Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse 2.8 - DE

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] you hello and welcome to reverse reverse

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   live from frankfurt germany i am brian chambers development director of Frankfort today is sep tember 23rd 2016 for new viewers that don't know or just rehash for people that do know reverse the verses CIJ and foundry 42 live stream with the fans we do a TV which around the verse that comes on the thursday and on the friday gives you a chance for us to dig in a little more detail and chat with some of the guys that you saw give you a little more insight also gives us an opportunity to actually take questions from you guys which is pretty cool if you want to submit questions you log on to robert

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   space industries com in the chat and if you poke questions put the word questions within brackets because those will be the key words that we pull out we don't take any of the questions in twitter or any other so we're going to pull them all from there so be prepped to put your questions in today we have two guests we have been dere senior level designer he showed off the the modular satellites so we'll dig in that a bit more detail and then we also have evo hurt sag showing off the visual envision stabilization um so we'll pull in with him as well so yeah our first guest been there but a senior level designer here in Frankfurt thanks for coming cool yeah it's nice to be here

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   thanks for taking the time I know you and the guys are busy yes yes Emily yeah that's cool um so why don't you tell everybody your senior level designer what do you actually do here in Frankfort for star citizen ok so as a lot of designer hair my job is to create interesting and diverse environments to populate universe with and obviously the universe big so that requires a lot of locations they've got skill in there which from the videos that you've just seen we're looking a lot about modularity and trying to do research on our individual parts you know how I best implement not and as you saw in the video I was working on the satellite modularity yeah yeah so yeah the satellites and that was

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   cool it was cool to see the other parts and pieces and having a system that comes together that creates that amount of variety right with that and jump into it I'll that's the first one so with the variety that you have so far with the modular satellite pieces how did you choose which ones to go from which satellites to build with those pace purely and gameplay I know you had an aesthetic dry for as well so you can see the silhouettes so really what kind of government so yeah really started with my own research so looking at the satellites that are currently are in the world looking at star sits and really thinking what purpose these satellites would serve in the star season universe yeah and the reason that I chose those three the defense communication and

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   science was they with the most distinctive types and by picking three distinctive types of satellite it meant that i wrote my documentation the design documentation for it and they were good test to see you know if if the system is versatile enough to make those three types of satellites then it should be versatile enough to make to make any sort of no that's cool that's cool it's cool speaking of that and kind of you know digging in and documentation and specific first artist and I mean you're in a senior role typically means you've been doing this for a little bit of while so you know what you're doing how would you say being a level designer on star citizen differs from other level design jobs you've had there are also there are certainly similarities with it

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   the process is the same of the the research patooties the implementation 3d but the thing which has been really distinctive for me since starting here is when designing a location the real authenticity of it so when i'm working on a location everything has to serve a purpose it's not the case of we're putting something in just because it looks pretty yeah it feels a lot more like being an architect thinking about what you know what does this location have to do what are the constraints that would be on this location and then finding the most elegant solution to all of that and when when that's done well a player just walking through the location will be able to tell the purpose of

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   location and history the location and that's something that being a level designer I finds both challenging but also really rewarding working away no that's cool because I mean with with the sense of exploration the players are going to have when the universe gets larger and larger and larger and more build out i mean it's that concept that if you see it you can get to it yeah and if you can get to it you can explore it so i mean yeah it does have to have its function you know so cool questions are rolling in now so let me look through here first question are the modular stations going to have interiors established with them or they just a basic shape of the satellites yes so the modular satellites will have some

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   internal playable space ok we can you can think of the currents comma right so there's there's some internal space in the satellites that I was showing there was the hub module yeah we did have that one section where you're lying into yeah but are there are the interior is even going to be more expensive than that or is that still too early on to there will definitely be be different different areas so dependent on the size of satellite and the purpose it serves there'll be different size interiors and also the interiors will be very very different depending on what type of satellite is whether its nuclear power or solar power and yeah I really like the feeling of when you get into the hub of it so you can really see the kind of goings of satellite you know it it doesn't seem like a normal a normal place that you would have on the on

