is very cool, Leo. Thank you for taking the time to show this. I've got some more if we have time, you think? Uh sure. What What you got? Go to a rolling barrel. Uh keeping the best for last. Uh if we ignite it and we enable physics, the barrel will will start rolling. we can keep track of this is like a made in Britain extinguisher. if we track this voxel then we
00:41:58
see the we can track the temperature of this this voxel. Um and if it goes above the yellow line, it will go into the smoke temperature, so it will start smoking. And that means that the voxel can also start to catch on fire. So, in here you see this Yeah, just like it's spiked up. That's because it went into the fire range of the temperature. this voxel caught on fire basically. And we have this for all these voxels around it. So, the the temperature will go up. They will start smoking. And when is this important? It's going to be important if we want to start extinguishing. So, our extinguisher it's Yeah. Not working very well.
00:42:47
But, we got a debug um extinguishing feature which we can use. Um let's speed this up a little bit so I can speed up the propagation. Oh, this is fine. a lot. This is fine. This is fine. Um and then I can start extinguishing. And hopefully we'll see the fire to die down where I extinguish. So, basically what you need to do is is make sure that there is no more smoke anywhere. Um Okay, maybe this was a bit too much. You can reset it. To make It's out of control, Leo. I'm Yeah. Don't worry about it. Well, we finally answered the age-old
00:43:36
question from Billy Joel. It was Leo. Yeah. So, extinguishing works in a few different ways as well. So, we um because we go physically based, we can kind of um use the fire triangle triangle, um which is used for by firefighters. Uh basically, if you take away one of the oxygen, fuel, or What was the other? It's fuel oxygen and fuel power. What? temperature heat It's It's temperature, it's fuel, and it's materials, I think. Are they other materials or kind of fuel, isn't it?
00:44:23
Yeah, let me completely blanking out here. It's okay. Uh fuel, heat, and oxygen. That's us. Yeah. So, basically, what we do is we we take away the heat inside this inside this sphere that you see here, this this debug sphere. We also take away the oxygen so that the the fire kind of dies down, and then we by taking away the heat, we we are able to kind of make the temperature go below the smoke temperature, and that will make sure it won't be able to kind of reignite and catch on fire. We also track fuel, so if the if that specific voxel or object
00:45:11
doesn't have any mass anymore to burn, it will die down on its own. And, of course, like later down the the line, if we if we kind of decompress a ship, then your fire will be gone as So, yeah. This is my demo completely running out of control. But, thank you so much. Last designed. You Yeah, you can stop the screen share. Thank you, Leo. Oh, where where's where's where's my picture? There we go. Uh people saw the wonderful outside of the apartment there for a few seconds. That's great. One of the follow-up questions that I know folks a lot of a lot of folks had in the chat there. have you have you considered zero-G and
00:46:01
how any of this is going to work in zero-G. We're all nodding. For I explained a little bit that convection will it will play into convection, which is the only way zero-G will affect fire and propagation, but Theo will explain a little bit the visuals, I guess. Yeah, I mean, in terms of propagation, it makes sense, right? Zero-G there's there's no there's nothing pushing the fire up or sideways with wind or anything like that, so it radiates uh uh everything. The the difficulty with zero-G fire is the visuals, obviously, because uh gases behave differently in zero gravity. Um it's it's something I think about a lot.
00:46:51
Keeps you up at night. Keeps me up at night, and it's um uh yeah, it's next on the list for me to uh take a look at um along with um different uh visual styles for surface types for for different types of fuel. Uh that kind of plays into it almost cuz it it it might it might need its own uh look. Right, yeah. Now, fire in zero-G it tends to be uh from the reference I've seen like almost globulous. It's it's it's weird, yeah. It's it's very weird. So, we could do that, but then would that look cool and would that but you know, is that what we expect? Yeah. Now, uh like like with all things, you take it to the point of realism, then you bring it back to the point of
00:47:37
fun. Uh let's see. All right, we've got 15 minutes left. What else we got? Missile effects. Mike, are you happy with the current missile effects? Cuz they kind of seem like crap. He told me I'm not I'm not happy with No, I'm not happy with them. And I intend to improve them. Um I'm actually I'm actually working on them myself at the moment. Um sort of I guess in between official duties I I I'm trying to tweak in the effects and I I probably I think I've shown in in in a couple of the update meetings that I've already got some improvements to them. Just just things like making them making them last longer so increasing the life and that helps readability. Just making making the flares more visible from a distance, pushing out the the actual thrust effects themselves.
