Star Citizen: Around the Verse - The Origin of Spaceships

18 January 201800:54:111,312 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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hello and welcome to another episode of around the verse our weekly look at star citizen's development I'm chris Roberts and today we have standing in for Sandy Shawn Tracy hi last week we introduced a new format for around the verse featuring one segment in each episode yeah and allows us to bring you longer more in-depth looks into what we've been up to at all our studios and deeper dives into the development process this week community content manager Jared Huckaby kicks off the season of shipshape our new in-depth look at everything involved in the ship production process in this installment we'll meet the various teams responsible for designing and developing all of our ships and learn about where new ship ideas come from with a glimpse into the earliest conceptual stages of the design process along with an update on the miss grazer let's check in with Jared now for January's shipshape
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greetings citizens and welcome to shipshape I'm your host community Content Manager Jared Huckaby during our anniversary specials we introduced our new format where we give a quick rundown on what's in the ship pipeline who's working on what provide interviews with developers and bring you the most up-to-date news on your favorite star citizen ships working their way towards release into the persistent universe between the eighth anniversary specials and then the Holi special just last month we've updated on the current status of 18 ships and the Stars that is a ship pipeline in only the last eight weeks that's a lot of spaceships as we go forward in 2018 we'll take one atv every few weeks to check back in with the ship teams an update on the continuing
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evolution not only of these 18 ships that are already in the pipeline but new ships as they enter the development fray because we've covered every ship in the pipeline so extensively in just the last several weeks our first show of 2018 will be an introduction to the people and processes involved in bringing these star citizen spaceships to life to get things started let's meet some of the team members in our Studios working throughout the world that we'll get to check in with throughout 2018 and beyond I am Luke Davis the ship pipeline producer coming to you from foundry 42 and Wilmslow today I'm going to introduce you to all the guys working on the ship pipeline in the studio let's start with the concept team on my right here we have Paul Jones our after actually basically you know he is the guy who makes sure that every idea that
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chris has every idea that todd has actually comes to life basically I'm the art director with the concept team and we basically split into two in this one section we deal with ships and so basically we get to work on all the sort of new cool stuff I was sort of like the sharp end of the stick and basically yeah basically let our imaginations run free and deliver what Chris wants we have Sarah who's recently started and we're looking forward to what she's going to bring us we have Mike over there who's recently worked on the anvil Hawk my position here is senior concept artist and I'm working on concept designs for new ships what I find enjoyable is that you first set the
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basic idea you don't know where it leads but you start sketching make your first thumbnails you getting closer and closer to your main idea you decide for some final sketches and it's improving every time you're working on it and now let's go and have a look at the ship art team follow me and after it is done with the concept team it comes over here to our lovely ship team on the ship team let me introduce you to a few of the guys here we have Phil a ship lead artist who is essentially responsible making sure that everything that Todd Erin and Chris want from the universe one into the game gets
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communicated and coordinated to the guys and making sure that actually goes into the game as their vehicle art team we are responsible for creating all the artwork on the ship's interiors exteriors the the modular kits we're also responsible for all the textures the shaders and the lighting my role in all that is is partly to still be in production producing artwork in leading by example but also to work with other departments and make sure that the the schedules and the estimates are correct and everyone knows what they're working on we have our senior artists Jay at the end over there who's Colley working on the 600 I has previously worked on the Bengal and
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has been the guy who's basically fleshed out the ship derelict pipeline so for me one of the biggest challenges when me ships will star citizens is the whole process and the process itself and the fact that you take something which is initially just the concept building the block out figuring out design the layout and then from that point trying to take the manufacturing style and the the direction that it needs to go into and then push it forward all the way to to in-game and so for me that's the most exciting challenge about the whole process we have Joe in the corner over there who has previously worked on the misc razor the Dragonfly and you may know him for being the guy responsible for working on the stark kitten livery skin for the dragonfly if I'm working on the ships quite enjoyable because you
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have such a diversity of work some days you're building quite agile sports car esque racing ships and some days you're building bombers and giant frigates and that was our ship team in addition to those guys we also have a few more guys on this floor we have the system designers and we also have UI let's go and look at them in here we have the system design team here in the UK and one of the steps in the pipeline is to make sure that Kyle Jones here our system designer it essentially comes up with the UI templates which is for the UI team the team next to us to make sure that they have everything they need to plug in their work let's go and meet them in here we have our UI team here in the UK
