CitizenCon 2951: Life In The 'Verse

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] [Applause] so now

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   oh hi i'm todd pappy star citizen live game director hi i'm ian i'm the art director for star citizen hi i'm dave i'm the narrative director at star citizen so finally we're saying goodbye to stanton it's quite quite precious to us we've been talking about it we've been looking at it we've been living there for quite a long time now it's time to you know move the

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   conversation on start to look at something new now it's changed slightly the jump point side is from what we saw um a little while ago one of the things that was quite important for chris is he wanted that feeling of um something that was quite wondrous something that was quite amazing you know it's not dark it's not mysterious it's not hostile but it's more like i said wondrous so when we started looking at pyro and we had to start looking at how the jump points work when we're traveling from santa to pyro or pyro to stanton and thinking about border security and with the infrastructure that's needed there what's the lord just because on one side it's it's very lawless versus the other side is is dealing with the uee we needed to go through and really think

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   about how this was working and then also with the jump points how smugglers would work with the secondary and tertiary routes that would lead into the main jump point and then funnel out yeah we kind of call it internally we kind of call the swiss cheese approach of the you know the sort of the main entrance that you would go through on stanton which would be the sort of guarded have the infrastructure that you had mentioned uh the security and stuff like that but the possibility that there would be alternate ways to kind of get in to bypass that so which would be you know beneficial knowledge for smugglers or criminals who were trying to you know get in under the radar and also it was you know if if there's a lot of infrastructure around it it sort of created this impression that that infrastructure was responsible for the jump point in reality it's a naturally occurring thing an interesting balance of like make it seem like this is a

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   checkpoint but at the same time it's something that the the ships are creating not the structures so before we go too much further into the pyro system let's take a deep dive into the op process with jake dunlop and he's going to be taking us through the author and process for the stanton and pirate jump points bringing jump points to the verse has been an interesting journey as we've been designing a new element in our game we've put a lot of time into creating two solid examples of different types of jump points you'll eventually see all around the verse one in stanton and one in pyro we've been continuing to use houdini as the tool to create these gas clouds the setup we have for them is a parent gas cloud and a child gas cloud

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   the parent is mainly used as an establishing shot when you arrive in your ship from quantum travel while the child is used as the main gameplay environment and is placed inside the parent the child also has a reasonable scale which keeps your average ship speed in mind these things aren't nearly the size of real nebula if you're curious but by no means the jump point small is an example of a pirate jump point next to microtech to explain the process a bit more we create the parent at a large scale then cut out a small box in the center of it inside the small box we'll gather the volume data from the parent uprise that and then add details the details will be different depending on what type of gas cloud you want and

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   if you want to easily fly through it or not we usually spend time investigating different designs for the gas clouds but with a stanton jump point the work had already been started and used in the 2019 citizencon demo we just had to go through clean up the houdini file and get a game ready with a couple of extra tweaks along the way some of the tweaks we made to the parent were making it feel like more of a structurally sound rotating disc this was to make it feel like a safe and well used jump point the child gas cloud here was changed more dramatically it used to have a bunch of dark clouds around it we felt that it was feeling a little bit too closed in so we spent time morphing the magnetic lines in the center to create a really

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   interesting horizontal flowing relaxing composition to visually show you that stanton itself is generally a safe place at first glance the parent gas cloud for pyro was created with the same process as the stanton parrot but we changed the shape of the cloud into something more menacing and violent we wanted the reveal of pyro to be a clear warning of what you should be expecting throughout the entire system so we made it very closed in dense and very active we did make it a small challenge to traverse the child something that won't take too long but should be something to consider when traveling through something that helped really quickly create a fun traversal route was creating a white box play area in engine out of solid geometry and flying around

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   it right away after we were happy with the rat we exported the geometry to use in houdini where we converted it to a volume and combined it with the uprest area of the parent to export that out as the child cloud we wanted to make sure that these systems feel very different from each other some ways in which we did this was by the shape of the jump points as i had mentioned before stanton feels very clean put together and generally safe with the disk-like form that it has but pyro feels like it's more violent stressed and this shows in its form the comparison is shown well in

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    both of the child clouds in the stanton child cloud we have nice long strands of the magnetic waves that encapsulate the jump point that feel harmonious beautiful and free whereas in the pyro cloud it shows almost the opposite the walls feel like they're closing in on you moving in unpredictable ways completely unstable your ship could enter into a wall and disappear within a second lighting also plays a big role in how we feel about these spaces you can see these are dramatically different areas in the moon and tone and lighting is the key to that so that's a brief look at jump points they've evolved quite a bit since last time you saw them enjoy the rest of the show thanks jake uh so one of the things that players first probably come across when

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    they come into the pyro system is the space station you know it's discovered a long time ago it was sort of deemed uninhabitable because it was just too dangerous with that that variable flare star going on uh so they kind of utilized the system for resources and then when they kind of tapped out they just sort of left and that's when all the sort of squatters came in so there's sort of older infrastructure built to sustain kind of the mining activities and the gas harvesting and stuff like that but you know that they just basically left and then other populations started to slowly move into the system criminals squatters survivors and whatever and start to kind of take over what was left behind which gives us some unique gameplay comparatively um to stanton and the the space stations there so with pyro since they're in such disrepair some of them are inhabited

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    some of them are completely abandoned and then so players can go and explore they can go and see what's happened there whether i've been hit by an asteroid or if it's there was some sort of conflict there before but you'll be able to go and explore the different decks and be able to go and meet new people meet the frontier lifestyle enjoy it okay so before we go to the inside of the stations we're going to jump now to eric and he's going to go in a bit more detail the concept development process taken when looking at the exteriors hi i'm eric jano principal concept artist on star citizen the goal of that initial step of sketch development is to create something not

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    inviting dangerous damaged by asteroids and surrounded by floating debris hiding place for atla looks old decrypted lawless no security force here approach at your own risk industrial look messy but not abandoned some parts are wrecked but under repair and relooking i like to use the black and white sketches to start it's it allows us to go very quickly and focus on the shape only we then try to play with a touch of color to define more of the commercial board platform we try different skins to

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    remind us of the whole look we are rusty vibe and brown tones adding a touch of light in some context around the sketch allows to see the scale of thing and properly view the silhouette we expand on the id to play with the mechanism and functionality this is the color sketches of the asteroid enterarpum and the different angles in this sketch we can clearly feel the arrival of the asteroids and dismantling our destruction destruction zone we also need some top angles to properly showcase the size and scale of it with all those element in place we can now

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    build a nice plate of the entire concept for the asteroids harpoon with all the peace together the shantytown module habitation is a nice idea to add a kind of small city on the hot skirts of the space station so here i sketched those shapes to create something very modular from the grayscale it's pretty easy to do a color pass i played with a color palette that reflects the vibe of shantita in this sketch here we can easily see how cool the area is going to be another angle shot here is pretty nice too playing with worn and cold color contrast is interesting

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    all those different angles help define and expose the different elements of the concept to properly illustrate it now we have a nice board of this sketch face we applied the same process here for the commercial port platform the black and white sketches are a good way to go in this image we see the silhouette shape sketches for the front of the port platform structure a quick side view plan here is necessary to well build this design we feel the form and the ratio and the size of what we want to achieve and of course we create a color sketch to see what it could be we see the industrial look and some

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    potential details to better define and deep dive into for those we have a deeper design exploration of this industrial area pipes tanks angular shapes and a color touch combining 2d and 3d sketches really help properly communicate the design antenna it's a common technique now but it's really efficient to highlight areas of the concept using 3d is also very useful for level designers to validate the size and shape of things when creating the environment in-game let's talk about the big repair missionary heidi this machine could be used to repair surfaces damaged by asterians

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    inspired from the av missionary that we see in mining nice to see the overall haddon ids broke together on a single board it gives a great look and makes you want to see the next design step the mood looks we also create a mode board from our different shots this shows how lighting is used to set the tone of the environment by giving different options and color palettes finally we provide some options for paint of the exterior surfaces we work from a list of brands and faction that we need to incorporate to the design

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    we started from the narrative things worked to build the visual identity of the different brand exploring different ways to represent them and the environment stickers flat surfaces graffiti or official paint job this really brings the sketches alive and set in the universe of star citizen the outlaw station are a staple of the pyro system and we hope this first exterior concept phase excites you as much as we had fun to create it thank you thank you eric looks great that's the exterium so right now we're going to go from the outside and we're going to jump

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    to the interior before we really started exploring anything one of the core concepts and that was discussing as a group was the idea of power and the idea of heat now we've got like this big interior layout of this maybe this old mining station how how would they have adapted the space you know they would have like okay we need power here okay that will create heat so we started thinking about okay where would the heat lamps be and then would light come from so just the the principal concept of power creating heat creating light that was pretty much the the core of the start of the visual development process so when we started talking about it from a design side we needed to make sure

