Star Citizen: CitizenCon 2949 - microTechnicalities

9 December 201901:03:471,696 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hello everybody. Um, welcome to our talk today. Uh, it may be a little bit more uh superficial than the previous talk you've just watched. Uh, but nevertheless, we care very passionately for it. So, I'm in, I'm the art director on Star Citizen. I'm Michelle. Hello again. Uh, lead on the organics team. Hi, I'm Nick. I'm the uh lead environment artist on the uh landing zone team. And I'm Eddie. I'm the lead environment artist on the modular team. Okay, so let's go through a quick overview of some topics we're going to cover. First, we want to talk a little bit about the team formation. Um, and why we're kind of set up in this way.
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Next, we'll talk a little bit about the visual development of the space stations, uh both the exterior and the interior. And some of the uh notes on the direction we're taking. Then we'll take a deep dive into the visual design of the new London zone, New Babbage. And then right at the end, we'll explore some of the biomes um that we're going to see on MicroTech. Okay, let's start with the environment team uh formation. So, um as you know, like the locations in Star Citizen uh are quite diverse. So, what we wanted to do was we wanted to format um our team in a way in which we can work on multiple things in parallel, but not necessarily overstretch the team, um which would ultimately reduce the quality. Okay, so first thing we want to talk
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about uh is the landing zone team. So, obviously the focus of this team is focusing on, you know, cityscapes, spaceports, hub areas of the landing zone, common elements, things like that. Um, and that team is largely focused on kind of like maintaining or implementing the complexity of what these landing zones are. Next, we got the modular team. So, the focus of this team is kind of making sure that in between landing zones, there's locations to go to. So, that's things like space stations, ground locations, space locations, things like that. So, the the kind of like the core resource of this team is to try and um utilize our building sets in a bit more of a creative way. So, it's it's more
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about um ensuring we get the quantity of locations in our game uh to support gameplay. And then the third team is the organics team. So, um fairly self-explanatory, but the focus is on planets, moons, caves you've seen a little bit of already, but also supporting other production teams with things like organic asset packs and things like that. So, the focus of this team, beautiful landscapes, and working closely with other teams. Uh, obviously it's not we're not just environment artists, so you know, we get warm hugs from quite a few other disciplines. but as you can see here, hopefully that gives you like a little internal uh a little look at our our internal formation. Um, and hopefully give you a little bit
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of confidence in how we can kind of move forward and work on a few different things in parallel. Okay. So, let's start real quick with the modular team. Um, So, we had rest stops in our game uh for some time. Um, we were happy, but they had a fundamental problem. Um, essentially, we needed to um diversify the visual design of them. I don't know if you remember these guys, this is a clay render of one of the originals. And it didn't really matter how we kind of changed it, it still kind of looked the same. Um, so Chris was very passionate with me. He said, "Hey, you know, I want space stations in Star Citizen to be diverse, beautiful, vast." So, what we did was we sat down with the concept team, and we had a very
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intense period of visual development um to try and generate ideas of what the next steps of space stations could feel like. So, here you can see an example sheet of that result. So, after a couple of weeks of um you know, fairly intensive work, this is like an idea board uh that we'd put in front of Chris. Um, so even from quite small thumbnail images, um you can kind of see how diverse some of the ideas could feel. And we wanted uh designs to feel iconic and um fairly recognizable. Uh, and then for those of you with really good eyesight, maybe you can recognize some of the categories we're putting them in. And the idea is we want the core space station to design um to be primary, and then what we do is we use additional elements to help define the theme of that space station.
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Okay, let's take a little ste- sneak peek sneak peek at some of the um arc types which we uh want to explore. So, this is an early example of um of a cargo. So, from Chris right from the beginning, he wanted a very busy kind of shipping port vibe. And one thing I'll notice, a lot of these renders, we deliberately didn't surface anything. Um, we wanted to almost give that um aesthetic of a an old scratch-built model from like ILM or something, just to validate the shape and form without getting into the details. So, this is like a slightly larger, more developed infrastructure. And you can see like the cargo containers are now kind of formatted into larger units. And that tiny little hub area is in the middle, whereas the
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uh outer connections for cargo will be on the outside of the infrastructure. And then we also tried a vertical design. Uh, ultimately this had too many problems, like Todd was like, "Hey, man, what what happens if if I fly right through there?" You know, cargo's just going to go, right? but there's elements of this that we kind of liked, and you can actually see in game right now. Okay, so we expanded the cargo unit rack design. And ultimately, we're looking for an idea uh where the hub was quite small and insignificant compared to the cargo. Um, but as you can see, like the first read of this, we went, "Oh, that that that's a cargo station, you know." Continued design exploration. This time, we're kind of taking cues from Port Olisar, because Port Olisar should be a a port station, right? So, this was us just validating what with this design
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language, what something like Port Olisar could feel like. Okay, let's move on to some refineries. So, we like the idea of something exposed. So, it shares some common elements from the other stations, but we like the idea that the protective layers of other stations have been exposed, so you're just seeing that the inner workings. And we also like the idea of something skeletal, lots of negative shapes. And also, you can see like a range of arrays of components. And this can also be used to kind of describe, you know, um expanding up the scale of operation. So, if you see something with like large quantities of arrays, it kind of implies like it's a bit more of an established operation. And we also wanted something that had like struts leading off from the main hub, and kind of having a little bit of fun at what these stations could feel
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like, cuz the design for zero gravity. Okay, let's move back onto rest stops. Fundamentally, you know, we wanted designs that could work vertically as well as horizontally. And we also wanted the idea of like Chris described it as, you know, you come across like a backwater space station, but then that's fundamentally different to a space station that you'd see on a major kind of trade hub. So, it was having a look at what like expanded modules building up from the core could feel like. And also, we're exploring various shapes which which we did with these rings here. So, this was a core shape that internally we really latched onto. And then like it enabled us to do new things like like array and hangers around that core. So, because it's in space, where you