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these guys are essentially the step in the pipeline who are responsible for making sure that the visual style and functionality are implemented in time if T's and HUDs on the ships in addition to these teams we also have a few more downstairs let's go meet them and here we are on the ground floor behind me here we have the audio team and on the straight pipe line these are the guys responsible for making sure that we add any audio to any moving parts any ambience needed any music and is in addition to any trailers that we provide the most challenging thing about working on the ships is creating that sense of a character per different ship but also trying to make sure it maintains within the aesthetic of the manufacturer but you want to make sure
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it's got its own identity its own feel but it fits in another family of ships the manufacture of ships there comes from that's probably the most challenging thing and that was felt from the audio department am i right here we have the QA department up next one of the guys is very important integrated and into the ship pipeline is Mark IQ a ship specialist he's very much involved throughout the entire development process of the ship pipeline and he basically go to him to make sure that we are aware of every single issue but really come out of QA so Q is at the very end of the actual pipeline once all the departments had time to work on the ships and add their different sections the art the animations or the or VFX it then comes to us to test all those different aspects that come together to make sure that once they're combined
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they actually work the way it's meant to up next let's go and meet our marketing department let's go and down here we have our marketing department here in the UK one of Richard is Aryan Garin associate marketing producer she's responsible for making sure that all of the requirements that come down from Sandy and Chris are taken into account for any planning within ship pipeline so the concept ship sails the flight ready ship sails are very important to us and if we don't take that into account from the very start we will get it wrong we create a marketing plan and we basically collaborate with all the other respective teams whether that's the web team the art team design and our community team to just ensure
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that we deliver what the community expects when we ship it to release and we also have a few other teams on the third floor to meet let's go and here we are on the third floor let me introduce you to the UK tech design team these are the guys that are essentially responsible for being the gatekeepers of the ship pipeline nothing goes through the pipeline without these guys actually being aware of it they're also the guys are responsible for making sure that every disciplines work comes together into one playable product at the end here we have John Crewe our lead tech designer the UK tech design team is eight people including myself and we're responsible for implementing all the art that the UK ship art team does the tech design team fit in on every aspect of
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the process where they're at the start doing the initial design briefs feeding back on the concept working with the artist when they're actually blocking it out giving direction and feedback to all the other disciplines as they come on board putting it all together and then balancing it and getting out the door the biggest challenge is just getting everything together there's on every ship there's so many people even the smaller ships will have probably 10 people working on them and it's getting all those pieces of the puzzle together and working with each other and not causing issues no more right here we have Steve Tober field a senior technical designer he is responsible for the initial design all the way through implementing the final setup of our ships we're very hands-on from pretty much start to finish so we will essentially design the specs of the ship and this
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our web apps that fits in with the verse we do the initial white box plan before that goes to art and then once the art animations are done we're responsible for setting up the ship to get it working in game over here we have the VFX team there seems to be a few other guys missing today but one of the guys we do have is me how our VFX artists on ship pipeline he primarily works on things like thrusters damage and quantum travel after we have the first pass off kamesh when there is something to play with a concept mesh for example we are ready to gather some ideas and how the effects should be made we also can
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redesign documents to foresee which which features will be implemented in a vehicle so we have a good idea of what should be done in the future later on once the vehicle is almost ready that's when the effects start doing effects so first thing I always do is that I'm checking which manufacturer is creating this vehicle each manufacturer has a certain Luke and it's not only about the the vehicle shape itself it's also about the effects so Drake engines will look totally different than for example anvil or origin it's all manufacturers specific it depends whether it's a ground or space vehicle we take all those factors into
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consideration and only then we we start doing VFX and that was everyone who works on the ship pipeline here in the UK let's head over to our Austin office and meet the guys who work on the shape pipeline over there hi my name is Chris Smith and the leadership artist here in Austin Texas and so I worked on the ships here since almost the beginning of the project of designing or built quite a few of them including the 300 I the Hornet Hornet F seven eight I worked with Joshua on the constellation remake and so yeah I've been working on ships for a long time the challenge the most challenging one probably would be the constellation so far that was a big ship I had a lot a lot of moving parts a lot