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    that we were covering certain shops uh just basic needs for the player everything's bare bones um it could be that it used to be a clothing store now it's a food shop and and so they've converted it the gang's moved in you know it's it's very it's not what it used to be and um but you see that old skeleton there one of the things that definitely we've been talking about with pyro that we didn't really get to see in stanton uh is the idea of the sort of the gang presence so uh you know that idea that they're the sort of local law uh in the area so you know you might see gang members coming and shaking down some of these shopkeepers for protection money or rent you know type type thing or even shaking down the player

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    yeah yeah it should be very fun not for me so when we started to explore some of the side areas there were other things other factors that we had to cover um habitation clinics you know players need a place to sleep to log out as well as players needs a way to get themselves healed we started taking the same treatment or similar treatment that we were doing with the the main market area and started to take it into the habs and how they were possibly repurposed or the clinics and how those were possibly repurposed so and just make sure that everything felt cohesive in its in its raw natural form in the way that we have the station structured um we

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    haven't let players go into like living quarters of where the people that lived at the station would be or even into the lower decks where where the power where the gravity generators are and this is where we're going to start introducing these areas and it opens up new opportunities for the players to go explore and do new things but it's also areas that the gang might want to protect yeah it offers a lot of possibilities for for mission content you know whether it's actually maybe working for the gang itself or other kind of little small things you could do inside there to really kind of yeah drive you deep into the bowels of this thing okay so that's a little look at the insides of the stations but now we'll jump to christian and chrissy is going to take us on a little bit of a deeper dive into the

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    concept development process of the inside of the stations hi my name is christian doretz i'm a senior concert artist on the environment team and we're going to look at the concept development for the space station a little bit so first off we looked at the heat maps so there is a lot of what i said the electricity is gone the heating is gone and the visible air the oxygen is gone there's pretty much all of those connected areas there are they are lifeless in a way right so you wouldn't settle down somewhere in between those in those empty corridors we were trying to sort our thoughts and get them on paper right so we were exploring different ideas

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    that we on the concept team had in mind so we were thinking about pathways that the player and the mpc could take so what would happen we were thinking about what would happen if all of a sudden one pathway is blocked off or another one will open up right so we were thinking about verticality and how the players or the npcs can traverse all of those interesting areas that are in the end pretty ominous right so think about there are some people just screwing off side panels on the wall or they're screwing off ceiling panels and you would see all of the maintenance areas behind it so so we'd see a lot of struts a lot of working areas there's cables hanging so those were the very first sketches where we could see what those eventually could evolve

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    into and we also started then slowly with some loose uh 3d sketches so getting everything into 3d and it's pretty much evolved over time where we could talk to the environment guys and we were asking for some of the current rest stops uh geo and some of the textures and then getting them into 3d and we were just changing up all of the props all of the side panels or all of the the whole um the environment so we could looking back at the references then convey this feeling we could introduce more dirt we could introduce some damaged panels side panels and pretty much explore this side area right and the the big advantage of this is that we can make the the environment how we like so

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    one thing that we did is like kill all the lights because we don't need lighting we want to we want to create our own lighting and this is what i said earlier um the current rest stops are super bright they're they're family friendly but now we want to make it ominous we want to make a dark mood we want to make it super dark with the players like always feeling kind of in danger and especially with the gang members in mind right this would allow us to create one of uh one of the very earliest or one of the earlier 3d explorations which then lead to one of the final concept arts or the um the final implementation of this so when we were at the point where we were kind of um okay or where we thought like okay this is this is an environment that we want to see then we took care about the last 20 so the last 20 in this case means having a final render

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    and painting over so we were just painting over in photoshop and doing some some more refined refinements for the mood and the lighting we were painting in some some of the decaling and some of the graffitis because it is ultimately easier to do all these things in 2d than in 3d and caring about the materials so we were able to um yeah just refine the the final concept in in this regard and this this wasn't a was great straight process from a to b it was um an iterating process so in between if you look at some of the other concepts for example the barriers we were at one point thinking about what would happen if we introduced barriers that the gang members then would set up on one point so what does it mean for you as a player what is the player doing what is the

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    player doing at this point so will he encounter these these gang members will he try to find a way around is he going to use some of the letters or the the underground vents for example so we were changing the concepts here and there more or less and this leads to in the end having a nice variety of concepts or different types of concepts that we then could cherry pick the best parts of it or the in other teams the environment team the design team could cherry-pick the best ideas from from those concepts and this was pretty much a rundown of the concert development for the pyro space station's interior thanks christiana the looked appropriately scummy so we've been talking a lot about the insides of the stations we've been looking at a lot of the concept hot

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    but now we can jump to josh and josh is going to talk about uh one of my favorite parts of the process and it's when we take some concepts and we we start to do some eye duration some uh visual development in the engine hi my name is josh van zullen i'm the principal environment artist here at cloud imperium games today we're going to be going through the pyro space station's visual target and pre-production sort of things that we're going to be doing for these rundown slash outlaw space stations so what i have here right in front of me now is obviously the the food court from our stanton space stations we've just dragged the wear up on all of them so now we're getting all of this really nice grime on all of these surfaces right so if i turn off my working lights which hopefully are gonna you know produce that mood that we're after so i'll turn on that right now

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    so a number of things have happened right in front of us right you can instantly see where we've got lots of heavy fog coming in don't pay too much attention to the particles now i'll go into them a little bit later we've got some light panels up here shooting through the rafters and we've got another one over here as well right so we're going to do an a a quick little thing here it's adding in some cables right and now this is really important not only to achieve the art direction but it gives us a really nice level of parallax within the scene right we have a couple of design constraints within this space as well one of those being we have a gang and then a general civilian population right now one of the things that we wanted to do in terms of that design in this particular space was separated out in like a kind of class type system right

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    so we're going to start to explore some of the requirements of that one of that being that like i mentioned before you can't get up here unless you're in favor with the gang so we need to put in the instruments that are going to help betray that and that is a checkpoint right so and just a side note all of this stuff is super work in progress and nothing is final so don't read too much into it so from here we're missing a few bits and pieces right but one of the ways that we're going to solve that is with graffiti all right so i'm going to turn on those decals now and you can start to see that the walls here are starting to disappear a little bit it's a very subtle effect in this particular area but you'll start to see how much more it comes through in others right so moving on from here we need to start putting the stuff in the

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    environment so bear with me for a sec when i turn this on all right so we've got here is a lot of stalls right we really want to get that cramped vibe in like that was kind of similar in the concept and start seeing how far we can push the limitations of what we can do in the engine but also what we can do with our technical systems as well right one of the things that was immediately apparent to us is that ai is really tricky to deal with when in tight and enclosed spaces right so we need to look at areas like this here and this here to make sure that it's wide enough that a few ai can pass each other or a player and not you know look completely gross right now i mentioned lighting before so i'm going to turn off the

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    working lights that we've got so far and you'll start to see what i mean so we've got a whole bunch of stalls here at the moment the entire scene is being lit by the stalls itself now this has already come a long way and the stools themselves have had a bit of a lighting pass so um there's this is already starting to look quite nice but we're not getting you know that that that thickness that we were getting up up on the top level right we're not getting that little bit of life to a certain extent and we're also getting these areas here where they just fall completely into darkness which is which is not fun so obviously like i said before we'd be doing lighting as we go through this process but just to see how much of an impact that pass can do on an environment like this we'll just turn it on for you so you start to instantly see we've now

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    got a lot more thickness within the environment and if i just double check just to make sure that our lights are generating correctly cool we're getting a lot more voluminous lighting now we're getting all of these heaters coming in now the heat shimmering off them we've got these little portable ones lighting up the place we've got some ones that are hanging from the roof ones that are over in the corners and stuff like this right so we're starting to get a lot more mood in this this is starting to feel really nice now what i was mentioning in terms of the rain right so yes we're talking about the rain now why is there rain inside right so this is generally a really cold station when people are in this area that's in the center because there's so much stuff happening here it's starting to get

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    warmer right you've got the heaters here you've got the gang that is kind of maintaining a lot of this stuff and and producing a lot of the heat themselves uh everyone this is prime real estate for where everyone wants to be right what happens when you have this many people cooking food in this one small area you know breathing hot air that sort of thing it all starts to rise in this this environment and it starts to get that massive cabin right that we've got up here all the way up to the roof there as it goes up it starts to cool down right and we start to get precipitation inside where it starts to rain and even in many instances we start to get a little bit of ice coming through as well so that means once it's all fallen down here it's actually quite wet and damp