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need to validate composition from all different angles, and even from this clay render, we felt, you know, quite confident about the compositions that we'd expect to have. and then I just loved that that strut leading out, really leading out from the main core. And was really thinking about what that experience would be if we landed on there, you know, what that would feel like. And then eventually, we want physical transit elevators bringing us into the core. So, just to repeat this slide again, hopefully you can kind of see what we're doing. We're not necessarily, you know, building unique space stations for each one, but we're trying to invest into what our core space station uh visual style is. And then when we come to do like uh refineries or cargo depots,
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it's a bit more of an additional approach. And then this is just a slide, you know, you just saw this guy um in the demo we just saw. It's in game right now. But, you know, it kind of maybe gives you a little bit of a backstory as to how we got to this point. And then maybe gives you a little sneak peek as to, you know, what some of the next steps could Okay, so let's move on from the exteriors, and then let's move on to the interiors. I'll pass you on to Eddie. Pass me the clicker. So, I guess the problem with the interiors was really the same as with the exteriors, they weren't really big enough, and they weren't really varied enough. So, um especially now the larger exteriors have come into the game, the current interiors feel both kind of very small
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and just not much variety between them between the rest stops. And we also wanted we set out with an idea that we wanted to make the stations flow, and the layout feel generally more open rather than separate areas into distinct segments with smaller doorways and doors. Um so I'm going to be talking through just some of the various components we improved and added to to achieve the new interiors and then I'm also just going to give a brief breakdown of some of the modular workflows and tools. So let's start with hubs. The hubs are kind of the nexus of the stations. We made them bigger. We gave them a more spacious and kind of a grander atmosphere to a scale intended to kind of match or mirror the increase in size of the exteriors. Um we've also added some more variety of hub spaces along with more variation in
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lighting and dressing. Um and then in addition to that we just take a look at the quick look at what we've done to the shops. Um the shops were kind of an important change. Previously all our shops were kind of gated behind doors. So we changed them to all be open-fronted. Um kind of enhances the more open feel of the station as a whole. Um it also provides what we call curb appeal a lot more. Um opening up the fronts entices people in and it's something you see a lot in real-life stores as well. If you go to a shopping center or a mall. Um kind of softens the transition between the inside and the outside. Um next we're going to have a look at the mom-and-pop shops. Now the mom-and-pop shops are kind of a new type of station we haven't seen type of shop that we
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haven't seen in stations before. We've kind of made these independently owned rather than tied to a specific brand or a specific corporation hence the mom-and-pop. Um and as they are brandless we've kind of established a new set of advertising and iconography with the UI guys that we can use universally across any kind of utilitarian shops we want to create in the future as well. Um the bars. The bars are another new addition to rest stops. Um the bars are traditionally kind of a big part of landing zones as they provide spaces for mission givers to hang out in. So we've added bars to the rest stops to provide a similar sort of gameplay um function. Um food court shops, right? So the food court is a new addition um to the rest
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stops as well. Um starting with the shops we've kind of created a new set of shops specifically for the food courts. Um they're all open-fronted in the same way all the shops now are. Um and also they are also independent and kind of non-corporate for kind of a friendlier more sort of low-budget feel. And you'll see they're all made independently of the food court itself so that when the layout tool does its thing uh positions within layouts will vary between generations. Oh I've skipped a slide there but that doesn't matter. the food court itself. So the food court itself is another new space. We knew we wanted a a larger secondary space other than the hubs that's kind of specific to
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rest stops. So we we developed the food court and food is going to be a gameplay mechanic in the future. So we've kind of pre-established the food court as a space in our new rest stops going forwards. Um another thing we've kind of developed as well is the idea of layouts. Um I'm sorry. I mean overlays. Um overlays what overlays do is essentially they provide the same base architecture with the simple swap of an overlay we can kind of completely change the atmosphere of a space with a simple overlay swap. And here's another shot of sort of the upper deck of the food court with the small eating area inside it. Um okay. So habitation you'll probably all recognize this brand. Um
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I'm sure most people have woken up in easy hub here. Um Rest stops are now going to accommodate hubs and they're going to accommodate player spawn points. So we took our existing easy hub set and we've basically expanded on it slightly to produce a slightly bigger version of easy hub for use with the new rest stops. View rooms. So view rooms are kind of another really important addition that we wanted to get right for the new rest stops. Um they've dramatically increased in scale. It's more of a view deck now than a room. Um the issue with the old view rooms really was that they were very small and a player never really had any reason to actually go to them cuz in the layouts they were always at a dead end essentially. So there was never any reason to go and look out the window. With the new view rooms um
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we kind of and especially with the new layouts of the stations we kind of direct the player through this space on their way to other locations within the rest stop. So the player has much more chance to actually get a good view out of the window. And again it's really important they've become a much more important space to remind the player of their connection to the outside world. And as you saw in the demo um we're now going to be putting stations in low orbit around our major planets. So it's something we've wanted to do for a while and it's going to give you some really really nice vistas hopefully. Um so yeah we're quite excited about that. Um so just to um give you a brief breakdown of how the modular team works because it works in a much different way than maybe a traditional level is made. Instead of building a layout by hand we