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of different rooms areas exterior exterior interior so that was probably the hardest one so far that I've worked on so recently I got started on a new ship finally which is exciting it's been a while since I've done a new ship and started working on the anvil Lightning FA heavy fighter ship which is pretty cool ship the designers really awesome and it's anvil company which I like this one's going to be pretty heavy fighter it's gonna have four size - guns - size three weapons loads of missiles it's gonna be it's gonna pack a punch this guy so I'm pretty excited a good to get
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my hands on this one and you know see it through and have you guys have that ship in your hands in no time oh it's my name hi I'm Josh Koons work at CI G in Austin Texas I'm a 3d model I've had a few challenges in my career three plus years here at CI g one of which was winning the CI g chillest dudes award [Applause] beating out Chris Smith by landslide that was a huge challenge thanks guys for voting me worked on a bunch of ships and other various items worked on character models and props and all kinds
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of stuff mostly just ships welcome to shipshape I'm here to show you guys the good old feature team for the vehicles yeah now unfortunately mr. Dave havoc decided that you know he's gonna be in a meeting I sort of have a somewhat loose roll with the ship team we usually are kind of consulted or brought in to sort of talk about like the manufacturers like who potentially could be a good manufacturer for it usually that the initial brief kind of comes through from design is sort of what they're looking for as far as what the the new ship is supposed to be and then we sort of help contextualize it within the universe rather than me being the ones who said like oh it should be a blip we don't we don't really do that we just sort of help if it's needed grounded in the reality of the universe so we'll let him
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be there and we'll show off all the cooler people we got right here we got Matt Sherman good old designer typing away to the community because you know what he does awesome things continuing on we got mr. Elwin making cool art stuff you know he touches the pixels does some things and they go my team is composed of a total three guys me Daniel Kaminsky which is also another 3d artist he does essentially the same stuff I do and then we've got Byung Jin hyung another 3d artist does all the same stuff so all three of us work together to build as many ships as possible for the community and together we all work together to put together the caterpillar currently the la ship team is working on the hurricane we're working on the redo of the Mustang and we just finished up
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the first go at the cyclone buggy we got mr. Daniel he's known for saying mark and I am guessing your line yeah Daniel continuing on because he doesn't want to do it it wasn't be cool we got the good old tech guys we got mr. Patrick and we got mr. Matt started here about four and a half years ago when there was just three ships the roar are the Avenger and the Hornet and I started off we were working on the Connie I helped with tools I helped build we call the RSI toolbox they involved the materials the geometry the special effects the lights everything you can think of that as partnership I probably written the tool to facilitate
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that process in the pipeline continuing on we have the ghost right here well actually is right over on that side mr. Kirk the technical design team in LA is responsible for ships and ship elated systems this includes things like interfacing with the ship's as a player in the game by sitting in the cockpit how ships look and function what kind of things you can do with the ship such as in among weapons on them ship-to-ship combat ship to ship interfacing such as docking and other ship related systems as a in respect to how you can actually find the ships in the game we even got mr. calyx over there to so let them
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figure out some awesome stuff and we'll go implemented - moving on we've got mr. hosmer tech design as well we got myself mr. bug smasher and my responsibilities is basically look at the ship features and production line basically if the ship needs a fly ship needs combat ship needs to get destroyed ship needs to do anything I'm your guy we have two more engineers we got max and we got Patrick they're here to assist on any of the vehicle feature sets that we have to do basically when I get work I give it to them and they go off do their thing and I get to go play games pretty fun well hope you guys enjoyed and not really one watch for intros outros as you saw on bug smashers so see in the verse the journey through the ship pipeline is
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a marathon not a sprint and depending on their sides ships can take weeks or even months to bring to their full realization as we check in throughout the year we'll follow a number of ships through the various stages of ship development but in today's first episode of 2018 we're starting where all ships start with an idea let's find out how ship ideas are born and where they come from in a little segment I like to call how ship ideas are born and where they come from Selam process involves approximately 49 years of obsessively washing science fiction films and TV shows and reading a lot of science fiction novels plus being a bit of a world war one and a world war two enthusiast and taking all of that and then coming up with various ideas
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for ships that are sort of inspired by things that you've seen things that you've read things you know in the real world that fill in the various roles that we have in the game so typically we get an idea of what ships that we need to implement in the game usually from Chris it can be anything from you know we have a function that we need or gameplay mechanic that we need in the universe and we need and you know we need a ship that will do that you know Salvage or mining or racing or courier or whatever we have that discussion it's know me pretty lively how let's do this let's do that let's you know let's have one of these let's have something with you know the size of the planet or you know or the size of a you know