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    for it's still cold and a little bit warm around heaters but it's generally quite damp because of that weird kind of event now the rain as it currently sits is just a placeholder asset that we're borrowing from squadron and that will have to obviously be remade to suit the amount of rain that we want to have within this environment which won't be you know crazy but um it serves as a proof of concept for what we're trying to achieve right that is pretty much pyro stations um i hope you really enjoyed like seeing the breakdown that we've done here today um seeing learning a little bit about the process of going in and doing a visual target and um you know just a little bit more of that earlier process and problem solving that we go through so yeah i hope you really enjoyed the rest of citizencon here

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    today and uh i'll catch you later cool thanks josh that was looking really good all right so as we continue our process of exploring uh the pyro system uh now i think it'd be good to look a little bit at the planets and moons that populate the system one of the things we thought it'd be interesting to talk about is how do we design a system from the ground up as with all of this we always start from narrative you know before we put any pen to paper or we have any discussions about player experience um we always start from you know the world that you know dave and others have kind of built yeah i mean you know and again it's also the thing you know the pyro i think was first initially conceived very early on in the process but once we finally are

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    tackling it from a realistic practical how we're going to build this what is what each planet can look like uh you know it's important you know to ask more questions about to flush it out more because we kept it intentionally kind of vague because we want the art team to you guys to do what you do and the designers to do what they do so when we started that exploration process we knew we had like um a ballpark that we needed to stay in uh so we we literally thought okay how do we how do we design a system and fundamentally it it kind of comes into maybe three key areas so um because we're a space game the establishing shot of that planet is very very important because it it it describes everything from you know continent breakup

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    fundamental palette so right from the get-go we we started to sketch in ideas of what the key establishing shots were going to be like and then from there then we jump into um kiot so key art is basically on the surface what is what is the mood what's the tone that we're expecting to see and as you're saying like the first one we wanted to tackle was parawan because you know david described this this wonderful um picture and it was already clear in our minds of about what it wanted to look like so we hit that first and you know we wanted something hostile we wanted something hazardous uh also as part of this process is um we knew our current um tech limitations but we also knew what we wanted to do in terms of our

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    future tech you know um future planetech weather you know so we kind of went crazy um with ideas as we was exploring so we went through the various planets did some key art and again put them up on the board and just to validate we are keeping within that that palette but we're getting that diversity we're getting that diversity of of color hue value structure silhouettes composition um because even within something like stanton there's variety you know that was very important for me in the team where you want to feel like you're on a space opera you can travel around but now we're going to a completely other system so we continued that idearation process there so we had the establishing shots

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    we had some key art and then um from there is we create like what we call like breakout packs and this is where when we're talking through with design about you know what are the what are the interactables that the player maybe will come across what are the minerals what are the harvestables and then from there we start to build out um literal breakouts for or almost asset packs and that will go to the team now from there like we did a first pass exploration and what we did is we put it all together on a single border for chris to have almost like a commander's view of a new system um you know we showed it to yourself dave we showed it to chris we showed it to todd and right you know on on one sheet you've got the establishing shots

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    you got the key you got the breakout and and for me personally that's how i like to work i like to see that like i said a commander's view of an entire system and then from there you can kind of tweak adjust and you know mold things into what what what play experience we want to put forward so that was a snapshot of the visual exploration process we use when designing a system from the ground up now we can take a break from us talking and go to an art video a sizzle video created by the art team and what this will show is it will show a kaleidoscope planets and moons from pyro and it will also showcase some of the the latest and greatest art techniques and processes and tools that the art team have awesome i'm fully in love with pyro and

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    hopefully from seeing that video hopefully you guys are too so as a continuation now we can jump to sebastian and sebastian we'll talk to you a little bit more about the cloud authoring process and some of our latest cloud tech then we can jump to maximilian maximilian we'll talk a little bit about geology creation how we create that type of biome and then lastly we can go to muslim and muslim will go into a lot more detail about how we take some of the concept art that we've been showing of the botanicals and how we interpret that to in-game artwork hi my name is sebastian and i'm a principal environment artist on the planet content team i'll be talking a bit about the data that's defining the visuals of the volumetric clouds and how we create it

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    crusader was our first astronomical object that made use of the volumetric cloudtech that's being built by cast and veins and others while working on crusader we learned a lot on what kind of data gives us which results and what is better to be avoided with the tech being new we also needed all new workflows for it we are currently building more tools for producing the data so we expect to get better more complex results in less time in the future we are evaluating everything from a very manual process that involves painting every pixel to a fully procedural one with little to no artist input and we will probably end up somewhere between the two this essentially means that what you are about to see is very likely subject to change due to the way the shader works we can either throw random data at it and hope

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    for happy accidents or we can be very specific with the data and what kind of cloud formations come out of it in certain areas of the planet for most use cases there are two types of textures that need to be created the first of which is the global property map which determines what what type of cloud is being used at any point on the planet's surface it is also used for controlling the color placement of non-water-based clouds but i'll get to that later the other map is for defining the types of clouds and is named accordingly the cloud type map allows us to control the cloud density and the impact of the two separately tiling 3d noises which add detail in definition to what would otherwise be fairly low resolution shapes the way the two textures intact is maybe best compared to forming a vase out of clay on a pottery wheel and that's kind of what we are going to do in this video we are revolving half the

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    silhouette of a vase around a circular pattern which gives us a base like shape and 3d space the big difference to a potter reed though is that we cannot only feel it there in the shape of a circle but ultimately whatever shape we want with the density channel we can control how thick the clouds appear white pixels represent very dense clouds black pixels produce no cloths at all and then we also have everything in between there's always a tiny bit of impact from the tiling noises which you can see to have an effect on the lower density regions the shaping noise and its control texture are the most impactful in terms of turning a nicely shaded volume into something we can clearly identify as clouds how much it gets to affect the shape of the clouds depends on the brightness in the corresponding channel of the cloudtab map by combining density and shaping noise we can model everything from dense

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    clouds to soft more ethereal shapes and everything in between the last of the cloud type map channels controls the erosion noise it is lower resolution in the shaping noise since its main purpose is to add an extra layer of small detail we usually just edit everywhere unless we specifically want soft clouds with less definition black values add details in the way the tiling noise is offered while white values invert the noise and medium gray values mean that the noise has no impact maybe you can already get a feeling for how clock for the complexity of the system and how every pixel in every channel can have a dramatic effect on the end result another thing we can change are the tiling 3d noises themselves by default a cauliflower-like noise is used for the shaping to model of those fluffy sheep-like cumulus clouds

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    but by changing it to a different 3d noise we can produce some more abstract cloud shapes that wouldn't normally occur on earth this is an area in combination with different global data we keep investigating to produce more alien cloud formations in the future we've been advancing this approach with pyro5 another gas giant which brings me to the other use of the global property map it has a second channel which in combination with a color gradient is used to control the global color of the clouds for not so physically correct coloring of the gas giants we sometimes have to restrain ourselves to not make brightly colored balls of cotton candy there are a lot more settings that allow us to tweak everything from how the clouds are shaded and shared out over the global impact and frequency of the detail noises two parameters that drastically change what results the textures i've shown you today produce you'll have to bear with us as we figure

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    out if there's a best combination of settings and how those might change once all the features that are still planned eventually get added by now you've probably seen a fair amount of volumetric clouds as part of this year's citizencon and are quite likely to see a bunch more because of that and since i'm still an artist at heart i leave you with this bad throwing of a cat instead of more epic cloudscapes thank you for your time hi my name is max and i'm a senior environment artist at cig i am part of the planet team where my focus is on planet and asset creation i want to give you some insight into how we transform simple terrain shapes to a final biome plus a little preview of what you can expect in the future when creating a new biome we start by assigning ground textures to the terrain geometry for this research and development desert biome we chose a selection of different types of sand and

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    soil for additional depth and detail we have the option to use displacement mapping the next step is adding our first layer of ground cover assets in our game ground cover is any low cost asset up to knee height which does not require collision and allows us to use a lot of these assets to create a nice level of density here we use a mix of gravel patches of moss and dry grass after that we add slightly bigger acids in the form of clusters of desert bushes to give context to the smaller assets and add variety we finish the object scattering paths by adding individual larger rocks and arrangements of small rocks which give the player a better understanding of how far away something is when walking driving or flying over a planet for performance reasons we use a range

52. 00:44:42

    of settings like randomized rotation and scale values to get as much variety as possible out of the number of assets we created to mimic a level of complexity that feels organic and comparable to what you find on earth something that we have been missing on our current planets and moons are massive rock formations due to tech limitations some of these limitations have since been solved for example we are now able to render assets much further because of that we recently kicked off a research and development phase during the production of the pyro system to find workflows for the creation and distribution of cliffs full disclosure though this is early in development and heavily work in progress but we still wanted to give you a little glimpse of what to expect in the future the challenge for us will be to figure out how we can make these assets look as