00:48:26
Just kind of minor tweaks again similar I guess similar to the quantum travel conversation. It's a much the missile trails are a much older effect. Um possibly some of the first I I I worked on back in the day. But yeah, long story short definitely planning on improving them. Already made some work on it. We're also we're also holding out for some some graphics uh from sorry from the effects particle system improvements as well in like for ribbons on the GPU system for example which will allow us to to uh get kind of a bit more efficient with the trails as well. So yeah, going to improve them definitely. And those will go along uh other improvements to missiles in general being worked on by like the vehicle experience team and stuff cuz uh missiles in general are are are are coming due for a
00:49:15
for for an overhaul and you'll of course be hearing more about that as it continues on. somebody was asking where's Pico? He's right here. Think it'd be Is he flammable? We're not going to find out. This is the only one in existence. This was the manufacturer prototype. This is literally the only one that is out in the world right now. So we're not we're not going to find out if it's flammable. I need some reference uh production sheet. it. You're not going to get it. Uh let's see what else do we got here. We've seen what looks like cherry blossom trees in Orison. Does the thought of them dropping leaves excite or terrify you? To me, both. Yeah. It it It's terrifying in the sense that it's It's like more more dynamic
00:50:02
effects. Um but it's exciting because that's a real nice having having leaves falling from a tree and and getting blown around by the wind and uh Ian the the uh art director kind of he wants Horizon to have that kind of feel to it like a sort of a gentle breeze. So, uh yeah, I mean it's exciting actually. I'm I'm only really joking when I say it's terrifying. Um but I seem to vaguely remember I think I I think I half jokingly said to Chris in one of the updates that if we knew the amount of leaves on a tree, we could actually directly Leo's laughing already, but we could we could directly drive like the amount of leaf particles that fall from the tree, but I mean And that's why we call you part of the problem, Mike. It's an option. It's there, you know,
00:50:51
but but then from the geometry as well, so Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, you know, someone all the all the leaves would have to grow back otherwise we'd just end up with no leaves on the trees at some point in the in the the game, so it's probably not not the best idea I've had. so maybe we can do seasons as well. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. In future. In a to be de- to be determined uh patch. Uh right along with missile effects, let's move on to thruster effects. Same kind of question, I guess. Yeah, I mean the the answer is the same like I mean thruster effects is thruster effects were the the things I was most passionate about for for a while when I when I joined CIG cuz I actually loved
00:51:41
thing about VFX is like it's quite In the old days of of being a VFX artist, there was this conception and it was the case in in sort of more earlier games. The VFX artist just made a pretty looking effect like a flame and they just placed it in the level or or it came from a weapon. As you just saw with Leo's Leo's demonstration of fire propagation, there's a hell of a lot of data that derives the effects these days. Thrusters always I really liked thrusters because it was a similar kind of thing. It was it was fairly simple. It was like the the thrust input to the actual value from the ship was driving the the the strength curve of the particle. So you could do some really nice things with it. Um it's progressed over time. So as well as thrust input and and Leo, you know, was was very much involved in the functionality side of this. We got
00:52:30
overheating. We got damage. We got misfires. We got we got boost. We got shock diamonds when you're in atmosphere that you know, you don't you don't see them when when you're not in atmosphere. There's a lot of ships in our game as as as well, you know. So there's a lot of thrusters that needs to get made. We're constantly improving the GPU particle system. So so naturally some of the older effects don't look as good as other ones. We've actually just finished work on the 100 eyes thrusters. Yeah, and we just showed that Yeah, yeah. So we just showed that in the in a in a PO update and I'm happy to say Thank you for saying about an internal update, guys. Yeah, sorry. An internal team update. Chris loved them and Ian commented as well like he thought they were the best ones we've done. So I was really happy for Jacob, the the the
00:53:18
artist who made them. So yeah, it's just one of them things where you got so many moving parts. We we you know, can't really press the pause button on on on the machine that you know, the beast that is Star Citizen. So we just got to try and keep up and we just need to find a bit of time to just look at all of the effects kind of collectively and just and just work on improvements that we can do across the board. I have been doing that again similar to with the missiles. I've been working on the Gladius distortion effects. It's It's my favorite ship. Obviously, it's important for Squadron 42. So, I've been looking at what do I need to do to make the Gladius effects tick all the boxes uh that Chris has got really really clear ideas on on how how they need to be improved like general visibility, maneuvering thrusters in particular. I know that I know that's a common thing that comes up like maneuvering thrusters