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kind of build all the components and use the procedural tools to generate many different layouts rather than hand-building individual ones. So here's a library of rooms that are kind of unique for the rest stops themselves. Um and this is a library of more universal rooms that we can use going forwards in different space stations in the future. Um on top of that then we have libraries of props which are small collections of items all filtered by category and type. Um and then the same deal with advertising filtered by color. Lighting use a lot of these to light the stations so they need to be able to decide oh I want a warm color here I want a cool color there. Um what all these libraries and all these categories and all these filters allow an artist or a designer to do is is kind of direct
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the general flow of a station um interior but the actual content and how it all fits together is randomized every time. Um it's all driven by a layout graph which is the prettiest slide in this presentation this art presentation. Um but it's kind of a node-based thing that we use a designer or an artist can snap these nodes together and say I want this general flow for a station and then we've got a video of basically that graph. This is the tool doing its thing with that graph and you can see it's testing connection points. It's finding successful ones and then it's moving on to the next node in the graph. Um eventually you get a successful layout. Um and once you have a successful layout really all that remains is for an artist or a designer to go into that layout have a look at it
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and decide whether they like it or not. And if they do like it it kind of goes into the yes pile. And if we don't like it really all it's a question of doing is deleting it and generating another one until we get to something that we do like. So the modular team works in this way because obviously it's a much easier way to create hundreds of different locations thousands of different locations. I mean just with the sets that we've got now we've probably got millions of different permutations that probably could be. Um but instead of having to hand-build every interior we make we we spend a lot of time figuring out the rules so that we can generate hundreds over time. Do you want Do you want to click it for you or That's okay.
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Awesome. Thanks Eddie. That's pretty cool, right? Okay. So let's move on to the next team. So I'll talk about the the land zone team. So moving on to this location there's a few key factors that we wanted to um focus on. So first it's going to be the new art style and as I mentioned a few hours ago Louisville Area 18 we've kind of been utilizing um the utilitarian building set. But because this is um MicroTech it's MicroTech's kind of like home location we knew we needed to invest our time and energy into the new building set and kind of expand on the work we've previously done with high-tech. Also we wanted to improve our approach to building our cityscapes. Um and again like we said this morning
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like um none of us was really happy with um completely walling it off. We wanted to validate sections of that city to enable the player to explore if they wanted. And learning lessons from Louisville and Area 18. So for the new art style as I said you know if you look at if you look at Louisville you know we wanted something that felt old you know um not necessarily um well-maintained. In Area 18 it was a bit more of a a dystopian kind of like um neon city. So we already knew right at the beginning that New Babbage would need something new. And also like I said for the narrative it was it's very appropriate we'd need something um that that was no longer in our asset
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database. So this is a slide um which we use internally. It's basically our internal architectural style document. Um so at first our system we don't want a a kind of a bland game. You know we want it to feel like it's um it it's kind of got a a rich history. You know as you going around you see architecture from different periods much like if you walk around Manchester you know you'll see architecture from different time periods and it kind of gives you a a type of layering and a and a type of depth to the game. That's ultimately what what we want Star Citizen to achieve. So, you can see here on the timeline, this is where the high-tech is. So, it's it's a lot more recent to modern day current day in the game than utilitarianism.
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And it was kind of like the next stage coming out of the the hedonism period. So, we kind of thought there'd be a very much of an uprising in design methodologies, you know, much more of a focus on industrial design styles, you know, advanced manufacturing materials, things like that. That was kind of like the the core pillars of what we wanted this art style to achieve. Okay, so this was the first kind of like concept we achieved on where it was kind of like close to the final direction of what you can see in game right now. Previously, we'd gone through quite a few iterations. Um so, it's this New Babbage is kind of described as having like these beautiful domes of where the the city's kind of inside. We tried many many many many ideas of um
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trying to visually describe what a city inside a dome looks like, but ultimately it never felt right for the game. So, what we did was we kind of moved the dome design idea and tried to make the hub of the London zone and put that inside the dome and then we keep the city's cape separate. So, let's talk about some key landmarks that were established during this preliminary concept. We got a signature building and you know, we stayed fairly faithful to that guy. the domes as we mentioned, but we wanted to have it as additional to the city as opposed to embedded in the city. Transit lines from previous London zones, we knew that transit was going to be key. Uh and then as you know, it's going to be a cold
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planet. This is kind of what distilled the idea to drive the tech to help build the frozen ocean shader because we love the idea of walking out of that London zone and rather than having to get on the transit to the spaceport and then let you out there, we wanted to get right out onto the ocean straight away. But most importantly, as you can see here, all of these open areas, you know, we wanted that open feel. So, if we wanted um the hub for the player to get out the hub and then kind of traverse on the train straight away, we're we're trying really hard to make that a possibility. Okay, so this was a video. We pretty much took the concept mesh, got it in game as soon as we possibly can. So, the aim here is to replicate um
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the concept one to one and then you start to get a sense of scale of how it's feeling. I'll pass you over to Nick and Nick is on to the next section. Should let that play out. So, yeah, we had an really early idea of having this sprawling web shape to the city with the transit tunnels linking each major district together. So, we're replicating that in 3D from the concept and then iterating from there. This video shows the advancement of the layout and how we increase the scale from concept was quite narrow and we broadened it out and it's really important obviously to play it and see how it feels flying around, walking