53. 00:45:28

    good as possible from all angles if a player walks up to them on foot they must look just as good as when a player decides to land his ship on the highest point of a cliff but we are excited to add an even more epic level of scale to our game that's it for me thank you for watching and enjoy the rest of citizencon hello my name is eslam and i'm part of the organics team today i want to talk a bit about how we build the different biomes on pyro3 pyro3 is a planet with very distinct biomes for example we got the yellow moss biome that is a strong contrast to the dark volcanic regions we have some icy areas boulder fields acidic fields different coastlines and a lot more when working on a biome the first thing we do is to have a look at

54. 00:46:16

    the concept art we do an acid breakdown for all the elements we need to recreate the scene by doing so we get more information about what kinds of rocks and vegetation assets we need the proportions of the assets in relation to the character the distribution and frequency of those assets on the planet but also the amount of coverage per biome on the planet and we can also get information about the color palette the terrain colors and what to scatter on the coastlines the last thing we can see from the concept is the acid and ground materials we also try to reduce the amount of the acid packs because of performance and time constraints instead of doing 50 unique rocks we can

55. 00:47:04

    achieve the same result by using just three with our procedural scattering system since the assets will be scaled and rotated randomly after figuring out all the necessary elements we start with the white boxing phase this means doing a very quick mock-up of the scene by using very simple assets the white boxes should just represent the shape and color of the final object we do that to see if the asset breakdown we did beforehand is working in the 3d space as well at this stage of the process we can still change the whole look of the scene if we don't like the outcome yet we can say let's make the rocks five times bigger or blue instead of red and so on or we realize we need to do some research on a specific acid to solve it visually which was the case

56. 00:47:52

    for the moss for example when doing r d on the moss we were trying different shapes and sizes and we also had to figure out how to do the most trends that are covering the whole mesh to make the workflow for the mos trends a bit easier we used houdini to procedurally scatter them otherwise it would have been too time consuming to place every single mos trend by hand since there are several thousands of them after figuring out how to do the mos trend we still didn't like the overall shape of the moss as it was a bit too blobby and yellow we wanted something that looked a bit more natural and integrates better into the terrain so we created some rocks with a moss plant on top instead we broke up the mos shape even further because it looked a little bit too molten and we added different kinds of mos

57. 00:48:39

    trends to get a little bit more variety in the end all these things got us to a result that we were satisfied with the usual approach to setting up a biome is to start with the largest elements first and work your way to the smallest one if we take the moss preset as an example we would start by adding the largest elements first then adding some smaller moss patches around it to create a nice fall off we continued with adding some flatter grass to make it sit nicer on the terrain but then we realized we needed something bigger to bring the elements closer together so we decided to add some high grass as well the final steps are adding some ground cover like small rocks or tiny moss as you can see while building a biome we need to do several iterations to get the best visuals

58. 00:49:27

    thank you for watching thanks to seb maxi and oslin for showing us their work so when we started looking at outposts and started really from a ground up on how to make make it so that there's more diverse gameplay in there the player can approach it in multiple different routes um there can be combat encounters uh there can be social encounters um so we needed to kind of rebuild and rethink the way that we were doing this we started honing in on what what was working what wasn't working and then did a lot of adjustments yeah we've had outposts in our game for some

59. 00:50:20

    time you know when we started to hear from an art site for what the design requirements are going to be fundamentally thinking about these as as modules thinking about them as thematic modules and you know very specific then you know already like the mind was going of like okay we're going to need a kind of like a paradigm shift in terms of how we visually present these you know what could these settlements kind of feel like and you know as with everything without posts it's it's you know it's it's a game play uh or it's a location archetype it's it's the smallest probably one of the smallest location architectures that we have and then in time that will lead to like you know villages and towns yeah thinking about how we wanted to push

60. 00:51:08

    this forward i i mean chris has always talked about putting outposts into players hands and so we needed to think about how would this expand how would the players be able to make these homes feel you know homes or outposts or even businesses feel unique for the way that they want to play and and then there are even tools that we had to create in order to actually be able to embed these into the ground and and make sure that it it worked um much better than what we did in stanton because with those we had to have them kind of on stilts and and you know just the points of contact were very limited on for the ground right if i connect these modules together how do we get something that doesn't feel like well

61. 00:51:54

    i i know that design we came up with in particular andreas and dan came up with the long list of things you know okay here's what we'll need in halves here's what we'll need you know for utilitarian here's what we'll need for defenses here's what we'll need for um power and some oxygen life support so and so forth so there was a very long list and then it's it's how can we take those and make them feel unified and visually unified together yeah fundamentally the thing that probably got us the most excited is finally we've started to think about these as like unified settlements you know base building so as you can see on some of the concepts we we deliberately presented early exploration shots in this kind of like

62. 00:52:44

    semi-isometric view to see you know how does it feel if i'm laying out my base how would these modules kind of you know you know tie together and you know it kind of got the team excited and finally we were thinking all right these settlements are going to be more than just you know like a single outpost but but more like a collection of modules so just to continue on with the module building and the module creation we can jump to christian and christine can talk in a bit more detail about the visual development process we did for creating the exteriors of these new outposts okay so we've talked a little bit about the colonialism and uh now i'm going to show you a little bit more about the

63. 00:53:32

    modules so the very first thing that we did was creating all the primitives and all the primitive shapes into 3d so as you can see here we have a lot of variety right there's the the cubic coming in there's the cylinder coming in the sphere is coming in for example if i take this building over here and i duplicate it and move it around i could just simply grab some of the other ones and combine them together and you will see later on that this is one of our archetypes or one that we that we pretty much liked right so you can see here already there's a lot of variety of entrances maybe some garages maybe some smaller entrances for um for those npcs or for for the players right and if i zoom in all of a sudden you can already see like how they react to the uh to the environment or the

64. 00:54:20

    overall scale right so if i pan over here and you see these buildings on the on the back in the background so you're always having a first person standpoint or a first person view so we're not only creating those entrances but also smaller details and very briefly looking into the modules so what you can see here is the the very first uh concepts for the solar panels for example or the top mount at the roof mounted solar panels in the background you see some some other nice details that we can then just pick and put on our buildings right and some of the very last that we did is they're pretty much those so those were one of the archetypes and you see there are small buildings for um for housing or housing buildings there are some building types that are more

65. 00:55:08

    communal we have some secondary and tertiary buildings like those uh radio towers if you imagine you're an um you're a colonist on a planet right and there are multiple settlements on a planet how would they communicate with each other so we have a kind of a radio tower or some of those um cooling cooling devices so if you imagine maybe there's something on the ground there's an even bigger facility underground because you're on a very hostile uh planet environment so you want to store your very sensitive data underground and um we were looking at those hints of life uh maybe you are a kind of a farmer so you see already this is the the first archetype this is more cylindrical and there are some storage spaces coming in here and there so where would you store your oxygen or your

66. 00:55:56

    water gases for example all of this is just a consideration from from our side uh going over to the next one this is more perimetrical so we were looking at also again the the the same materials or changing up the material so now it's it's again more concrete and the the color palette is changing there are some of the storage coming in and going then over to the next one it is again looking at different materials there is some storage buildings that are not in one big storage facility but it's divided into small smaller parts so you have to to walk around your settlement and see like okay i can put some stuff in here but if i need something else then i need to walk over there and there is some playing around with some more entrances and windows how do they

67. 00:56:44

    react to the environment right this was just one of the very many files that we we created so those are mostly buildings but we have different different files for for assets and props and how they would would fit inside this this this main architectural style that we wanted to to see more involved right so just a very early version of the refinery for example but all of this in the end was given us the opportunity to just cherry-pick the best ideas that we felt appropriate for this specific um this specific colonialism style right and where other people were able then to just grab the best parts and then use it in the actual game engine yeah this was pretty much the um the

68. 00:57:32

    concept development for the colonialism i hope you have a great time and wish you all the best for the for the next panels that are coming up awesome thanks cristiano so that pretty much covers uh the work we've been doing on the exteriors so now let's jump to the interior so we pretty much had to follow that same idea asian process that we did for the exterior but now for the interior now slightly more simple we we knew there was a few key areas that we needed to design first it was the social space you know this is basically these kind of communal hubs we knew we wanted like that open kitchen seating areas windows an area where people could kind of hang

69. 00:58:21

    out and you know relax and then second to that was habitation you know we knew these are going to need to be a boats we knew we needed bathrooms have units but again nothing in here would be you know pre-manufactured so we wanted actual beds not not uh racks of beds so um everything about this process was about you know creating a good design which you would look at and relate to and think i i i could i could see myself living there i could see someone living there for quite a long period of time so inhabitation you know it's soft soft surfaces soft shapes but again something which felt fairly integrated into the core architecture in contrast to that we knew we needed uh