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coffee cup whatever I mean that's ridiculous but you know it kind of that's the sort of spectrum that you know that these things sort of cover it's twofold one side is the design requirements so like for instance we go okay well we need a ship that you can fight with or we need a ship that you combine with you mean we need ship that you can carry cargo in and then so that's sort of the logical game side of it and then there's the emotional side which is like with the sense of an emotional attachment so it's not just purely you know kind of cold pragmatic science involves evoking ships or aircraft from the past from the present day or from fiction whether they're spaceships are actual real aircraft I
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mean so a fair amount of our combat ships are really evocative of say aircraft that will be from world war ii or later and the overall kind of I guess idea boiling pot that they come from and then we sit down and we know we we talk about what the role want to feel okay would we want we need a single-seat ship here we need a medium ship or a large or a capital class ship and then what the role the ship's going to do and then that's where we started throughout these ideas once that it's been decided then it'll go to the design team so john crew so basically him and his guys they'll work up an initial brief generally we try and keep the ships we know where
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they're going to get made at the end of the day based on the size of the ship so larger ships tend to get made in the UK smaller ships in LA so it's always better to have the designer that did the original concept in the same studio as the ship that's making it so they can help guide it so that initially sort of dictates which studio gets given to and then myself will Kirk will then further narrow it down to a designer who has perhaps shown interest in doing that style of ship so we've divvied up the work between the LA and the UK students as far as implementation is concerned regarding the attack design teams typically what we've done is we've divided them amongst the manufacturing lines that works great the design the art style for the ships can fall within
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the the different Studios team structure as well so the tech designer and the artist can work hand-in-hand being right next to each other and then we would we would sort of go from there and would decide okay well for this kind of ship for our portfolio of manufacturers what kind of you know who do you think would do it you know which which of the manufacturers are known for fast or which manufacturer is known for cargo ships which you know which manufacturer do we feel like we haven't overloaded on I mean right now if you look at our ship lineup the GS is is is is is a you know over indexing as far as our ship manufacturers but you know we look at it and go okay yeah you know this no yeah we would like you know the the constellation is a great ship but you know perhaps we want that sort of slightly more you know I wouldn't
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necessarily say style over substance but there is a little bit of it that you get with origin which is sort of that sense of a BMW or or an apple you know in terms of sort of how it does its elegant design well you know let's have one a ship like that that will be in the same area that the constellation because you know the constellation is a really great ship you know it works really well for a small group of friends to play together in some ways I think it's kind of perfect because you know three four friends playing together as a pretty cool number and it can take a few more than that and if you and if you don't have that many it works pretty well with two or one even so I think it's a great ship we don't have enough ships in that in that area so we say okay that's and this is kind of where the three the 600 I came from we you know we've talked about having a Origin competitive for
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quite a while but we felt like yes it was a good time to have that in the game because yes we have lots of single seater ships that do a variety of things although mostly compact because that's some of the you know that's one of the earliest game mechanics that we had working in the game but we generally go through and we try to say okay well we need ships for these different areas and different classifications and different sizes so you can progress so once we get the initial concept and the role from Chris we decide we're in the in the hierarchy of all the ships and the particulars ship lies and then we figure out things like okay well it needs to be really combat capable or its role isn't specifically suited to that so maybe it's a little bit more lumbering but has
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a lot of armor and of health or its you know we can forego all then say its its main role is to travel from point A to point B really fast for going safety because that's the that particular ships role once you make those decisions we can start figuring out okay what are the what are the stats for the ship and in that regard figure out what are the items that we need to be able to fulfill those particular those particular features and functions that a ship that we design to fill a particular role would have so we might have a ship that can carry X and has Y guns and so we'll flip that around to create a sort of a polar opposites one of it or create artificial weaknesses or
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strengths to differentiate them we have a lot of ships that are average ly good across the board so we want to push ships that are significantly better in some aspects but you don't want those ships that are gonna be the clear favourites to go to they need to have significant downside to them so the people there's one of the easy life they can just pick nice easy ships they can just do it and those that one have a bit more engaging gameplay from it can pick those those outlier ships that give that challenge well then it starts a bunch of questions all right so we have blank type of ship that we need how big does it need to be is it need to is it a small ship is it a single-player ship and said multi crew is it a capital ship whatever so a lot of discussions going around and round it round of try to hone
