Inside CIG . Round Table: Art . Pt 1

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   [Music] hi everybody I'm here with all of our artists at cig uh for a little round table discussion uh Brian Brewer Chris Smith Elijah Wood Jeff C Jeff kin Chris Olivia and Mark Skelton who yeah so um um Chris actually heads up the team of artists as our chief visual officer and uh right now we're all crunching on the 300i right so tell us how the process works for us to deliver come Friday oh this

2. 00:00:46

   Friday what did this happen well no it's uh it's sort of something that we have to do on a on a regular basis as far as um um you know getting um brochures and and commercials out to sort of like highlight you know what the the very ships are um so in between the process of like building um everything for the game and all the artists like working on um the actual assets for the game we have to sort of like um focus on getting the the the marketing tools out but it it all sort of goes towards um finalizing the assets for the game and stuff we sort of have daily reviews to where um we go around and sort of like um kind of see where everything is

3. 00:01:34

   at and sort of make sure that there's a consistent vision and everything but um I mean everybody here is like considered leads so they're all talented enough to sort of like um you know keep things on a on a high quality level so Brian what do you what tools do you use and what's your process for getting your work over to Chris well uh I'm generally handed a ship and I have no idea what I'm going to do CU nobody's told me what what needs to be done so I generally work pretty close with Chris Smith here and he usually highlights everything that needs to articulate on the ship uh some things are very obvious like doors but sometimes things that are like control panels in the cockpit you know uh he highlights hey these should move this way he should things should move that

4. 00:02:21

   way sometimes he blocks in animations and uh it's kind of a prototype which I I feed off of and I go you know that's yeah let's let's let's go with that whatever that idea happens to be uh with the 300i it's been a real learning process for us because a lot of us are still so new in the The Cry engine uh we're just kind of we're we're trying to get down the uh the pipeline how to properly have things built and handed off to animation uh how animation needs to set everything up to be properly exported to game um so there's a lot of that one of the things that I did on the 300i was how have to break apart a lot of uh components uh hydraulic Hydraulics for lifts had to tear apart the ladder so it can animate proper um a lot of other

5. 00:03:10

   games we may not have that issue because we can rig the ship with a skeleton uh but the way the cry engine handles it is their animated objects so that that's part of the learning curve that's part of what has been a real Challenge on this initial ship uh which we are doing internally from start to finish uh so as I as I figure things out I I play it off of Chris and and we kind of go back and forth and I say well you know maybe it's a good idea to break something down this way and build it out and then he takes those notes and he does that for the next ship and then when he hands it back to me on the next ship it goes a lot faster a lot of it is like working with the the game design um Department as far as like you know what's going to be happening on the the various ships and stuff and like what um the game play is going to be to

6. 00:03:57

   determine like what needs to be animated so basically you know we have the concept of the 300i and it it gets built and with the concept comes you know the stats sheet basically that tells us um yeah what kind of power plan it'll have how fast it'll be you if it's more like a transporter ship as opposed to a quick speeder time and what tools aside from the cry engine who works on the z z brush is that what Chris calls it is that youon the Z brush come on we're in Britain now yeah the Zed brush is an amazing tool um yeah I working zbrush it's cool I think uh Chris does too a little bit I do a little bit like if if there's some wear and tear like for the hard surface stuff like scratches and

7. 00:04:45

   stuff C brush is like uh sculpting in 3D it's pretty cool it's pretty sweet that's cool it's very much like uh 3D clay so it's like we finally crossed kind of the barrier where you don't have to manipulate Poes as much it's more like a piece of clay in front of you that you can sculpt into what you want which as an artist I mean CU you know I'm not hugely technical um I think having like digital Clay is uh is much more conducive to how I would work regularly than having to like jockey Poes around so it's much more conducive it's much more artist friendly than the way I've worked in the past um and that's only