70. 00:59:10

    technical spaces you know these could be used in the future to be i don't know uh soil processing rooms or anything really within a technical bracket so um this one was quite a tricky one because again we needed to describe a feeling of age you know a type of historical depth in this so we tried a few um you know visual cues like you know there's the the physical tape deck the clicky buttons you know again to give you that feeling of like all right this isn't necessarily like a modern technology level you know and then the last major visual archetype was engineering so these are the type of spaces it could be a power room or an engine room or some areas if you if your

71. 00:59:59

    armor got beat up you could you know repair your armor in there basically it's a it's a language which will enable us to create a variety of like engineering type spaces and then once we once we've established a spread of visual archetypes we knew that they were all working well together we could take that as a format and then start to think about more about actual themes that we wanted in these yeah kind of looking at the who would be the people that would be inhabiting it what are the circumstances that would drive them to be there and uh so we sort of came up with like we call it the triangle of of kind of the the edge points of the sort of the independent the outlaw and uh the corporate uh and you know where these

72. 01:00:46

    the inhabitants would fall somewhere in that spectrum of uh of of three points and it's also important to note too uh you know that this stuff would be applicable for the stuff we done in stanton like if we wanted to add these back backwards in the stand as well that it wasn't just exclusively pyro based basically when was doing the design process we pretty much focused on independent mainly because that was our that was our baseline it was very easy to kind of design these and visually design these spaces to is it like an independent farmer or is it an independent miner and then with that we wanted to really create a um an experience where you walked into one of these outposts and it feels old it feels relatable but it

73. 01:01:35

    doesn't feel recognizable kind of similar to if you went to like a historic ruin or historic pot that you'd never really been to before or yeah somebody's old farm exactly so we did a lot of exploration process of like what type of artifacts would you find there you know what how did people used to decorate the house in this time period you know you'd still see uh patterns surfaces shapes uh in these independent um outposts yeah even even early versions of modern technology so you could see that you know oh this is like the mobile glass i have but it's an older mobi glasses right just as an example but but also when when we were even just to back up a little bit when we're talking about the planets we have a certain style where we have certain amounts of

74. 01:02:23

    points of interest that we want to go to how we pull the player around the universe and so dave and i and and will and others sit down and talk and say all right what do we need here and all right well we need mining facilities and then that helps to inform ian and the the other design teams and our teams of all right is that an independent theme is it a corporate theme is it's an outlaw theme so these are all kind of layers but the first and foremost it's oh this is farming or this is mining or this is you know cargo because looking at something like pyro two which you know again starting from that sort of original pracy sentence of the planet was the idea it was like that was a heavily mined mined out planet that that had been kind of stripped of a

75. 01:03:12

    lot of resources so there would be remaining infrastructure that would have been corporate back in the day but is now independent or now even an outlaw setting so and then there would be the ones that would just be a straight independent one and stuff like that but yeah exactly like you said you know we start start with that sort of the base and then apply the theming to it to kind when we're thinking about the theming um we we kind of wanted um like a space catalog like a furniture catalog so i know this is quite big for chris's we kind of went down that um process of okay let's design this one independent outpost in a few different ways like how could people have decorated it in many different ways and it's quite a fun process because you basically create space furniture catalogs which

76. 01:04:01

    which again are going to be ways for uh it's ways for the the developers to be able to dress and will build but you know eventually maybe it's a way for people to decorate their own spaces you know when we think about the outlaw uh versions of these outposts again the process is very similar you think about the visual rule sets which would turn this into an outlaw um outpost uh namely you know would it has been taken over by hostile intent you know is the signs of combat is the signs of destruction still still so present the actual physical act of occupying one of these outposts they defended it if they boarded it up yeah it could be any

77. 01:04:47

    number of situations yeah it could be outlaws or squatting here and they're operating as a base which makes it a potential combat space or is it you know was it a potentially an independent uh refinery that outlaws attacked and killed everybody there and now is it a drug facility exactly uh and then lastly on with the corporate you know um you know it's something that we really want to advance out into in the future that feeling that this location is owned by a corporate umbrella you know that would tie into the branding you know maybe it ties into the the the costumes that you'd expect the npcs to be in there you know so there's a huge amount of visual world building that we can do to you know present these outposts in a few different ways and even potentially reputation as well like we talked before

78. 01:05:36

    about that idea that that you know if you do missions for a corporate outpost that it you know reflects in your general uh relationship with that corporation i mean that ties into the the clan tags like maybe you've just come from one of the space stations that you know was occupied by a certain gang type and then they sent you to a settlement on one of the surfaces of pyro and clearly it's been you know tagged way by a different gang so you basically want that read and that consistency uh throughout now one of the one of the uh outpost themes that i was quite excited about getting into was the idea of a trading outpost you know we've been talking about you know buying and selling for a while but thinking about it in a in a frontier

79. 01:06:27

    context you'd you know it's almost like the money's kind of worthless you know but it's more about the ability to barter or you know trade so um fundamentally i thought it'd be cool that if we kind of design a module which focuses around one of these trading posts so within a planet you know it's where you know people would kind of you know trek to and you know barter or trade components and then go back you know we was talking about the idea of if i had a farm in the middle of nowhere like would i want load of credits or would i want that one component that you know kept my phone going you know so um so we did you know we we took that idea and we rammed with it and we we did some visual exploration into what

80. 01:07:15

    would a a trading post be like on one of these frontier outposts as you can see on the images we wanted that feeling of um the majority of the stuff around this outpost is pretty much junk you know uh spaces isn't at a premium so they just keep it outside you know maybe it's rusty maybe it's rotting maybe it's big you know getting overgrown but i love that idea as you're approaching one of these settlements it's very easy to understand all right this is a training post because you know just all of their stuff like um hodgepodge around the outside well and it opens up another aspect to it which is the characters who inhabit it because the the sort of general shop experience that you have

81. 01:08:03

    with the storekeeper is very conventional instances of you know the what we've done so far has been a lot of franchise stores actual companies that own you know that are selling wares uh you know who have customer service and stuff like that and the idea being that out here the experience is going to be much more different it's not going to be that polished it's going to be much more of a personal interaction with somebody so it's been really fun talking with you know the ai and behavior guys to try and work out exactly like how is that dynamic supposed to work and and feel like for the player all right cool so that was a little bit about the interiors of these outposts so let's throw it over to eric now and he can go into a lot more detail into the visual design process we did for the interiors hello i am eric gagnon principal concept artist on star citizen today i will

82. 01:08:52

    present the interior colonialism outpost concept and explain a bit how the pre-production process works the goal is to create an interior design for the homestead colonialism outpost it was the first time we had to create a timeless design look we have the objective to create something warm and with a cozy feeling interior at the beginning we started from this concept art made by christian dorvitz we have a lot of information in there to inspire the interior design in those interior we have a specific zones social area place to eat together play game leisure the bedroom place to relax have a proper personal space and of course sleeping the engineering room the

83. 01:09:42

    place for the building machine will maintain the possibility to survive there the technical room the appropriate space to analyze minerals some elements of the planet entrance use for storage material and stuff to go outside at the beginning we had an overview of the plant that's helped to organize the zone to create all of those areas we need to do a lot of exploration and design social area for those sketches we want the center piece on the ceiling could be a light fan or whatever that could be cool we feel the curvy shape of that space here on this sketch i play with a very contrast values in the greenish color palette that one is the best

84. 01:10:31

    long vertical windows from the side let the light inside a lot after validation of the most relevant sketch we do a 3d blackout as you see this 3d blackout follows very closely to the last sketches from the screenshot of the 3d blackout i did a sketch over in the greytown value that helps to better organize the coloring phase to make sure all the elements fit and will live together after this i like to do a 2d elevation concept it's a good way to make sure all elements fit together and the ratio proportions between each of them the final key shot of the social area bring it alive nice lighting come from the windows cozy mode gave a soul to

85. 01:11:20

    this social area now my concept art co-workers extract the elements from this case shot and break down the props to define more accurately first a homestead radial contour done by danny chen from the uk that concept is the perfect blueprint to start the production the color lighting people food is there on this one more close-up version of specific zones of the radial kitchen counter some explanations are had to properly cover convey the hint of each part all the details are there to define a fully functional stone for the bedroom area the process is the same as the social area the sketch phase is essential as you see here is an example of grayscale

86. 01:12:09

    sketch from one of those shots we get a validation from our directors and cr and boom this is the final one to detail the engineering room we again go back to the painting technique this process again is key to send us in the right direction the detail of the machinery cabling metal grates really help convey the ambience of the room and also informs what players will have to do when they go to this place for the technical room we wanted to make sure that technology came true against the same process where we start from manual painting to set the tone and then deep dive into color