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    stations it's learn very very so technical and almost a bit a bit dangerous you know it's against I really fun awesome another question will satellites be destructible I mean I know that we're making these modular pieces but can they be destroyed and so the design is that the modules will definitely be things that you can break and you can prepare going on from that we are also exploring if they will be complete destructible and then how they would be the place because that's the something we're still having an ongoing conversation about Ernest I think it would be good if it was possible but as imagine it best that you know that important satellites that's there that you've owned or it's whatever it exists

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    and then somebody comes by and destroys it and so on and now there's commodity because you have to replace it and you have to get the parts and you know so so yeah really be great because then like say it leads to interesting gameplay another question which actually I don't I haven't heard this one I do some of the satellites use standard ship components such as power generators coolers etc or are they all unique standalone parts just for the satellites as so the the parts will be standalone parts but their functionality will be very similar to the things that will happen ships yes way things are repaired and replaced but they will be specific for self like so I think that does make sense though I mean because a satellite is a specific thing you're right it's

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    not oh let me take the satellite part and repair my ship yes I mean that's a little MacGyver it's kind of cool but it's not realistic yeah so they'll be similar bits like you wouldn't use the same components to fix your car as you would your house so they're definitely going to be different beasts ah let's see another question here do satellites have pipe system similar to ships and will we be able to disable individual systems yes the that they will work very similar to the way that ships work with the piping systems and being able to disable certain sister systems yes that will we send that happens when you're approaching satellite if you're trying to take things off line that can be something you do externally so you're

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    causing damage to the satellite oh yeah or you're going inside the satellites having the computer phantom viruses so you've got different approaches to it but yes it is similar with the piping system two ships call another question the satellite construction system looks like it's limited to 90 degree angles is that true and if so what are you going to do to try to avoid is sort of Minecraft like look okay so a presence the modules that I I was creating motions and had these six points to join them and that was so you could grow them out in different axis but that's when necessarily the case on all modules and

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    when I was working it was very much for a white box protist prototyping and type of stage so they won't necessarily be a nice degree angles and I don't envision it becoming like Minecraft that you know that those things yeah it does look really gross hugely complex you can look at the things like the space stations as as they are now in the way that they they are constructed no that's that's the kind of smoothie inspiration because i'm at work that we saw and this is my question on the work that we saw actually in the video how far along would you say you know as a prototype because it is still fairly early on right is it you know was that that tastes take you a few weeks to put together did you spend a month on that and and how much further time do you

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    think it's going to take to get it where you guys want it to be yeah in the amount of time that I spent some that was probably about a month to do the research do some prototyping back and forth and with something like that obviously it's not just level design but speaking to the others miners and urns and getting feedback but now now it's with the art team and their witness and concepts so when it comes back from them then they'll probably be a little bit more back and forth but um it's it shouldn't be should be too long until i can start constructing there's lots good pieces which is going to be something it's really really exciting i'm way excited to see the concert at school and stuff like this too i look forward to you know in the months ahead kind of revisiting showing some of the old footage we shot versus hey this is

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    where it is now and this is how its functioning and these are the things that modified and grew and changed you know it's cool another question can players control a satellite in any way uh us our presence we are designing satellites to be things that you can interact with so you can destroy them you can fix them you can potentially plants plant viruses on them control them is something that we're not looking at right now but in the future that that they'll be great we'll just have to see how it plays out i mean is very early days so this is our scope at the moment but I mean that would be nice more we

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    just have to see how how the process of all sorts where it takes us another question excuse me will some satellites have automated defensive capabilities to protect themselves and this kind of falls in the destruction as well right yes it can blow them up can they can we said something on it'll protect yes most certainly that's that will be dependent on whether its military satellites how sensitive the data is on it but yes the satellites will certainly be able to to defend themselves so it won't be an easy job to take down the satellite and that's something I'm really looking forward to it if you have a team of people you can take down satellite but maybe as you're taking it down it's far engaged you there's there's reinforcements coming so Justin just