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around. And this was our first time where we felt really happy with the sense of scale of the city. So, if it's starting to feel like a real city. So, but we wanted to make it a little bit bigger and a little bit more sprawling. So, this is New Babbage pretty much in its final form. Um and in addition to the sprawling city, we've added some more districts further out and then having these kind of little outpost clusters on the the mountainous horizon to make it feel like the city's not just on its own, but you know, it's it's embedded into the the local landscape and there's more like man-made structures beyond. So, breaking down the city
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as we've seen from the concept, here's a here's an in-game shot. We have the the transit loops that go from spaceport into the city. We've got the domes, which was the central place to go for the players. And we've got our Aspire Grand signature building in the center in the main downtown area. And we have the sprawl sprawl, sorry, and the open areas as as Ian's already mentioned. So, we wanted to validate the design from above to make make it believable and it that was really important and have the feeling that the city has expanded over time building out the major transit as it spreads and maintaining that kind of network
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composition of the city and it's growing out around the bay as well, which gives it that really nice skyline view. So, the transit tracks really ground it making it a believable city. It makes it feel like it's this hustling bustling city. People have places to go. So, we knew that these these transit tracks that that the players are actually going to take need to be dynamic. So, they weren't just straight lines everywhere. They kind of weave in between buildings and places and curve around like you see there. So, let's talk about the architecture of the city itself. So, we we wanted to put a real emphasis on distinctive silhouettes of the buildings, compound curves, material separation and give it a nice
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elegant feel. We wanted to make it distinctive from the utilitarian style like Area 18 and Lorville, but not push it to minimal like the super modernism style. So, it's it's it's kind of in in between point, but it that's where the high-tech style lives. So, with the skyline, we wanted to have more kind of negative shapes and negative space created with like structures and supports and the antennas and aerials to create that interesting skyline. So, how did we actually make it in engine? To break it down, what we did was we had these very thick plates, which are deliberately quite thick so we could we could embed that in the snow and in the terrain and then add integration on top of that so we could have that at various heights.
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Um the tall buildings, all the skyscrapers have been handcrafted by artists. And the gaps are filled in with lower buildings, which were made in Houdini, procedurally generated out of Houdini, which the effects team did. And they did a lot of research and development into with Houdini and and getting the right variety and shape and and and scattering of these buildings. So, these these are the lower detail, but higher frequency buildings and they complement that base layering. So, then we need to embed those main plates with these secondary plates, which again add more layering to the city and add the believability. So, here's a shot where you can see all
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these secondary plates added in around the main ones, which add like a really nice natural layering to the city and they break up that kind of mega structure feel so it doesn't feel too monolithic. Okay, let's talk about the spaceport. yeah, Chris laid down the challenge of wanting the spaceport embedded in the mountain. So, we started exploring visually what that could feel like. Um and then also we wanted the idea that it would be almost overlooking the skyline from across the the water feature. As this was going to be MicroTech's home location, you know, we wanted something where the architecture kind of reflected the brand. So, as you can see here, it's it's pretty much a combination of sleek and you know, sleek architecture,
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but it's ingrained with technology, but it's also laid with the botanicals. And also we wanted to use the first kind of holo greeter for this London zone. Ultimately, you know, we kind of felt the in-game implementation, you know, of the spaceport was quite good. Um we needed to add a few more vertical towers just to expand the capacity of of the spaceport, but also for design it was important because whenever you embed something into the the the mountain side, you can't see it. You know, if you're coming from the other direction, design obviously had concerns about, you know, people being able to find it, you know. And also internally, we spent a lot of time just having a little move around the base of it and it feels really good seeing ships coming and going as they fly
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overhead. We placed the spaceport opposite the the main city as as you've seen in the demo and that gives you that really good vista opportunities from both the outside of the spaceport and inside the atrium. And from the spaceport, you'll be able to take the train from the different sections of the city using there's a few different transit loops. also you can leave on foot or from a ground vehicle from the garages, which you can get to. So, keeping the large window in the atrium was important showing that um the vista and ships coming and going and it's kind of a nice feature that um all the other spaceports in our game have. You always want to see that traffic. And the eight the um the vista view is is on the critical
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path from the atrium down to transit. So you kind of walk past that window going down to transit, which is a nice nice little addition. So the main atrium uh here it it serves as your hub to the different sections of the spaceport. So you from here you can get go to go to the garages, the hangars, the surface entrance, the ship rentals, and then there's the transit system. And this shot here um is a really shows a really good example of our high-tech building set on the interior side and how how we've been developing the art style. So um for the first time for this landing zone, one of the things we wanted to do was
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we wanted to do a deep dive into what we're calling the graphical standards for the corporation. So in in the real world, you know, huge corporations go to a graphic design agency and ask them to kind of like define their brand and you know, we did exactly this. We worked with very talented graphic designer. And what we did was we expanded down what the corporate identity of MicroTech would be. So essentially it's a document outlining the principles of how the company uses graphic design to communicate. So this is an example shot of of wall designs and how they use iconography. So when we release the location, the idea is we'd we'd kind of layer in these details and the idea is that this would kind of
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just layer on that believability because there's there's a lot of traveling in our game and we wanted to help improve that navigation experience. Okay, let's talk a little bit about props. Uh previously we've used a lot of um crates, barrels, trash and as Todd likes, couple boxes. It's a video game after all. For so for MicroTech we needed like a whole new suite, right? So we know we needed things like seating, terminals, and um you know, the the turtle kind of escalated in Area 18 a little bit. So I like the idea of you know, each landing zone almost has a little uh mascot. So then we're like, you know, let's develop like an extreme sport penguin. Yeah.