8. 00:05:34

   come about in the past few years and you can see it in games I mean games have come a long way in the past like I don't know six years is and a lot of it has to do with like mudbox and zbrush as far as like how you deal with uh polygons now zbrush is more organic uh where ships are very hard surface very you know crisp Lin stuff like that but if a ship gets beat up in battle or if it's bent or blasted or you know blown apart or something then you'd probably want to take it in zbrush at some point and like do the scarification do the the blast marks do the the bending and the the more organic type of stuff well the thing is so so with the 300 ey and the

9. 00:06:23

   way we're modeling these ships now so that would come into play if we had a lot of unique baked textures so you you you bake detail you know from a high poly to a low poly uh with these ships that we have now it's mostly a tile texture because we have such a high resolution on the on the outer shell of these ships and everything so what kind of resolution are we talking about here because I want to build my power rig very soon so how do I well I mean we're using the 1024 M which is not that high but we're scaling the UVS so big that you know on the ship you know makes the texture look more crisp and what about the detail of like the cockpit and everything inside uh the detail in the cockpit is actually unique so most of that is uh has been baked from normal

10. 00:07:11

    maps and U it started out with a you as well you're doing that too yeah I did everything oh my God everything he does the whole game I here I here it's the Smith Show Ladies and Gentlemen well I did everything the lighting I give no yeah I modeled the whole thing and from start to finish and texture and you come on speak up helped out on the our commercial The Landing Pad which uh Elijah concepted out the landing pad and the the various houses that he had concepted from those built that for the commercial and then uh now I'm back on to the M50 see these things take a long time right weeks yeah it's definitely well months I mean these ships definitely take a long time from design to finish I mean characters as well I

11. 00:07:59

    mean everything yeah especially thisy it takes forever anyways them all um we just scan him in scan ships we have the cool model button that's it no yeah it's definitely a crazy process and especially like Brian mentioned uh there's a couple you know some Growing Pains that we're going through you know because some things are unique uh that we're doing as opposed to other games um so what what are those big flat screen things that you guys work on oh CTI oh yeah what is that um well it's sort of geared towards like organic either sculpting or painting So as a you know sort of akin to like traditional drawing and stuff so you basically draw on that Minority Report that's what it

12. 00:08:49

    is is that you do it with your finger no you do it with a pen right ah close enough right there are versions that you can use your fingers and stuff but I don't think we have any here so so who has one of those who's got who's got Elijah you've got one not cool enough not cool enough I'm approaching coolness but I got to lose the hat first before I who needs a s right all he has to do is put a quest and he'll get one so right right I'm afraid I'm afraid of technology I born in 1979 I can't handle it me I wish I was said you're working on the b or what you working on right now yeah no for like the live stream there'll be like a a new character release for the Bano so how long do these things take when did you start that um about three years ago what no

13. 00:09:38

    no um seemingly that was the sex change operation that was that was three years ago um the the basic sort of uh look is down but we're trying to get sort of like the um the Finish costume finished before you know the live stream so okay yeah no it's it's hard to sort of put a number on things because there's like so many other things going on at the same time so everybody's balancing you know multiple things at the same time some people are not L some I know Chris Roberts is an I right so how do you guys what time does he wake up in the morning what does he have forast got any questions he emails like at 5:00 a.m. so I'm just curious uh he works till about four or five a

14. 00:10:27

    Speedos I work in speed yeah Bri they kind of release my creativity all right come on all right come on then when when are your best hours n or not when are your best hours Mark the weekend the weekend my best hours best hours no you know I don't know it it depends I I don't I don't mind working during the day I guess you know what to an artist it's like quiet if you can have quiet for like a couple of hours about the you know like uninterrupted craziness then that's when you get the most work done obviously I think that's with anybody though you know but you know since there's so much crazy yeah no it's um I mean for an artist it it's hard to sort of like

15. 00:11:18

    switch gears constantly or like go to meetings or answer emails you know when you're trying to like work on something specific so it's good to have like a DAT interrupted to be able to concentrate on something so I know that Chris says that the the morning hours early morning hours are the best hours for him because nothing do and when I take sick days and just work from home that's oh my God we could God didn't like that days for you who's taking sick days