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    from this one satellite you know there were strong like they that could spiral out so yes you'll there that will happen with me that's cool that's awesome another question in will satellites orbit their assigned location so sorry yeah so when when I speak about satellites it isn't typically a satellite orbiting a body so as there will be objects that you interact with in space but okay satellites is just a nice name for them because you can visualize them and that's what that's what they look like that they won't necessarily be orbiting a body appliance they're cool another question here um what are what we kind

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    of talked about this a little bit but what are the different types and purposes of satellites and space stations we'll see so maybe you can run over just a little bit because you showed off some of the types and the offices and I know it's early on but maybe you could go through which ones you've kind of prototyped and what exists yes so I see the different satellites and the amount satellites being almost endless because for science satellites they could be in a nebula gathering some information for military satellites they could be protecting another satellite they could be protecting a base that could be a network of them and communication satellites will again come in all shapes and sizes and you know they'll be ones

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    which are which huge have lots of Defense's and there may be smaller ones on the outreaches that's the great thing about the modular systems that bike racing these modular parts and assembling them in different orders you can we can really create custom satellites for any in hello situation yeah so it's although there are those those main categories I see under those umbrella terms they're being yeah huge amount different satellites different purposes different parts parts of the universe and anywhere than that near a son away from a son somewhere scientific somewhere of military importance yeah there'll be a huge amount and that's cool awesome

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    anything else you wanted to talk about that you didn't get a cover in the short two-minute video and so far here um I think I think we've covered most of it in our chat base being a really good process to go from the initial research even to the early prototype we've got now and the more thy works in it the more potential that that you can see it see it happening you know I see that just one satellite can branch off into all sorts of different game face and arms which which were really good no it gives us the ability really kind of customized and gives us those lego pieces if you will kind of moving forward or if we need some additional functionality will have something there and we'll be able to dress it up slightly different and give it new

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    capabilities new defenses and so on so that's cool this is the great thing about windstar on anything in this game that you realize how much potentially I was thinking of attacking a satellite and defenses my people might be hub missions to defend it other people might have missions to come fix it yeah information if we stole you know it branches off I'm beautifully awesome cool thanks for taking the time cool appreciate it but thanks for watching so far we will take a very short break and when we return we will have evil hood sec here where we'll push him a little bit more to talk amman vision stabilization God

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    welcome back again i'm brian chambers we are live from Frankfort foundry 42 next guest now evo hurts AG are laid animation animator and I'm sorry fish Premier Li the animation engineer thanks for coming on cool so can you tell us a little bit and I know you do a lot here but can you explain a little bit about what you do here on star citizen well about 12 years ago I start to develop the core animation system for CryEngine and here I'm still doing the same yeah so this adjust my job is to make sure that we get all the runtime features

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    that we need for the game yeah and my covers body the Cobras face trotter spaced body everything also the unified rake and also all the sterilization techniques absolutely cool he's got his hands in a lot of stuff and we rely on him and a lot of stuff so your piece and vision stabilization we put out the first one at 60 so people could see a buttery smooth it got a lot of got a lot of press a lot of people were checking it out and saying really good comments it looked really cool a little more detail and a TV which was awesome and broke it down in in your piece for hcv you mentioned using a unified rig there's all kinds of rigs that are out there so can you explain a little bit to people out there that are watching what

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    a unified rig is and why we chose to go the route for sources okay that's a little bit of a problem so before I start to explain what it is and for what we needed it's a bit easier to just take a look how we do in more traditional way ashita so when we start with the traditional methods and that's what i call this blade between 1st and 1st FL owers and Rick then it's pretty easy to get at least a floating floating camera to work yeah all you need for that is a simple rig for the position of the camera and a skeleton for the arts and if your game is only a single player game then the other nodes you need that nothing yeah that's what everyone starts with the solution of course but games are little bit more complex than there