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Who's Does anyone like that penguin? Who wants that penguin in game, right? Done. It's done now. That's it. Decision made. Okay, decision done. All right, okay. Uh and then also here you can see, you know, we've dived into all the prop designs. Fundamentally, the way in which we're going to dress these high-tech locations is different, you know, rather than just like, you know, going for that high frequency feeling where it feels like it's very well lived in, we want to keep that aesthetic. So a lot of the props need to work in addition to the architecture. And when you're working on a modular game, it's it's quite tricky. Okay, let's talk about the domes. Okay, so again, much like the cityscape, these domes
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went through many iterations. You know, there's a lot of you know, if you do a do a a Google search for you know, sci-fi domes, you get a very very specific aesthetic. It's not necessarily to my tastes. Uh so we spent uh quite a bit of time refining that And we also explored the idea of like how we want to get people in and out of these domes, how we wanted to connect them together, things like that. Okay, so um unfortunately we didn't see it on the flight path for the longest time um on the demo one, but we had a nice track over the domes. But essentially we put them in prime real estate on the front of the uh the waterfront. Um and then we got a dedicated transit line leading directly into it. So let's let's break down some of the
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key aspects. So the first area um is called Commons, right? It's located in the smaller side of what our internal team lovingly refers to as the double bubble. So inside the Commons, uh there's a few things that you'd expect to see. So uh the the narrative past that we get, it's kind of described as like a kind of a douchey campus vibe. So you know, we've got a bit of a dedicated yoga spot there. So if you want to get some yoga on, it's right there. Um I think Steve Bender's going to get get his mocap suit on and get get some shots going on. Um but also you can see some of the the princel principles of our aesthetic coming in here. So clean lines, beautiful and exotic plants and technology. Uh so the next area is called the plaza. So uh essentially this is the larger
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part of the the main dome. Uh and this was described as the corporate business park. So this is where um you know, it's the main hustle bustle of the location. And we wanted the we wanted to kind of like convey the feeling of like this is where the factory line is, but we wanted to convey that um you know, um corporate business park vibe, but it's still located inside the dome. And then lastly, um we got the promenade. So as you can see, it's kind of located across that skybridge right there and this will kind of give you that feeling of like going from the inside of one dome to another. So again, you know, building from lore, um this this space is kind of designed This is
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where the kids kind of go at night to um you know, take some substances. Uh Work hard, party hard. Yep. Yep. Um and this is where the mission giver's going to be. So this is where Eddie's going to be. Um so uh I think it was uh Day No, Will came up with a few terms and we're like, yeah, we need to kind of add some douchey elements. So those those icebergs molten into a waterfall, you can thank Will for that. Okay, let's move on to habitation. So looking for locations to put the habitation in New Babbage, it's pretty obvious that it should be in the center in the Aspire Grand. Uh it's the only real choice, to be honest, and we get
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really nice commanding views from from that building of the whole landing zone. So the corporation is called the Nest. Uh it's the hab uh habitation um apartment suites. And the idea of the building iconography layering into the environment itself, you got with the um the three leaves kind of uh holographic leaves uh as part of like the the signage and the the main lobby. there's a little shot of the uh the balcony area, which I we don't really want to spoil too much because the views out are really cool and the balcony is is you can see on both sides the uh the views of of uh New Babbage. So going into the hub units, these are
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the high-tech versions of um what you've seen in the utilitarian ones for the players. So they have all the same um uh types of modules, your your weapon racks and your your clothing racks and kitchens and stuff, but in that high-tech style. One view we will show is the uh the one from the hub pod, which we've wanted to get in for a long time, actual real views from your from your from your bed of the landing zone. So uh these these aren't fake views, they're not it's not a screen. These are the actual views you get. So each hub pod will have a slightly different view and you'll wake up and uh look outside and see see the uh landing zone. And it'll be cool if you get one of your
00:38:09
friends to uh park up a ship outside, wake wake you up, get out of bed. Big headlights. So we started the process of branding uh and the Nest and getting a a nice sleek design in with the hubs. Do you want to talk about the lighting here? Sure. So um this is kind of like a bit of an internal exploration. Um much in the same way with uh the spaceships, we wanted to start looking at light sequences. Uh so you know, ways in which we can kind of enrich this experience in the hubs. So what we did was try to think about, you know, you get out of bed in the same way maybe at home, like lights to slowly start to lift up. Maybe the temperature of the light start to change. And maybe even eventually, you know, we can kind of
00:38:57
like expose some of this expose some of this um to players. So you know, you can define your own kind of like ambience that you want to do inside your hub. So here you can see it's it's still quite debug, but it kind of gives the idea of where we want to take things. transit. Uh so right from the beginning we knew we wanted some um a design that was quite brave. Um so we we kind of latched onto this tube design quite early. Um for quite a period of time it was kind of like a hyper loop, so it was
00:39:45
sealed. But then as we expanded on developing the landing zone, for quite a few reasons, like we need to to open up that tube. So for the for the first time you're going to be able to have open transit tracks. You'll be able to land on that track. So yeah, so they kind of changed from being like a hyper loop to a maglev. And then yeah, here you can see it kind of transitioning into production and it's already feeling quite successful. And then also as the same way as what we was doing for the habs, we was exploring ways in which we can get light sequences that aid you know, player navigation and I really love the idea of rather than going left or right or wondering which side the train's going
00:40:31