00:54:05
are a bit too small. You can't see them. We've maybe been a bit too aggressive with the with the with the loading of them. So, lots of work is being done with that. I I'm personally involved. So, um yeah, make them better. We'll try. And for the folks asking, yes, you will see them when the time is when the time is right. Um with things like weather and temperature affecting more and more things planet-side, have there been any consideration for things like heat wave or or shimmer effects? Yes, they have I was going to say something like that. We used to have them exactly, Jared. Yeah, yeah, we used to have them on the CPU particle system. Um and again, we we moved across we've moved more of our planet effects well, all of our planet effects to the GPU, but we didn't have refraction. So, the So, our refraction particle getting that
00:54:54
heat wave look wasn't available to us. Um so, once we get that on the GPU, then yeah, we can put the the shimmer back in. Yeah. Um one of the most common questions that we get and maybe put you on the spot a little bit here. Uh space dust. Have you considered the option of letting people just check a box and remove it? Some people don't like it. Some I like it, but some people don't. Yeah, I see that a lot and I I understand that that it that it it's not to everyone's taste. Uh we're we're not planning on removing it just because um well, it it's it physically exists in in in our in our space in our game. It it is physically there. It's not It's not an AR thing cuz I know there's been conversations about oh, hang on. What is the purpose of the space dust?
00:55:42
I know that it's primarily to to to make it feel like you can you can see that you're moving, basically. It gives you that parallax. You take the space dust out, you got no kind of sense of of that you're moving. And I know that there'll be Yeah, I know there'll be some some people want the more realism side of it that they don't care that they can't see um any kind of visual cue. There's been talk of putting it onto an AR, so it's it's a deliberately artificial space dust kind of thing that that helps with that. We did some tests quite a while ago on that sort of thing. Chris Chris is quite keen on keeping the space dust in. Uh one thing I will say is that again, something that I've been doing personally, I've been I've been tweaking the values. So, again, it's it's it's quite a not the most glamorous of effects, but I've just been looking at maybe not making the streets quite as big, maybe reducing the amount,
00:56:29
increasing the amount, depending on on the location. So, really just chipping away at that and just trying to make them not too intrusive, but but you still get the benefit of of getting that motion. graphic designers are known to suffer from word blindness when looking at for at the same words over and over again during visual design. Uh does the same thing happen for visual effects? Tell you. Tell us. Yes. So, for for me, it's not so much obviously text or anything of that. It's more motion uh and intensity. So, a good example is when I'm working on the fire effects um and tweaking values with, you know,
00:57:20
with different strengths on the actual fire effect. Um after like about an hour, it's it's hard for me to distinguish between the the changes I'm making. And that just is because I'm I'm it's it's like when you're sitting in the back of a car that's moving for a long time and then you stop and then your vision can continues to to to make you feel like you're you're moving. That happens definitely to me a lot. Yeah, so it's important to take breaks, work on another type of effect even or something completely different. And then come back to it otherwise you just waste time making changes that don't make any sense. I think that's where where your colleagues come in useful as well. You know, it's nice to nice to show an effect that you've been staring at for so long and you actually I might I might give Theo some feedback or he might give
00:58:08
me some feedback or oh no, Leo, anyone in the team will will go they'll point things out that you've just become blind to because again you're you're just looking at so long. Yeah. That happens in just about every aspect of game development. That'll even happen in yeah, video stuff. You know, it's by the it's by by the time by the time I see segments go out to the public I've I've seen each one at least two dozen times in a variety of different states and and everyone will will will finally you know, bring it out and branch it to other people and they'll be like, "Why is this thing there?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" There's this giant like ugly ass square thing in the middle of the scene right here. And it's like, "Oh, I've looked at that footage so many times and for so long I was completely oblivious to it. Yeah, we'll go ahead we'll recapture that. I didn't realize I
00:58:56
didn't say that. So yeah, so so Contact repetitiveness blindness is something that affects anything when you just work on it over and over and over for a for a prolonged period of time. Two two two final questions before we wrap up here. How do you balance VFX needs versus game performance? Ooh, well, that's a good one. I mean That is a good question. Yeah. Well, we've just got to we've got to make it work, you know, so so the the fire is probably a good example of that. Ground ground storms is another example. We know we got a clear brief on what it is we need to do and it just so happens that the fire is going to you know, that that that's very easily going to be a performance breaker.