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    and when people walk around and they look down on the ground they expect to see maybe some parts of the body maybe the legs and how everything is moving yeah and then you have to first problem you need to add a second rig only to see your own legs in first cousin so you need to Rick's yeah and every game today is a multiplayer game then means in multiplayer other people need to see your body so you need to add a third Rick that's a full body ache so that other people can see you in multiplayer and that's the one we also use for the shadow rendering that you can see your own shadow you can first buzzing so you need to deal with free Rick's free skeletons for one player moment you need to keep all of them in Zurich yes that's a big issue that's in trouble with unique animations a little unique animation systems yeah it's fun it's

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    fundamentally different how we any made for us and third party which means you need a different animation system for our first and third party and you need need to keep some of all system in zoom run in parallel and both of them had not have not much in common they don't share anything they need open it your own set of animations and the own cult logic and that's the trick and with a unified rig well we unified we have only one single brick one single skeleton for everything and we also need to share the animations on both and that's a freaky part sharing animation you know making sure we can play them on both rigs and saloons that takes a little bit longer so it's a bit hard to get all of the start but I think as a long term solution the unified Rick will make things a lot easier yeah yeah

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    now I mean now that we we've gone to the point that we have a unified rake what is what does that mean for development what does that mean to the players that have an impact well it has a lot of impact first you need to develop it no no yours but I mean once once it's out here and now that it exists you know that's going to change in a way workflow amount of assets and so there are several points that they didn't even expect them when we worked on it so first of it it reduces the animation count a lot yeah so we need way less animations just to any made the hands into weapons in first class and I can give you another number for all the weapons we currently have on the screen in star citizen so we need only 50 animation assets not more that's what we

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    play at the moment if you compare a cliff crisis tool we had 1200 that's a pretty crazy number just for the hands to animate it go to the difference of course we will not shift again with 50 animations but even if we have 150 it's still a lot less so the system is very compact and it's pretty elegant solution of course the unifying is a little bit closer so we don't lose your screen okay and so what did I'll get your say I are the unified wake yes it also forced us to completely rethink the way how we animate or at mono we will animate in the future yeah because you if you aim in third person you can move the gun around but you have only one window animation and we have to adapt it to all

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    these different situations to noticed this in directions which means every animation we get and we still use animations but only called the timing and the style it goes through a very complex ik system and we call generate the animations kind of at one time it gives us a lot of flexibility but it took a while to get the system up yeah yeah now it's cool i mean i know this is something we spoke about a while ago and i know there were starting to explore in the unified rig and I know even in your past experience saying that it was going to be a huge challenge and then we were it was going to take quite a bit of time so I mean I think even from your own perspective the progress has been incredibly quick to get us at least to where we're at now mmm yeah okay to actually more points I mean because now

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    the risks are the same you don't just have less animations we can even share them yeah yeah does model and that's a huge so that's a double advantage and then maybe the biggest advantage of the whole system what I call the killer advantages for the first time we can really use different or we can combine different techniques to any made characters yeah we can use animation assets we can use inverse kinematics and we can use physics simulations all on the same body unemployment of different joints which is pretty cool and the mode a practical example that we have at the moment in the game that our implementation of EDA and then the gameplay feature yeah and in this feature you are actually a rectal a real great and if you think about it it's a

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    bit crazy you jump over this platform you are in space you're floating around and from that moment on every single joint is going for a physical system yeah it's a physical simulation it's a bit hard to imagine it is a big grand it's a bit crazy and it took also a while to get these things to work we have started already in December this but I think no one ever tried that before to have a fully physical body but we go riding prices one we had a sewer G level it did the squad level but it was only a floating head with a kaleidoscope there was no multiplayer an awful normal frozen so what we have now is actually pretty interesting and this is this goes back to I mean a couple points that he was mentioning I mean some of these

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    things take time but we I've always said in a couple other things that you know we need to take the time to build a proper foundation to be able to have the scalability ultimately we're going to have so if we look at where we need to be in three six nine months and you need to make the decisions now even though they may take a little bit longer to go cool let's sort out the unified rig because we know long-term it's going to have a huge benefit right oh yes and when we talk about being in space in this vast universe having a proper solution for EV a where you're going to get proper physics when you're balancing innings is something that you want to take some time on because it's going to be all over the place right so yeah that's cool