87. 01:12:58

    elevation and then the final key piece to make the homestead a living space the bathroom props are important to define the functionality of futuristic eugene finally let's exit by the entrance this is the first sketch exploration i did four star citizen the goal of the homestead entrance is to show what the player has access to and set the overall ambience of the place a huge thanks to all for helping to make the final result in the game match the amazing work that is produced during pre-production i sincerely hope you will enjoy living in those homestead in star citizen thanks everybody thanks eric awesome stuff

88. 01:13:46

    now that we've uh shown a lot of art and talked a lot of theory uh we want to get into game and show off what we've been working on we're going to be showing you kind of multiple playthroughs and how it changes based off of what you do and how you have faction with the certain game so here we are waking up in the 400 eye that will be released in 315. this is the competitor to the constellation doesn't compromise cargo for vehicle storage it's faster more agile than the connie and it can run with a smaller crew so this is the captain's quarters and then we'll go out and see a little bit more of the habitation deck and then make our way to the cockpit

89. 01:14:36

    so this would be the social area that you can meet and eat and and basically plan your next mission from here we'll go to the cockpit so here we're over pyro3 um we've come here for a mission to acquire an artifact um and uh you'll be making your way down to a trading post so i wanted to uh just give you a quick overview and then we can start talking about the planet yeah pyro3 is a yeah just a terrestrial planet has a very thin

90. 01:15:24

    breathable atmosphere but it's still pretty inhospitable very cold as you can see some of those lightning strikes in the clouds but uh but yeah very very pretty looking this is the first time we're actually seeing clouds above a terrestrial planet you know we went through quite a few iterations of uh forms uh what we ultimately ended up on was something that felt quite uh quite dramatic still believable in terms of uh how the wind would have shaped them but yeah like uh it's showcasing a lot of the the more recent um tech that came online uh also what we're seeing here is like some kind of distant thunder strikes and what this is it's kind of like a prelude to

91. 01:16:10

    you know future uh weather features that become on board you know and how this will tie into you know uh storms and uh ship handling you know due to the turbulence and it's great seeing the you know the rain hit the canopy glass here you know when you go through these cloud banks also as part of the process of shaping one of the things we really wanted to do is create these uh these kind of like these pockets in between the clouds so you're in these cavities so as you're flying through you get glimpse of the the terrain beneath you but you know it it feels really quite exhilarating you know to fly through also as well like uh it's showcasing a lot of the more recent uh tech coming on board as well so you know it's uh a lot of optimizations

92. 01:17:00

    been going on such way more performant than previously uh than previously it was also like the the level of artifact and that was seen here is is substantially reduced uh certainly on high spec machines it also gives you a great sense of parallax when you fly through these these cloud sandwiches a cloud sandwich yes that's that's what it feels like it feels like you're the meat or the the cheese of a cloud's damage the cheese were cloud sandwich so as we get out of the cheese another really big feature that was important for me was you know terrain train shadowing and train inclusion from the clouds so you're actually seeing you know these uh large areas of occlusion

93. 01:17:48

    uh cast onto the terrain it's um it just adds that depth it just adds that believability to uh what was seen in the frame and you know when you see like these over like dark over classic overcast clouds and they're hovering above the mountains it it it finally completes the uh the frame especially when you see these distant rumbles of thunder in the distance so james cameron who's doing the the run through yes that is his name um he will be taking us down to the outpost uh the goal for us is to basically make 50 of these whether they're inhabited or derelicts or or even basically inhabited by a farmer or inhabited by a gang the goal is to have these

94. 01:18:38

    act as different factions and so that you can develop different rep associated with them um and you can start seeing how big these outposts uh stretch to with the coms tower that's behind us and then even some of the aaa turrets that you'll actually see up close and personal that was a really good approach uh from james there good landing that was a good solid three out of ten three out of ten geez ian's a tough grader

95. 01:19:28

    yeah i go six at least no one's ever got a six gotta watch me land man so here we'll go down to the technical deck show off the cargo area as well as climate climate-controlled um component areas and then onto the gravity generator room and the stairway out um so you'll be able to learn more about

96. 01:20:20

    the ship in one of the later panels that we have with ben paul and john um i think the team did a great job on this uh i think this is one of my favorite skins yeah yeah they did a new skin just um just something that felt a lot more you know suitable for pyro but you can see how it you know it feels suitably worn and weathered um you know to fit into these these climates and you know what we're seeing here it's first boots on the ground you know on pyro i think it looks great uh especially in in contrast to what we're seeing here is like actual ai on the train you know walking about going about their business and is that an a8 or there it is and radio comps towers and all these

97. 01:21:08

    other elements that we want to make sure that are interactive for the player and allows them to go and explore or use us uh used to their advantage we want them to be able to interact with these these different items here you can see like various outpost modules you know to the right there we've got the garage unit you can see the infrastructure on the roof but this large beautiful you know archway here kind of signifies you know the main entrance the primary entrance to the the main social module i think the air looks look great you know fits in with your style beautifully the team did a great job on this and then we've seen the concept art

98. 01:21:55

    previously in the day and then you know here you can see it translated uh in game and i think it absolutely looks fantastic you know uh the radial forms you know is quite quite special to this art style and you can see how that that complements these archways that lead into other areas of the outpost so it with the ai we want to make sure that it's living it's breathing if you look back a little bit there was a chef actually cooking their security guards here to make sure that they're actually protecting their investments protecting their home from strangers and then but you have good rep with them and uh so they allow you to kind of enter into certain areas that you

99. 01:22:43

    the other players wouldn't be able to enter into we also got a quick shot at the uh the loadout that james is playing so it's a female loadout but it's also showing the um the backpack which is new also they want something new here as well which is rendering much nicer so here the player will make their way out to the training post um go see the dealer acquire the artifacts for the for the trading post you know we wanted to get all of the the junk on the outside as well uh you know so the player can see it as they're approaching uh we wanted you know as many tops as we could and you can see it's using the new soft deck shader so these are reacting to the planetary winds uh you know the same the same

100. 01:23:32

     force that the the tall grass and the moss on the ground is reacting to as other thing with the trading post is like ian spoke about before um the inventory and and what they'll be able to actually sell here will vary depending on where they're at in the solar system are they close to a jump point where they might be coming down and using this as a chop shop or are they in a very rural area that's you know they care more about um the frontier lifestyle and being able to survive versus money we uh we passed the kitchen as well on the way back there that's the the local diner uh to this outpost tough crowd

101. 01:24:23

     also so in the inside as well you know we wanted this you know kaleidoscope of colors and shapes um you know like it's just literally the the dealers displaying all the wares everything they'll have outside in the open here well welcome take a look i'm sure i have what you want and if not i'll have something just as good yep oh yeah very good choice very good so after five million credits of disposable income we get our first look at the uh uh uh hadithan artifact which is obviously gonna be what is sort of a super rare

102. 01:25:12

     thing that you'll hopefully be able to start finding in the in the galaxy which is sort of if you're familiar with the lore of hades was an old civilization that destroyed itself so somehow this traitor has gotten their hands on this artifact so here we're showing one way of actually playing through this area uh it really depends on your standings within the gang and how they want to deal with you and then it what's the dealer going to do what's the dealer going to charge and from there we have different ways of actually showing this and we can look at option two now so here we're going to run it back

103. 01:26:05

     a little bit and show off a different way of entering into the trading post this is a little bit more straightforward versus the in demo one we we took a side route through uh the so yeah this is just some additional warehouse space that the trading post would have and you can see it would lead directly on to the this courtyard and for the keynote people you'd see that the barbecue's still not being eaten yet the grill master would be fired still full of weaners so with this area again we just want to

104. 01:26:55

     make sure that it's filled out with items filled out with different things that you can interact with and possibly buy it's like dave said in the beginning um we want the stores to feel different but it's it's still making it feel believable quick reference to some uh additional traversal areas there on the right when we came in welcome the guys had a lot of fun addressing these areas there's a lot of storytelling going into it so here we decide not to pay the price um and we want to

105. 01:27:47

     we don't mind um losing reputation with with the faction and uh decide that we're gonna take the artifacts um through betrayal just take it straight at the backpack so here we've got uh different routes for the players to enjoy and and to use to to flank um and also navigate around so each area will have different uh secondary and tertiary routes of navigation um james was really just trying to scare him there versus that was actually if you notice real quick there was a uh the civilians are actually cowering as

106. 01:28:34

     opposed to fighting which is kind you'll see coming up but it's super cool so again here the player will have the choice you know do they actually want to interact with the civilians or does their conscience get better of them i think james made the right choice though she was nice uh one of the things when we play testing this lot is when you see the the enemy ai kind of fanning out across the train like that it's fantastic to see it feels really great just seeing the bass start wake up to you and uh actually trying to accelerate also now it's under uh you know combat

107. 01:29:24

     stress but that yellow grass looks just looks fantastic that's how i play so here james just wants to get out real quick so as we slightly hinted to in the first