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in on exactly sort of what type of ship it is and and and usually it sort of will come down to the higher-ups and design and then ultimately Chris kind of getting presented with the idea of hey here's the type of ship that we want to make what do you think and then usually more feedback and notes an iterative iterate iterate iterate and then finally they sort of hone in on okay so here's the ship as a design concept that we want to do and then it gets passed on to art who begin concept in it and so they're doing form language and shapes and usually narrative team will come on usually about that time because though if it hasn't already been decided but then the question of who's manufacturing the ship will come in because that will inform the art team as far as the kind of design language that they use and
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stoutest and and in some ways I feel like you connect to it better it feels real more real to you if you can you you can use sense a portion of it that connects to something that you know whether like a citizen that you've seen in fiction over the years reading books or watching movies or TV or you know in real work real life like you know a b-17 Fortress bomber or something like that and and and so that's the overall sort of big picture of how we kind of come up with the idea and then once we've sort of honed it in various folks throw in there sort of ideas into the Hat so you know depending on you know Kirk or a John crew or Todd or a Tony or you know Ben Lesnick did a lot of this especially
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in the early days I would say well how about this ship or how about this ship or how about this ship and there'll be a whole list of it and ultimately I would sort of look at it and I'd go okay yeah this one feels pretty good to me or let's do this one or I go well how about this one but I want it to be like this or how about we do something or sometimes it would be my idea that we throw it into the habit we would we would sort of shape it that way and then once we decided on that then we go out to start to took concept it figuring out who works on what ship I guess it depends on whether its internal or external their experience it depends on what we throw out then basically it depends on the risk factor so there's lots of things that factor into all these things so it's you know if it's something that's a an establishment a
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factor ER and we're totally clear on what it is and it's it's not wild and wacky it's a it's a safe about basically so we may put you know we may give that to a mid-level may even give it to a junior because it it's relatively manageable not only do I want to get good results and get the project Chris what he wants I want to make sure that the artist is comfortable they start to grow in their skills and then and then yeah they could go right yeah I've done that I can move on to something bigger badder Wilder with the most senior guys generally they're more sort of fire-and-forget whoever the concept artist you know we have quite a lot of them in house now and originally we were working with quite a few people out of house or a great like crayon
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Church or Jim Martin we still have a few like Gavin ruff three does a lot of our stuff and he's he's brilliant he's uk-based he's the sort of film conceptual designer as well as doing like the last house stuff usually there's a you know there's a kind of swatch of sketches that are laid out and various different shape explorations a lot of times very basic and we use that to hone in the shape that we want and and and sometimes it's a bit of a struggle because you're you're kind of balancing this something that feels familiar that people go oh yeah yeah I totally get that and then also sometimes you go well we don't want to always go for the obvious call for this and we want to have something that feels
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different and so you you you you try to sort of balance the two of them and the other thing is you also need to keep your identity of the manufacturer there so they they need to you know you don't want every ship to kind of be homogenous and look like it could come from any manufacturer you want to look an Origin ship and say that's an Origin ship or look at a RSI ship and say that's an RSI ship sometimes it's it falls to a manufacturer and naturally you know depending on what role that's trying to fill sometimes when we come up with a design brief bits it screams out it's a certain manufacturer like a if you wanted a cheap cheap and cheerful rugged thing that's usually Drake or if someone's got an idea of how they want it to look before they really know what it's going to do that can again
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influence it in military ships tend to be anvil or aegis and as the concepts come through usually we'll have one manufacturer they want it to be but quite often that changes once the initial round of concepts come back and actually that sort of looks better and it really just sort of comes down to that and occasionally you'll have a curve ball where you'll start off as one manufacturer and then we'll switch over because it just it just makes more sense I think we did that for the what did we do that for I think it was the Terrapin I think every Jinnah Lee it was Aegis and then it just made more sense to go and build because of the sort of put the plating and just that sort of that carapace that we had and it just felt
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more armoured and kind of worked more with the sort of the sharp sharp lines basically we have going on for that manufacturer where anvil has a fairly angular like a lot of its canopies a fairly angular and a lot of is intakes is sort of fairly angular and it usually has a round kind of dome like whether it's a turret or a radar or something like that in it right and so you can look at amount of oil ships oh that's an ample ship whereas you could look at an Origin ship and go okay well you know that's that's sort of very sort of elegant and sleek lines clean really nice you know high-grade materials and and you know you definitely can see the difference between those two manufactures so we have two big that into the conceptual stage and and I would say that the you know a lot of times the difficulty is coming to like a