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    let me dig in some of the questions here um here's what I hadn't thought about does the stabilization that you've done impact Mouse responsiveness like Mouse smoothing would absolutely not it these things are absolutely not connected one thing because i had this moving I wanted to show one single feature i want to show that this autosaved kangoo affect his head bopping is gone yeah yeah the only way to show it if we move all the other noise from the screen yeah yeah because give I have high mouse sensitivity and I move the mouse one millimeter the whole screen is jumping left or right exactly and then I can't really show any progress mm-hmm so one way is you use a controller that's one

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    way that's industry standard that's how you get a smoothness or you put a filter on the mouth of one millisecond just for this video effect mmm so that's the only reason but it has absolutely no effect on the controls how will another question how will stabilization work when looking through the iron site is the head subordinated to the gun or the other way around it has no big impact in that case at all when you're looking for the island site you just move you just a line to scope or the other side with the left eye yeah that's the only thing there is no big difference you mean the right away okay all right it's okay sometimes they don't know the right

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    from left you know it's good another question so what we saw in the video in regards to the work that's done so far would you say that you know how far along is that is that kind of we're done with vision stabilization and we're moving on or is there further work that you need to do there okay now this is a really tricky question I doubt the work is done that's very unlike yeah I mean just last week we had two huge refactoring with all the impulses to make the transitions move up yeah it also improved EBA and we are just at the beginning to understanding what makes this what makes movement on the ground feel natural yeah it was what we had before was not real yeah and the

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    interesting thing is head moving for some reason is no issue when you are sprinting which I saw my video in all this printing it was turned off we can tweak this issue for asset so animators can't we get yeah so it's interesting for one locomotion you need perfect stabilization for another it doesn't matter and all the other games like Call of Duty battlefield even have this camera roll it's pretty extreme when you're sprinting and nobody complains about it yeah yeah and one thing we don't want at all nobody wants it we don't want it that walking on the ground feels like floating eda no of course yes yes up says a lot of time tuning we don't I mean also because if you think of the design you know the guys have suits on you know these things have weight name armor and so on so I mean

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    yeah we want people to feel solid and be planted absolutely yeah cool are you afraid that head stabilization will make character models look too much like birds when viewed and third person no you're absolutely no missile so yeah I mean but that is one thing I mean in I mean in part of the R&D and to get where you were I mean not only was it to get it stable in the first person but also to look natural as we want either you know firmly planted or so on in third person right in some way and in fact wasn't a difference visually it's actually really hard to see I mean you have this camera

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    with this helmet and you have some leeway you can move the camera the camera around here to keep it stable and we visualized all these curves we get them we have head bobbing and the movement on the motion data was not that much but this little movement is plus minus three centimeters was already enough to drive some people crazy yeah that's the only thing we reduced and maybe if we do some very extreme emotions like this immediate sliding stop right to the side of you go down then maybe we have to adjust the spine a little bit that's when you can see it if you know exactly what to look for okay in that case if I didn't write a little in those cases though you know and it's always hard animations and so on I mean what if we're reviewing one asset over

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    and over and over in detail by the time you're in game and you see that asset play out in third person and camera movements and there's explosions on screen and everything else is going on you you really don't notice any of those tweaks that you would actually need to make in order to make it it's better than clay yeah another question how does stabilization work when you fall down does it get disabled at that point you know it gets disabled when you fall down it gets disabled when you go from stand to crouch we don't need it when you're sitting we need only for this every day motions like normal walking jogging so you've already worked it in the system then where it's intelligent where we can go okay during this this is here I I already i plan to fly at the framework to make a decision so any matters can

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    decide when it makes it doesn't make sense that's cool that it's completely turned off and for which Moses to be needed but we still need to do some testing to find the right balance also could is similar stabilization model be applied with shift towards for what bullets I don't know if that means while shooting them I'm not clear on this we'll move on to the next one question that I saw earlier today on the forums as well was they did ask about how you you recorded it that if you did use with mouse or if you use the gamepad I in the near tahoe they're talking about the 61 okay first of all NBC is fast yeah yeah that's one thing when we