108. 01:30:15

     walk through this is where the aaa turrets will come alive and uh if you're not fast enough as james isn't with your countermeasures then they'll take you down so what we saw there was the player went in and based off their actions the faction changed against them and then uh basically became very aggressive so in this last play through what we'll show you is if the faction is already against you from the very beginning and what are different ways that you can you can go about it so here we are in our last walkthrough since you're all by yourself we wanted show the player take a stealthy roots

109. 01:31:06

     versus if you were with friends you could go in guns blazing but this allows the player to come in access the the outpost from a different side than what we've shown uh it also allows them to clock all the ai and see how they want to approach the problem and see what other secondary or tertiary routes would be open to them either via the ladder or maybe a possible door good night was a great shot uh also one thing we did as well as todd said you know we we changed the time of day uh the wind is slightly stronger so you'll see the uh gorgeous

110. 01:31:54

     yellow grass blowing just a little bit more intense than uh before um something to to imply at the frontier living you know maybe the growing crops or vegetables out here but it also gives a kind of like a soft cover approach to the perimeter of the base also with it being a different time of day this allows us to show off the ai having their 24-hour schedule so that they can they can be in different areas when you approach it so if you approach it at night or you approach it during the morning you know they'll be doing different things whatever is uh is valid for their schedule that does locked

111. 01:32:49

     so there's no going through that way but what the what james does actually see here as he's gotten out the next ai is um you know just checking the roof line but uh as i said previously we wanted as many kind of like views in to the the bass as possible you know just so the player can continue to keep context of what's inside but also when you're inside it allows the player to to have context of where they're at within the actual outpost and that was a great shot the uh the ai fell beautifully on the uh the already called out beautiful yellow grass

112. 01:33:36

     and moss als so as as james is looking back what he's doing is actually making a mental map of you know possible routes possible advanced traversal routes on top of the outpost and we saw the dealer there in the bedroom just end of the day so with each outpost there'll be different routes that will be open to the player or close to the player so some of them might have ladders on the outside some of them might not some of them might have uh basically ways to get in through the

113. 01:34:24

     floorboards other ones won't but this is this is just one one version of you know many possibilities so here the player will take a secondary route of navigation all the way up to the roof from here this allows them to be able to check out any of the ai also be able to look at any of the interactables um in the future you know if you're uh if you got a good reputation maybe you need to go and fix uh different items on the roof um or if you are there for nefarious means then maybe you want to take out the power and which will then turn you know kill the aaa turrets or um we'll turn off the lights in the

114. 01:35:14

     in the outpost so it allows the player to interact with different items and then basically create a nice nice little sandbox for them to play in so here you can see one of those interactables as well as the ai and just behind these interactables like we've seen these these kind of archways like right now this uh these are just kind of empty and now to just illustrate like a like a guard point in the future you know these could be maybe customizable or you know that could contain like an a turret like we saw on demo one or it could contain like cargo storage basically we tried to design something that was as flexible as possible

115. 01:36:03

     so here we're showing off the looting system as well as the as well as the inventory system so this will be shipping in 315 this allows bodies to be able to be interacted with and take off the items associated with it also with this change you will no longer have global inventory so you can't be pulling off weapons that you didn't take with you um this location uh everything will be regarding uh what you carry is is what you um what you have and um so it really makes the players think about how they want to approach the problem also encourages them to look around and see if

116. 01:36:50

     the designers and have placed different um things that they can interact with or are used um to help uh get past a certain um roots or a certain way that they they maybe didn't bring with them and we'll also be including the uh i believe in 315 the knickknacks app for your moby glass so now that you aren't carrying everything on your body it's not sort of universal inventory you'll be able to consult this app to see kind of where stuff is being stored and keep it better organized and stuff like that so here this allows the player to uh have an a quick little puzzle but just gives them a little bit more interaction and then allows them to go on to a what i would consider a tertiary

117. 01:37:38

     route um versus climbing up the ladder and and possibly having to deal with the ai or them being spotted by them also i think the team did a great job on the planet as well as these are really fun to play and sneak around in and um you know allows uh allows for many possible you know ways of attacking the same problem what we're seeing here is like uh james is actually getting up onto uh through

118. 01:38:25

     one of these like uh rooftop storage modules and it's it's given like the the highest point in the base so from here and actually you know make probably the most informed decisions on you know how to approach the next problem you know we're seeing this guard routine here and then ultimately uh you know throwing an item to uh distract the guard allows them to to go and access new areas um it's a behavior that we're still working out but at least you're we're seeing like the first iterations be able to uh continue to optimize it as well as um make sure that the behavior is working

119. 01:39:14

     properly so we just saw that for the first time it's like the first rooftop uh airlock hatch so previously uh roots in and out uh if they if the outside wasn't pressurized we wouldn't have this option but now through that rooftop uh airlock you can you can cycle and then you know infiltrate uh through the roof and also what we're seeing here is you know potentially scouting out uh an advanced traversal up into the rafters you know getting on top of some infrastructure and and getting like this overview uh as we go into the uh the garage module so here this is placeholder but it gives you a very

120. 01:40:00

     it gives you an idea of you know we want to have different interactables different loot boxes laid out around the location so if the players um explore they'll be rewarded you know we we want to encourage them looking in every nook and cranny and and enjoying you know what what the outpost has for them and one of the things that's interesting is these garages won't be vehicle spawn points so so it's not like a big kind of like pad in the middle but it's more like you know if you want to if you want to have your your vehicle there you got to drive it in and park it so here you can see a variety of vehicles just just laid out how the player would have just parked them just gives a much more believable and

121. 01:40:48

     realistic so again we're just encouraging different navigation different routes for the player to go and see over to the left back there and there was a possible way of going into the floorboards are going underneath the outpost again those those will be opened up or closed off based off of you know just how we want to build the outpost not every not everyone will be built the same um our philosophy for

122. 01:41:38

     for these are to to make sure that they each one of them feels unique um and this is just one way of us us customizing it and making each one feel um different and so the player won't always be used to the same route we're using the inventory system we allow the players to go in if you take out a certain ai they might have different tools or notes or different items that you'll need in order to solve your mission interestingly when was designing these spaces um we knew we wanted these internal uh uh airlocks um but we knew we needed some sort of

123. 01:42:26

     like view like pothole on them just so before you commit through before you cycle you know you can just double check to see if there's any bad guys on the other side so we we got some ragdoll bugs um i guess it wouldn't be a citizencon without any sort of issues or bugs so here like the previously the players being uh you know on the roof they've come down through the main uh section of but here what the players doing is they're going to the the underfloor section so these aren't vans but they're more like supples so they're meant to feel very dark very minimal but you're actually seeing

124. 01:43:15

     the foundations of these outposts so inside here it's the play will need to kind of work out how to navigate through them it's very much a like a torch-based experience and then within here um what the player can actually do is work out uh roughly where they are in relation to the um to what's uh upstairs and what you're seeing here like this light bleeding down through you know you can kind of make the informed decisions okay that's where that ai was or right now the players just underneath that main social space so if you think back like that was that god in the beginning just just next to the kitchen counter but you know the it we we've intentionally made these spaces not

125. 01:44:02

     necessarily like very easy to navigate because you know there wouldn't be a lot of light down here you know um the player would have to you know follow for example like james is following the blue y here you know um you know making a decision to like hey if i follow that blue wire i'm probably going to get to something interesting or a point where i can actually you know exit the supply space and get back up above what i like about them is basically just the claustrophobic feel of it and then obviously the addition of possible secondary um or more advanced navigation so either going into prone or uh just going full crouch so here we come out

126. 01:44:55

     in the bathroom space that's on the other side of the garage so we're on the opposite side of the outpost from where we just were that's good ragdoll now the body drag in the shower so here um this is just a different wrapper on a loot box in this case it's a hamper and so the player will be able to really change outfits and and adjust the way that they look so that they can walk around the outpost and and not be be noticed uh there will be kind of a certain a certain time limit associated with it we still need to work out the details on how all that will

127. 01:45:44

     work but the the goal is to to give them a little bit of um leeway and so if you look the part maybe you're not scrutinized as as much and they i won't uh won't notice you as quickly so here we can see back into the social space but this time on the other side and then this door will lead directly into the the habitation room that we saw previously on the outside speaking of fun fun ragdoll physics that was a great one so here um the player uh decided to take the dealer out instead of actually

128. 01:46:34

     figuring out how they could open up the safe they're going to have to look around the room they're going to have to interact with the body and possibly see you know is there a way for them to actually open it in other cases maybe the safe will be hackable in the future and in some cases it won't be and then you'll you'll need to figure out a different way of actually opening it so here we spot a little clue um a little note and uh you'll notice the uh what's fun is like the name on if you look back and see the uh