to come, you know, maybe like the light changes and then you kind of know. And it's also worth pointing out that this time we we didn't have Transit designed. Placeholder trains going. So we were like I think you guys have seen this video, right? So we were like right, okay, we don't necessarily have transit but we have a I mean the trains are going to be the trains are going to be torpedo shaped, so Yeah. Okay. World's most advanced fast food Still a good video, but you can kind of get the idea of how we want to advance our interiors um through light animation. Okay, so um I'm not going to lie to you, designing
00:41:20
New Babbage has been extremely hard. Our internal concept team is very very good, but I've been kind of stressing them out, been going through many design iterations and the transit is is no exception. So we went through a few different designs and here you can kind of see the most advanced one we got, but ultimately we wanted something that felt very aerodynamic. It felt like it could cut through the air very easily. And then because we knew we had these exceptional views of the cityscape on the transit, we wanted to just open up that canopy so you can see as much of the cityscape going by. Cool. Okay, let's talk about the garages. So these are another common element that we've adapted for the the high-tech style.
00:42:08
So you'll be able to keep all size of ground vehicles in here from the very small to the very large like the Ballista ground vehicle to some more food based vehicles. What should we throw in there? And the so this is the surface entrance, so it's nestled just below the spaceport and this is where you'll go from you'll take an elevator down from the spaceport to your surface entrance. So this is like a essentially like a car park where every user owns their own space and garage to go from. So this is where you'll go from foot out into the landing zone and also take your um ground vehicle. let's talk about how we actually
00:42:59
integrate the landing zone into the planet. That's a good segue to to to talk about MicroTech in a bit. So this is an early test of some biome integration and how we will integrate this into the into the landscape. It's also establishing the the scale read of like the large, medium and small structures. following further investigation, this kind of shows where we're where we're at and seeing everything come together with the trees and the rocks and the grass and the snow piles give you that feeling of integration.
00:43:47
So I've got a couple of images of kind of before we were integrated and after and you can see like how the the build up of snow is added embedding the structures and rocks. The the shaders having that layer of frost which will which can be controlled and that's what the biome integration tech is currently working on. So that's integrated. Here's a here's a pretty cool night time shot before and after and we still need to do a bit more work on this For example, the transit tracks may not be covered in snow cuz you wouldn't want that to like ice up and your train plow into that, so
00:44:37
there's a bit of adjustment that needs to happen. These are the domes of that shot and and how integrating it just makes it feel so much better. It's like night and day and gives you that gets you in that holiday mood, hopefully. And then this is the whole city as well. So all of this in combination is working towards that to go and and the 3.8 release of having a very open cityscape and for you guys to explore on on on ground vehicle and and and in your and in your ships around the New Babbage landing zone.
00:45:36
Cool, thanks Nick. Internally we're really excited about New Babbage, so um I think I think we're all going to be watching what you guys think of it. Okay, so this is actually a really nice segue to move on to the last part of our talk. We'll talk a little bit about MicroTech. As we talked about, you know, this is the first planet which we approached fresh with V4. Actually without V4 we would not have been able to do it. What it comes down to. Yeah. Yeah, we So we're really happy to see it right. Yeah. So as the lore describes, you know, it's described as a very very cold planet. You know, there was a terraforming accident but it was perfect for MicroTech to move on to. And as we knew we'd have some new tech
00:46:24
to play with this, we we were super into the idea of exploring like biomes which aren't necessarily completely covered in snow, so warmer. And as you might have remembered if you were in the previous talk, we now have this temperature humidity graph that we can work with. So instead of picking random biomes and sort of figuring out well we want this there, we want this there, we have we positioned them on this graph as a like a visual helper what each of these regions would be. So we have cold dry regions, we have warmer dry regions, we have wetter regions and the bread and butter which is like the frozen mountains and frozen forests. And this also informs how our temperature is formed on the planet. Yeah. We've been talking about this this way of approaching
00:47:14
planets for years. So the fact that we're kind of delivering this now, you know, it's it's huge. Okay, let's start with breaking down some of these biomes. So let's start with biome one. So right from the beginning we knew we wanted these epic snowy kind of like mountain ranges. It was pretty much for the longest time this was pretty much like the core direction of what MicroTech was. And then there's a few elements that you can kind of see in here were these large mountain ranges kind of go down into the valleys and then that's where we'll start to see the the pine trees being spawned. in order to get these mountain ranges looking truly truly epic, we used both a selection of like mountain height maps
00:48:02
as well as a global elevation maps. So again in the previous talk we talked about a maximum up and down range of 1 km. If you want to get this this epic mountain range, that that has to go higher than 1 km. So we needed a combination of both. And we did some exploring into mountain ranges on Earth and it like locally the the maximum elevation is usually you can cover a lot of that detail with a 1 km range. It's usually across like the multiple kilometers to 10, 20, 30 that you really need this large slow increase in height. And with a combination of the global height map as well as these smaller mountain height maps that are distributed across, we managed to get these really epic looking mountainscapes. Yeah. The the transition of forms
00:48:51
between, you know, like I said the peaks and the lower areas like literally everyone who's had it on the screen, you know, other members of the company come over like hey man, like that that looks that looks really good, you know, so we're quite happy. Another cool feature that that came in with with V4 and Ali briefly touched on it is the is the idea of bedrock. So bedrock is something that is a separate layer that has its own colors and and and textures that we can apply to it and it's dynamically masked on slope angles. And I think this is one of those essential components that we needed to to make MicroTech look right as we wanted these these steep slopes to be like empty of snow, no snow, just the underlying rock being visible. So, this bedrock layer really did the job for us.