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shape that you feel good with that people are going to motion eliris pond - you're gonna mostly respond to the go yeah yeah I'd like to because essentially in all this you know if you be like on the picking Lee ships out yes that like I said there's a certain amount of like design was this thing but almost all the time in terms of ship decisions when I'm involved in it is about would I think that's cool do I want to fly that ship and I think that's kinda way on the game side you know my games in general have have connected is because I view it as me what I want to do and what I play and my tastes I think align with a lot of everyone that's back this game and also you know general gamers out there so that's how I view it is like yeah would I would I be proud to own that would I
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think that's cool and I of course I recognize that you know not every you know not everyone wants a mining ship and I everyone wants a combat ship or whatever like that but that's all there has to be that sort of emotional kind of wow factor that comes in the cool factor that comes into a ship and if you can't get that in at the very early stages that's when you're you you're sort of having issues with the ship and so I so in the early stages that's kind of what I that's you know the big thing that I when I'm looking at it as it's developing and you know usually Paul Jones is giving me you know you know progress updates on ships I'm seeing with sketches how it's developing and and when we're doing that that's where I'm spending my time going okay yeah this is moving in the right direction this is cool or can we get back all right you know I feel like I don't know
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whatever the you know the engine the cells look a bit goofy right now and sometimes will you know will go in a direction what we all you'll be pushing a direction that we think this is what we're after I don't go to kress maybe right no no no no it's it's not this it's face and and and it's just a theoretical you know hopefully most the time its course correction sometimes we've had to do complete 180s we have just got it wrong but those are quite rare and it's it literally is just about communication isn't it it's about trying to get it in front of Chris and him having the time basically because it everybody knows what Chris is like you know he's he's he's a finger on the pulse on everything
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so it's just power of just squeezing in and saying you know just look at this look at this just please you know we're going to we're about to start work on this you know that's coming up a sign-off there's always those those little changes that come on as once you see it go from A to D bit of art on screen to something in game you always find those those little bits that oh I didn't notice that flow from the 2d thing that looked like it was a 45-degree angle and it should be something extra so we're we're always going over things and and then that's a I mean it's you know Todd's happy with its Tony Z's happy with it Chris is happy with it is getting to realize my child and adulthood fantasies live in a game in you know in because
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the level of detail that we build these they just feel very real and visceral and so you know the like one of the funnest things with star citizen is there's so many things I really like this and I'd like to have I'd like to be flying that kind of like Washington I'd like to fly that ship I wouldn't be so cool to be in the cockpit of that and I sort of feel like the primal appeal of star citizen is very much that it's it's living that fantasy or that dream that you had as a kid reading novels or watching who's a TV and even as an adult and in a very real right because it's so you know like we do everything I mean you know you've got beds you've got toilets you've got dining tables you know it's it's it's it feels real even though it's virtual and and so getting to sort of create that out of thin air and put it into the game and have people
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fly and enjoy the ships is awesome throughout the year we'll continue to explore each stage of the ship pipeline in more detail but now let's go ahead and get to the part I know many of you citizens have been waiting for the ship updates in ages ship news the Avenger reworked which we highlighted last month has had its work completed by the squadron 42 ship team and has now moved back over to the persistent universe ship team to complete all the specific needs for use in the star citizen persistent universe on the pipeline it falls in the final modelling and surface tweak stage and worked on all the variants has already begun meanwhile the Eclipse has stealthily stealthily worked its way through the gray box and saddled up right next to the Avenger in final art phase now who will make it to the
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persistent universe first stay tuned to future episodes to find out the hammerhead introduced in concept during last year's anniversary show is in full production and has arrived at the Kip bashing of remaining interior stage now kit bashing areas from the similarly themed Idris will certainly speed things up but there are still a number of unique areas that need to be created from scratch and team members are already ready to start their work on the exterior damage set up joining the Avenger and the Idris and the final modelling a surface tweak stage we've got the Mustang alpha and the origin 600 eye powering their way through the pipeline now of all the stages of the pipeline this one can be one of the most time-consuming but it's still thrilling to see all the progress the team is made in refining the overall production of
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these ships and that's what's allowing them to move from concept to reality faster than ever before a little farther back on the pipeline we find the anvil hurricane in greibach servicing and the Vandal blade in the gray box modeling stage of a constellation Phoenix which is now completed white box phase has moved into grey box to join the blade in the modeling stage still in white box we have the f8 lightly one of the most mysterious vehicles in star citizen's lexicon of spaceships it has entered the white box final approval phase and you know what I feel like we're gonna need a big segment on the ship in the coming months don't worry I'm on it finally moving back to the future the razor the terrib-- in the reclaimer and the cyclone have all jumped to the head of the pack into the flight prep face that means that their ship are complete and