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    work on one feature for a long time and several people needs to work on that we always start with a simplified level that's oh of course well you need i order to accurately gauge that one thing you're on exactly and also it won't very fast turnaround times so when you shoot three bottles you don't need to hold universe around you so we created a special levels with the jungles arts from port aliza and that's what we use for testing in Game paramount or else it may ask mouse under it for the video only for the video i am using this filter of one milliseconds to make it so yeah it just if there are better on video but of course if you play it yourself you want this for responsiveness but if other people see you playing I think you need this kind of smoothness that's a reason why

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    everyone in Hollywood tries to get a camera stable of years and I'll stabilize the people like the images nobody likes this first-person shooter mouse jump yeah in all directions um here's another question which little subjective but it will speak to some of the choices you've made student advisor bounce a little even with I stabilization I can imagine a motorcycle helmet bounced around just a little when you move a lot in the FPS demos the corners of the helmet glass seemed like they were glued to the camera and that was maybe all the build I think for 2.5 day bounds we have it already and at the moment the helmet bouncing is our way to communicate with a player that you are

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    actually walking that's the difference between EBA the helmet dancing okay and when you have a gun in front of you you see that the hands moving yeah that case the hands talk yeah yeah tell you what the rest of the body is doing ok so that's how we do this but it was a conscious choice then as far as the helmet ticket is to be that was just not implemented this ok anything else you want to cover that we didn't get a cover or I didn't ask here the fans and ask him well I mean this was a pretty long development i think i did we ever talk about if i skip you love ocular reflex I know about that it's something Jean Tracy started it's always falls under that it has a term for the human gps

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    system exactly yes you'll have these two motion detectors in your ears and your rotation detectives in the eyes and it's basically a GPS in your hat it helps the brain the body is moving ya bein the brain needs to react to it somehow at the first thing are doing its controlling the ice with the stabilization and it's also making sure that we always focus on the things that are important for us it's a very fast adjustment and for a very long time I thought that's the solution but the problem is if you have a monitor and the image already moved you can't get it stable anymore poking at it it's already too late it's already movie yeah so this plan didn't work at all and then check it on this table it's a weird why Christian where did you come up where

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    where did you first did you accidentally find that video did hey when you hear you talk in the video and explain it and you see the video of the chicken it's just BAM it absolutely makes sense and it's it's almost comical to go let's try that right but at the same time it's in it's incredibly brilliant to go okay with this work because there is a system there that is I think this was mauled a result of what we at Google saw oh and sedans and generous humans can roll the eyes and yeah yeah it's pretty natural to ask how does it work if you saw Jesse searching through cans this is the an animal who can walk at all if they can't roll the eyes and keep the vision stable and then step by step we started with this and before we did a

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    lot of experiments with AK so we had something running it just didn't look too cuber to google you know when I found this video with the chicken I mean it there's a pretty elegant way how it's counter balancing the head intelligence moving the the neck and everything and then we developed this accordion okay how we called it and then lightly to the whole time yeah I mean as far as science goes and looking at that in the video and what you're talking about it's just gonna like maybe you could absolutely talk ever yeah so that's cool awesome well thank you so much for taking the time I know you're very busy with what you do but I appreciate how you push it on stuff and yeah driving it where it

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    needs to go I know your hands are full on a lot of things so awesome just about finished is us up just a reminder a couple reminders our weekly newsletter will be mailed out later today on this friday so make sure you check your inboxes for that and also this coming weekend in San Diego California is twitchcon we will have Tyler Jared and been there I think they're just going to be roaming around and hanging out and meeting up with people so if you get a chance definitely you know run up to them and say hi it's fun to be able to do these shows and we're able to do these shows because of the subscribers and the fans and the backers so thank you so much for back in what we do we

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    love what we do in bringing this whole universe to life thanks again and we'll see you soon