00:49:43
So, just as a next sneak peek, this is my monitor a day and a half ago. We we have such amazing tools. This is me scrubbing the time of day and you remember saying how important the shadows cascading over the terrain is right now? Like like this this was literally my editor. So, you can kind of see a little bit how it's feeling right now. Nice. It's quite interesting. When we release Hurston, we was all about the sunset. Whereas actually right right now we're it actually feels really good at other times of day as well. biome two. Uh so, this kind of like is the
00:50:30
transition from biome one. So, as I said, we wanted these lower regions outside of the the mountain ranges. And this is was a chance for us to kind of like, you know, build up the botanical distribution. So, we maybe wanted some areas that feel, you know, quite calm, quite peaceful. But then, you know, sometimes we might want areas which feel like that kind of like half embedded on the snow. And because the the most of the palette for MicroTech or most of the palette for this biome is completely monochromatic. So, we're doing everything we can to, you know, create interest with silhouettes and shapes and little color accents from, you know, flowers or berries or things like that. And you know, we've seen this slide previously, but again, it gives you a
00:51:19
good indication of how where do we start from building our our biome asset packs. So, one thing we really wanted to to do for a long time, which wasn't possible with this tiled approach, which was these large-scale transitions of of vegetation stuff like forests going transitions from like very sparse to dense and from dense to sparse over a large area. Um with V4, we finally can do that. As you can see in the image, you see the forest like stretching out and there's no like specific end to a tile. They just flows into the terrain naturally. So, the object distribution being informed by terrain features, we could finally achieve those transitions and I think we're quite happy with the results. Yeah.
00:52:06
We're still pushing, you know, um that's a lot of trees. But we always want more. Um and yeah, like like Ian mentioned before, or I think it you know, Nick when we're talking about the spaceport, it's sometimes really hard to understand and recognize scale in our game. And we on the art team, I think everybody has run into this situation as well. You're building something like and you you're building something that's actually way bigger than you expected and it isn't until you start putting stuff together in the biomes and you actually start having these trees in, you have a reference point, something that you understand as a human like okay, this is a tree. This is about the height. I can understand the scale of things now. So, to when we started scattering these
00:52:55
trees around, it it really tied everything together and really emphasized the scale of the spaceport and just how big and epic this this landscape is. Yeah. Um yeah, and this is this is from first-person view. this is on foot. Just taking a little hike through the snowy forest on your way back because your car broke down probably. Um Get some warm jackets on. But yeah, this is this is truly something that we are super happy about. I don't think you there's any other game that has this range of of scale from from first-person close-up cool stuff to these epic buildings. So, interestingly, we we actually had the spaceport embedded on the terrain
00:53:44
much sooner than we had trees on. I'm like, that spaceport look a bit small. And then literally we got a new build with with this in and we're like, is that spaceport too big? It's when you get those those things that you you recognize from a personal level like I know how big a tree is. So, that that sense of sense of scale is is what is much needed with these epic structures which you can't really tell until you've got those kind of reference points in. No. Okay, so just want to share some assets that we that the organics team built. We have the snowy spruce trees, which is like I said, the bread and butter of of MicroTech. It's I guess it's like almost around 80% of the of the landscape is mountainous regions and
00:54:33
trees in the valleys. Um so, these guys are the most common ones. They're snow they have a little bit of a frosty layer, but they're not too heavily covered in snow. And if we go to the next one, um we also wanted to have ones that were really like heavy snowfall, completely snowed under and they're frozen solid. So, you'll you'll come across these guys uh in the landscape as well. Um also, the weather on MicroTech can be really really harsh and blizzards and snow storms and all the strong winds and the lore describes a yeah, what do you call it again? Climate accident basically. Uh with everything terraforming terraforming Yes. Um so, we want to wanted to represent this in in assets as well. So, we made
00:55:21
sure to show visual cues of of the type of weather you could probably expect. Um and it also helps to make the the frozen forest a more interesting space to navigate because previously we had our rocks, we had our trees and I think the savanna looked really cool, but you could sort of make your way around quite easily. So, with this it's more interesting to navigate. It's also visually more interesting to like explore the what's what's on the ground. Just gives this extra layer of detail. And one further. Okay, let's move on to the next biome. So, as we said, you know, we got a bit more of a physically based um approach. And we knew it was going to have like these improved transition areas. So, we wanted to explore about how we could kind of introduce more
00:56:10
color or maybe introduce areas where it's starting to get warmer, uh but it's actually quite close to to these snowy regions. And also, we love the idea of having, um color next to the monochromatic mountain ranges. And you know, it gives us an opportunity to inject color into the frame uh with things like flowers and things like that. So, here we see one of those transitions um I would made a little joke about this in the previous presentation that this is what the transitions now look like. So, no more tiles. Um so, with the updated tech, we're seeing these beautiful transitions and they're informed by and at the same time emphasizing the shapes of the terrain. Um so, we're really happy with those