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now the tech art team used to hook up all the damaged states the tech design team needs to make it pliable and then FX and audio can begin to do their work the razor come to think about it and all those 18 ships that we covered in the last seven weeks we do haven't checked in with the team working on the razor have way let's go ahead and do that now the misc razor was it's a dedicated race ship basically by misc company part of the law as that misc has done a deal with GM and they're sort of using their technology so this ship is very much a hybrid of the two styles it's not overtly a misc you notice we're used to seeing the sort of large round curvaceous shapes on the misc ships this is more of like as if we'd pushed it in
00:40:53
more of a Aegean style basically myself and concept artists we've worked on the ship for quite a while and obviously got it to its final form that people saw in the concept sail and then it goes over to our production team and so you know through you know through the weeks and the months that go by generally just walking past or sort of you know looking and just have a nose around and just sort of see where the guys are working on and Joe as far as I know Joe has been working on it so the inspiration for the art design behind the razor is primarily Formula One racing cars but also the elements of sports cars and hyper cars in there too I was also looking at you know Nathan Diaz Lee's MP for X which is his McLaren racing car which is quite cool to look out and I was doing that zoom is crazy
00:41:42
are is basically similar to the origin m50 so it's mostly a racing ship but it still has some basic weapons to defend it himself and yeah this is like if the m50 is basically a very good hiker so Iser is like a Formula One or something like that so it would be maybe a bit faster in straight lines but the m50 is a big moment available the race had changed quite a bit what I was making it and that's primarily because the animation metrics were incorrect so it was a bit too wide we first made it so we had to make a little bit slimmer so the person entering the the ship could actually you know put his feet and hands on the hull in the
00:42:29
correct places obviously before he was he was walking through the hull of the ship so when he opened the cockpit canopy he was just a clip that they clipped through the ship and I look a bit a little bit strange the ship's a lot more sleek now a lot more streamlined I think I think it's improved as a result there's a lot more elegant now as a result of the changes as he raises basically using mostly the same human animations as the m50 so you get out from the side and you get in the same way in the cockpit whether it's in Cavite are in DVI on in terms of animation this is a bit different as well because the cockpit is opening like in three different pieces so this is really interesting like it's just no authorship having a cockpit opening this
00:43:17
way but this is pretty straightforward this is not like a really complicated ship but this still has new new features that other ships don't have right now also the the initial concept for the canopy had the canopy opening up and down like an airplane canopy which is a bit lead a little bit of a simple animation I was quite keen to try and bring some more interesting animations into the ship so what we have now is that the kind of yourselves made of four pieces which all slide of aims into the hull so it all retract so when you actually get inside the ship it closes around you and kind of encompasses you in the ship and so it's a lot more interesting you know visually for players you know maybe not
00:44:05
so much for the player but these players like looking looking looking at the ship from a distance that they can see the ship almost transforms and again inside it just bit more exciting bit more has more energy behind it so this guy's quite cool in tech design basically well it has been as usual working with all the different departments to to make the ship fly on it has been being sure that everything works properly and then talk with other designers to see in terms of parents how oh it should fit in its hole but still not be too too good on one way or too bad on the other way outside of that yet it's basically same as other ships I wasn't really on the design part
00:44:54
of it but I've been helping to direct it in the right direction to be sure that it is as it was intended in the first place we only have a limited amount of time to sort of get to off sort of final product and there's always sort of areas there loosey-goosey not fully defined but the idea is that we'll give the art team a direction they sort of know where they needs ahead and as far as I'm concerned you know it's it leaves the art team with enough creative freedom still to sort of embellish it to really sort of work up areas you know the cockpits how the copper opens you know we may have created a few problem areas along the way they will need refining and figuring it out the copper for the resin is supposed to feel a little bit
00:45:42
comfortable it's been designed to feel more luxurious than it used to be originally it was a lot of bare metal surfaces a lot of you know quite hard angles it didn't look comfortable to be in whereas I was quite keen to when I was given the brief of the this luxury element to breathe more more luxury back into it so when there's like a lamborghini interiors even though it's you know a powerful supercar it's still it still has a really distinct you know feel to it but it also looks like it's comfortable inside it may be when you get into it it's a little bit low but yeah I think when you're sitting in there and you feel encompassed by it feels generally quite comfortable so wants to kind of have a nod to that within the razor to the actual seat itself is quite
00:46:28