129. 01:47:25

     some of the ai being taken out uh you may notice some names um so here's the clue for the player but one of the coolest things for me here is the players holding an item with the clue and while holding the item they can seamlessly interact with another item to solve a puzzle that's awesome and then here we got a little bug player was able to acquire the artifact and then uh will be able to do whatever they want with it either sell it or be able to use it somehow in a future mission one of the things that was really exciting about watching this kind of back to back to back is is finally getting to see that freedom of choice

130. 01:48:13

     and it's like it's really really i mean our locations are always spectacular and beautiful but now like having that sort of striking that balance between uh you know this sort of well thought out social space and construction of these locations but also an equally effective stealth and combat thing it's a it's super cool to see so after seeing the demo play through you know three different ways um it was a huge team effort so uh everyone that worked on the project on this part of what we wanted to show we want to say a big thank you you know big shout out because you know we're just presenting it uh it's the people that did a lot of the hard work and that should be represented and speaking of people doing hard work now's a good chance to throw it over to

131. 01:49:01

     eddie and joel and they're going to tell you a little bit more about the how we built that outpost that we just saw i'm eddie hildich i'm a senior lead and myself and my team have been working on the new colonialism outposts my name is joel azapari and i'm senior environment artist too for the eu sandbox team so after the initial concept is done and rounds of feedback have been iterated and we move into pre-production this phase allows us to spend some time testing the concepts for in-game viability translation from concept to game isn't always one-to-one and during pre-production we'll get rough versions of the concept measures into game and spend time making sure that they'll work practically the art direction can also change at this stage so we use this phase to kind of explore creatively as well and concept art is a fantastic jumping off point for sparking ideas one

132. 01:49:48

     of the first steps when starting a new location is the start look development a hyper-focused small section of the location where we can hone in the tools and methods needed to execute the concept in-game some things translate well some things don't it's important to figure all this out before going full steam ahead with the entire team one of the great assets on the sandbox team is we have a lot of people who are passionate about concept and design which means when translating from concept to production environment it's very easy to expand on the concept art with the art styles of the colonial outposts we decided to change up the way we typically alter content our hard surface locations are meant to feel prefabricated like there's a manufacturing plant out there on arcgorp that churns out these flat pack space station kits so stations can be mass

133. 01:50:37

     produced colonial outposts are more personal more handcrafted by the people who live there based on their needs not once they're on the frontier world so they can't always choose luxury over practicality materials were one of the first things we tackled and we started off by developing the idea of how the inhabitants would have built these structures and what materials they would use we wanted to show not only the age of the outpost but also wanted to hint at all those different layers of the structure and give you an idea how functionally they constructed them one of the biggest challenges with the new outposts is how we introduce variation between each location the player will visit building each as a bespoke set of buildings is impossible as we want hundreds if not thousands of outposts in the game eventually the modular approach we've developed really evolved out of our previous work on space station

134. 01:51:24

     interiors but with a few key improvements this starts at the macro level where on the planet's outpost of place how the local conditions affect your time there then what kind of buildings an outpost has and how they're laid out all the way down to the ability to independently swap out an underfloor layout in a single building of that outpost we'll have various types of modules from large standalone modules like warehouses or or extractors which have a singular function all the way down to smaller room modules that can be connected together in different ways to form a complete headquarters building after pre-production was finished we had a list of the room module types that we wanted to tackle first for the headquarters building everything hinges around a hub module with different room modules that can be attached to extend the structure the room modules will serve different functions in the base with various gameplay systems linking

135. 01:52:12

     one to another for an interconnected web of sandbox gameplay opportunities as content creators for the outpost we needed a new system to build edit and manage the library of modules we're creating rastar is the tool we'll use to do this it allows us to intuitively create a location template directly on the surface of the planet not only this but headquarter buildings can be snapped together directly within the tour or with an intuitive user interface one of the other major innovations with the planet tech has been the ability to modify the terrain mesh and flatten areas of terrain previously we were at the mercy of the train when it came to designing our buildings which is why our outposts had to be built with stilts and placed in naturally flat areas of the planet now we can build much more natural buildings with walls and entrances connected directly to the planet's surface and also we can place these buildings in a much wider range of

136. 01:53:01

     locations we believe our new outposts inject a refreshing new location experience into star citizen they're organic warm personal spaces that really convey the age and history of humanity's expansion into the verse the new art style the focus from design on game play and the flexible modular approach to their construction it'll allow us as developers and you as players be part of creating a wider variety of rich and satisfying experiences for every outpost the player comes across okay cool thank you eddie thank you joel that was awesome and moving on we're actually going to talk to corey now uh who is going to give us kind of a deep dive into the creation of uh the artifact which is actually kind of our first little glimpse of the uh hadesian culture from haiti system thanks guys i'm corey bamford the props artist at clark imperium games i'm here

137. 01:53:49

     today specifically to talk about the hedesian artifact that you'll see in the walkthrough so we knew early on we wanted some sort of mcguffin for the walk through um we originally had a few ideas of what that could be originally it was either going to be a tablet fragment a sculpture or a hadith an artifact so initially the concept team explored a variety of ideas we used a lot of reference for existing alien artifacts in the game as well as reference from the real world you know lots of tomes and ancient kind of egyptian stuff as well just all sorts of really reference just to get a general idea we knew we wanted to integrate some form of ancient power or technology into the asset we also knew we wanted it to have some sort of symbolism and text so once the concept team iterated further on these ideas they then presented those back to chris

138. 01:54:36

     and we narrowed down the selection of assets until we had a candidate that everyone was happy with so once we had this asset in mind it then came down to turning that from a concept into a production asset and that's where the props team comes in when a prop artist gets a concept like immediately the wheels in their head start turning and they're trying to figure out the best way to implement it in our game engine they need to find solutions within the engine to achieve the visual target of the concept obviously it's not as simple as just taking the concept and replicating it we have to think about the shaders we have to think about performance our job really is to find a solution within the game engine to achieve the visual target of the concept once we've figured out a strategy for achieving the look we begin to actually make the content so for the artifact for example we knew that it needed to be split into three

139. 01:55:23

     segments and they needed to fit together the first thing we do is get a placeholder into the game for the design team to actually implement as an entity we also then figure out how the scale actually works in the player's hand and when they inspect it for the artifact there was a bit of back and forth between the size because we wanted to get a balance between it having prominence and also being easily carriable after we figured out the size of the asset we don't need to actually break down how we're going to make it so the first thing we really get into is the materials we know that this asset is made of a few different materials firstly we have the stone with the complicated glowing pattern we also have these large copper structures and some smaller thinner metal structures as well for this asset we knew we'd need to use unique textures just because of the amount of detail we wanted to achieve one of the biggest challenges we had was making sure that the stone looked really

140. 01:56:11

     good to create the stone we started with some scanned data of rocks and concrete as well as some mesh data like curvature we also use a lot of procedural noises from substance designer just to add some variety using the height map as a jumping off point for the rest of the texture maps it's quite a nice logical and physicalized way of doing things it took quite a lot of iteration to get the final look it was definitely a group effort the glow was probably the trickiest part of this asset we ended up actually using a shader some of you might remember from the vandal driller trailer we created the iconography using a bespoke texture mask and then the circles were derived from some cells within substance designer we took these cells quantized them and then got the edges of that quantization to create rings and then we used the procedural mask as well as some hand painted textures to mask out that glow once we were happy with this texture we multiplied that

141. 01:56:59

     onto the height map which is used to drive the glow threshold the glow effect has three texture inputs that we need to create there's an animated glow map which is sort of used to drive the background effect of the glow there's also a gradient which colors that map finally we have the actual pulse itself which is the texture map that pulses across the asset next up is the bronze this was actually pretty straightforward to achieve we didn't need any fancy shader effects for this one just a standard set of unique textures we wanted to get lots of nice scratches and aging on the bronze and in the concept there was also this nice effect on the edges where the metal got darker so we wanted to add that in as well just to give it a more distinctive feel once we were happy with the visual look of the asset and engine it then was just a case of wrapping it up we needed to create lod meshes for the object as well as collision proxies as you can tell quite a lot of work goes

142. 01:57:48

     into these hero assets so that was a little bit of exploration into how we created the hidicion artifact for the walkthrough i hope you guys enjoyed listening to me talk about it and enjoy the rest of the show we wanted to thank you for your time we wanted to introduce pyro and show all the hard work that all the teams been working on and working towards the team has put in a lot of hard work in building the pyro system building the ai building uh the planets the worlds and that you'll go and explore so pyro will be ready and when server meshing is and it will be coming out with star citizen alpha 4.0 so on behalf of myself i want to thank dave and ian and uh yourselves for watching and i hope you enjoyed uh the panel and i hope you enjoyed the rest of digital

143. 01:58:36

     citizencon see you in the verse