00:59:44
So, we need to look at people smart people like Leo help us out here and Simon. Yeah, you do Leo. Um you know, we need to look at we need to make sure that they are performing. I mean, this is a this is a game development uh core value you know, core principle for everyone in every department. You've got to be able to make sure that it runs in frame. It's got to be optimal and shoot maybe you make some compromises for that, but you got to make sure that the compromises aren't aren't to the detriment of the of the visual quality. And uh I've got to go ahead. You want to add? No, I I was going to say this makes a big difference to to me when working on impact effects, for example, I could uh visually I could throw it tons and tons of particles with smoke
01:00:32
and like make it really look cool when a mass driver hits snow, which I've prototyped before and worked on, but uh you do feel that lag come in when when you have an impact or fire weapon and that's just that's just a no-no for me. I it drives me crazy when I'm playing, you know, any other game. So, it's it's something I will put performance I put performance before visuals. Um yeah, and trying to get get as much visuals out of the performance. Yeah, it's worth it's worth noting that in that fire demo that we saw today and then in all the footage we've seen in previous ones, that is a a very WIP effect for the fire itself. It it is you know, the work right now is on the tech and making sure the tech is
01:01:21
lean and mean and functions the way and then once all that's done somebody will go in and start working on the actual fire effect itself and Yeah, for sure. I mean like Simon and and Leo did great things with the with the ground storms by the way. Like they they that's a that was a huge undertaking. There's a lot of effects going on on the screen and the performances are actually really good of the given what they're doing the performances actually really good on them. So yeah, yeah, Teo is absolutely right. Like we've got to make sure that the gameplay experience is is is kind of top priority there. All right. Uh final question before we let you go. Uh fireworks in space? Really? Yes. Yes, really. I mean, yeah. It's you know
01:02:10
Do we do we do we need to justify it with some with some lore or with some tech behind it or 930 years worth of advanced technology? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leo's got got some thoughts on this, I'm sure. Yeah, it's uh called space fireworks. Just like just like Oh, they're space fireworks. Say no more. Say no I didn't realize they were space fireworks. Now it all makes sense. Now it Exactly. Yeah, just needed that clarification. I'm sure that's put an end to that to that argument. All right. Thank you so much guys for taking time out of the end of your week to be here on the show. I think folks really appreciated I I I I know I did. As we are want to do at the end of every SCL now we are going to throw a we're going to throw a raid over to a Star
01:02:57
Citizen streamer that is hopefully broadcasting right now. I I haven't heard for certain but we're going to find out. This is a French streamer named you know I'm not good at pronouncing these things. I've been calling Teo Teo this entire time. I said Whimslow instead of Wilmslow as Luke Presley once corrected me on. I'm terrible at the pronunciation but we're going to try this water patat I think if I've got that correct. She is a French streamer who does a lot of flight instruction and stuff especially with the new flight model in 310. So so when you go over there and and and the raid happens say hi from the VFX team and yeah we'll see you back here next week everybody. So take care. Thank you Teo Teo. Leo
01:03:45
Mike this is I'm Jared. End the show. Thank you. See 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.