economic you know income to do quite nicely the joystick and the throttle have armrests by them the the surfaces within the cotton itself have quite soft fit their edges to them so it doesn't feel like if you kind of touched the surface of the ship it wouldn't feel uncomfortable to touch it you should have quite a nice soft plush feel to it and should feel quite quite matte and just nice to be in I think if you haven't got there doesn't really feel luxurious it feels more like a military machine and I was quite keen to avoid that you know when you look at the ship it's very much a sort of ship of two parts you know you've got your main sort of monocoque body you know very sort of f1 styling again the sort of large of curvature basically that we're used to seeing but rather than being convex most
00:47:18
of them are sort of concave specially on the front and then you have this sort of this dark material almost like a looks a bit like carbon fiber that's really on the main sort of front splitter and on the rear wing as well and that's basically a composite material that was developed so we threw it sort of basically the way it works as it enables the racer to collect hydrogen extra hydrogen while in flight so it gives a shipper extra spoofs of speed so that's you know so it basically you know this you know this the ship should theoretically go faster than the others I mean that's the hope right I think the miss Carozza is is it's interesting one because it doesn't adhere to the general design
00:48:07
ethos behind the misc lineup I think it's pretty much the antithesis of what misc is made so far this an interesting challenge it was one of the more complicated things that I've built to date appeal because the hull was so so curvy and sleek and trying to maintain the flow of those curves across the entire ship is very hard to balance with some of the more boxy ships they're a lot more forgiving with how how you model them you know we could have things kind of crashing into various elements and you can hide stuff away quite quite easily but but would this because it is such a formed shape it becomes very difficult to make the flows look smooth all the way around one the problems will be faced generally is is smoothing issues so when the light
00:48:58
catches you know as a sleek surface for example if the smoothing and the topology isn't all correct you had to end up with this quite a nasty triangulation which is quite hard to avoid so we had to build this thing using like a sub-divisional workflow and then you kind of go back and read apologize it I can strip it out clean it up numerous times I kind of make the hull in iterations it was it was love back and forth you make a bit see if it works make a bit more hope it works it doesn't work send to your back and remodel it again and then go over it again and again and say ten different versions down the line then you finally end up with this really nice formed curve shape up until that point it becomes you know I think I think until
00:49:47
the end it's quite it's quite easy to be a little bit disillusioned by and look at it and think it's not it's not working and then suddenly you know then if the last 10% of the production schedule it comes together and looks it looks okay and it's you know you quite private at the end but I think I think at first I was quite quite daunted by the prospect of making this ship and this hope that the fans are happy with it and they have delivers you know their vision of a racing ship - it's looking great it's looking in some ways even better than the concept art so this is ships that really turned out very well this is interesting because this has been a long time is that we didn't do such a small ship as well so yeah it's it's very a really slick ship on in terms of miss kaswell this is kind of a
00:50:35
new ship where previous misc ships were a bit more industrial whereas this one is really like it's it's a racing ship so it's very slick on the cockpit is different from the usual misc ship it's a bit more modern as well so it's it's really interesting for the manufacturer so the principal focus of the razor is basically the Morey Cup race there are I think there are two other ships there are specific for racing so this is a this is our third to the series I think Joe has done an excellent job on his on the model of it and so I'm looking forward to seeing her it's what it looks like I see in game with that this episode of ships to a close we'll be right back here through the rest of the new year with more ships more ship
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updates more pipeline features and more of anything that makes the ships and star citizen everything they can be for shipshape I'm community content manager Jared Huckaby back to you Kristen's Shawn the Rays are sure to become a fan favorite of all our Murray Cup racers out there yeah no it's cool very close it's very much like an f1 McLaren car and we have quite a few other ships coming online for 2018 as well as new concepts making their way through the pipeline so it's gonna be an exciting year for ship shape definitely and Jared will be back in the coming months with additional installments and remember to tune in tomorrow at noon PST for another episode of reverse the verse this week's guest is composer Jeff Spinelli yeah now that's gonna be fun Jeff's a great guy I first worked with him back on the movie Outland which is this really fun sort of
00:52:10
be sci-fi movie and Jeff has scored countless films most recently their parents the Caribbean film television shows and games and he's been doing some really great work on squadron 42 you got a taste of his music in the vertical slice which he showed in the holiday livestream and I'll sure have a lot to say about scoring squadron so far mmm and speaking of squadron 42 next week around the verse will feature our monthly update on its development so remember to tune back in on January 25th and check out the squadron 42 page on our website where you can still in list to receive monthly updates yes please do that that's all for us today and don't forget to check out the season premiere of book smashes if you missed it as well as the first episode of calling all devs that premiered earlier this week you can find new episodes each and every Monday at noon PST yeah and thanks as always to
00:52:58
our subscribers for sponsoring all of our shows and to all our backers for making the development of star citizen and squad forty-two possible yeah thank you very much guys so until next week we'll see you around [Music] thank you for watching so if you want to
00:53:50
keep up with the latest and greatest in the star cities in the squadron 42 development please follow us on our social media channels see you soon

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.