00:56:58
results. And here are some examples up close. I like the spring vibe that's going on. The frost is gone, little flowers start popping up again. And although these areas are like quite calm and nice to have a little hike through them, the snowy mountains are never far away. So, we always want to remind the player that um yeah, it's it's still a cold planet. And once again, these transitions we're super super happy with how these flow into each other. Yeah. Um so, these are some of the assets that we did for the biome. Fairly small but simple packs, some nice colors, some nice flowers and some remaining roots and and trees that did not survive the initial
00:57:46
frost. Just wanted to show some renders of that. Okay, next biome. So, there's a kind of like an offset to these snow regions. Um I was really quite passionate about having areas of like quite quite intense color. Um so, then we explored like these type of regions, you know, um again like red, oranges and things like And then also as part of the the asset pack we use, you know, maybe instead of these rocks being covered with snow, you know, we start to build up the lichen on there as well. So, these areas show actually what MicroTech would look like if without all the snow and ice. And so, we're seeing
00:58:34
the same spruce actually is a conscious choice to have those return in a more unfrozen state just to tie these areas together. And obviously, as you can see in the distance, to remind the player that these warmer regions are they're not that many of them. So, we wanted to make sure that there's always these epic mountains in in the background reminding the player that yeah, they're never far away. Yeah. Uh some of the assets that we did for the tiger region. So, you see the red lichen um the rocks and the ground cover, everything has a bit more warmer colors. Uh some more of the spruce in the same color variations. And in order to emphasize these these warmer colors, we added a few more tree types because the spruces are really cool, but
00:59:22
they're evergreen. So, they basically gave us the green but didn't give us the the warmer reds and and oranges on like eye height. So, we wanted to have these guys in there as well. Um we already did a bunch of these broken assets and we figured we might as well have them on the warmer areas as well. I mean it's trees break down, they they fall on the ground, they they rot away. So it's the circle of life and if we want to do a dense forest, I think that's a necessary component plus the previous reasons of the complexity on the ground being nice and detailed. I think that was a good reason to keep them. And some more examples of these guys. Next biome. we've talked about snow biomes, we've talked about uh quite botanical heavy and we've talked about uh like an
01:00:10
offset. For somewhere like this, I thought it'd be really quite interesting if we described areas that were very bleak, you know, gray dark, very cold. Uh and then maybe the idea is that these are located like maybe on the poles. Um so you know, the sun angle is always quite low. And then you know, it was quite heavily inspired about you know, you see these areas uh even on Earth where like the glacial melt is kind of happening. Big chunks of ice have been left behind. And on also for like um maybe a little twist on the asset pack, you know, we start to introduce like maybe these large slabs of obsidian in combination with some of the gravel that you'd expect to see. And here it is in game. And what's really cool about it is
01:00:59
because it is at the poles, the sun is over there at a very low angle. and you could say it's on purpose but actually it was a bit of a happy accident where this these these low sun angles played really nicely with uh with the glossy obsidian that we we were scattering. Yeah. Mhm. So we've done boulder fields before but I think this one really stands out. Mhm. Um so these are some of the asset packs that we created for for this biome and the next thing that the organics team wants to look at after we're getting close to wrapping up uh Planet V4 is uh increasing the asset quality and we're doing that with a new shader that's being developed uh with the graphics team. It's not completely done yet but here's a bit of a preview of what you can expect um of
01:01:47
the the the quality of rocks and assets that will be uh visible. Okay, lastly, last biome number six. So this was always our wish list um and again this is what helped drive a little bit more of that shader development. You know, as we knew it was going to come down into the the coastline. We wanted to get people like on on the ice, walking on the ice. So uh like I said, it was kind of driving a lot of that tech development. Um yeah, so to create the frozen ocean, we wanted to reuse some of the features from our existing ocean and expand on um making the sur- on that basically. So we wanted the the surface to be solid. Um we needed to add some additional features um to help sell this broken look both when flying over it so at this further distance as well as when you're
01:02:35
right on on on top of it. and it doesn't really actually show uh but when you're walking on it and you look down, you actually see the multiple layers of cracks in the ice uh refraction going on. So it's it's quite a cool experience to to uh to walk over this and um who knows, maybe there are some stuff hidden underneath the ice. so to complement these transitions into these frozen oceans, we wanted to have some stuff that reminded us um when you go to the poles and you see these these large chunks of ice that broke off and sort of are floating around. Um and in in our case, they're all along the side along the coast um frozen shut by yeah, the the the storms that basically keep happening. Someone mentioned the other day that that iceberg looks a little bit like the
01:03:23
Aspire Grand Tower. But maybe that's like the It's your challenge to describe the tower. of there was the extreme sports penguin being artistic. Right. Okay. He was inspired. So as always, you know, it's always a massive team effort. So this is the art team and lighting team that you can see. uh great job to everyone. Uh I think you guys are killing it and thank you.

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