10 for the Artists: Episode 02 (2015.05.18)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:01

   [Music] Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of 10 for the artist. My name is Lance Powell, supervising art director for Cloud Imperium and this is Dan Kmency, a surfacing artist. And I want to thank all the subscribers for making this show possible and all of our shows possible. Now, Dan, what's up? If that's your name, we have 10 questions here from some of the subscribers. Uh, so I'm just going to get right into it. Uh, and we'll just kick things back and forth. Uh, first question is from Blackjack. In the real world, fuel comes to the aircraft instead of the craft traveling to a central fuel depot. Will this be the case for Star Citizen? Basically, they

2. 00:00:47

   want to know if they're going to be able to purchase additional fuel, store fuel in their hanger, and so on. Uh, so a couple of things. You will definitely be able to purchase fuel. Uh you will be able to well the plan is to allow some ships to be able to collect fuel from nebulas by just flying through them and then converting them inside the ship to actually use it as a propellant. Um and then we've got ships dedicated to fuel entirely. Like the one of the versions of the Starfare, it's the entire purpose of it is just to haul fuel from one location to the other. And it's got the ability to refuel ships in while in flight. So that's kind of cool. So it's like a space trip AAA. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So you run out of fuel, you hit the button, and it says on star, can I help you? And you're like,

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   I'm stuck out here in a nebula. Yeah. I'm hoping we make it um sort of like a skill challenge where you have to actually line up your ship onto the Starfare ship, you know, get them to dock properly and then refuel and just take off. But who knows? We're still working on that. And if you're texting, then what happens? And you run into the field. Yeah. Okay. Kill about 16 people. That's right. Right. Uh the second question, it's a good one. This is a kind of a multi-prong question. Okay. Uh this is from Notable Joe. Since you're creating pieces for the for the far future, how do you come up with a good design that's not too sci-fi cheesy or too retro, have you asked CR to send you into orbit for, you know, research? So, we joke about it sometimes about getting sentenced into orbit. I actually want to do the uh

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   vomit rocket, the parabolic flight. That'd be super cool. So, coming up with a cool design. Can I just stop you for two seconds and just join me in this? Sure. CR, we want to go to space for research. For research. For research. Okay. Sorry. Okay. So, the the design question, I think in a previous 104, the artist mentioned talked about this a little bit. uh we tend to start off with uh real life examples of what it is that we're trying to achieve. So if a spaceship is designed to accomplish a specific goal, whatever that might be, transporting fuel, dog fighting, space tripaa, spacea, a mining ship, whatever it is, we collect as many references uh for the actual function before we even start figuring out how we're going to design the aesthetics of the ship.

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   So, we start off with function, then we go ahead and build a design around it. Uh, the rest of that comes from some of the the uh the style guides that we've already put in place for the manufacturers. So, if you have an Aegis ship, which is supposed to be a mining vessel, um the well, the reclaimer is actually not a mining vessel, but as an example, let's assume there was an Aegis ship that was a mining vessel. We would start off with mining equipment as references. Then we'd go ahead and apply the Aegis aesthetic on top of that. So we'd have smooth curves. We'd have um like space shuttle paneling since that's part of the look for them. Um and we'd probably have the intakes on the top since that's like an Aegis thing. So we we have uh style guides just define some of the

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   elements that these ships need to have and that's kind of how we arrive at at the look and we'll do variations of that and pick the coolest one. Right. I think uh just to add some some color to that, the game takes place in the year 2900. Uh and one of the things that we we kick around a lot more as a form of entertainment to new people who come on, myself included, uh is uh the year 2100 is really just a date that uh works for the story. It doesn't have practical implications on how design's going to work in the future. Uh and a good example of that would be uh there's some technology that is being worked on today. Uh and that technology far outshoots anything that

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   we're planning for for Star Citizen 900 years later. So the concept that we've been working with on the art side uh specifically with the persistent universe and with some of the concept art uh instead of people going well in 20 in 900 years we're going to have everything's going to be a hologram and you may have a teleporter and you know your dog is going to be made out of nanobots and they'll be reform and reform. Instead of all that stuff, we're saying, you know, you can take a look at Rome as an example. And 2,000 years ago, Rome was a dominant culture on the planet. They were hundreds of years ahead of almost every other culture. And then they had the plagues and wars and they were sacked several times by the Gaul and it basically sent them back

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   into the stone age. Uh so 900 years is really what does it mean, right? when you look at Star Wars is at 900 years. When you look at Star Trek, is that 300 years? Right. Right. So, it's our timeline uh and how we choose to tell the story. And and to your point about the the ships, I think that um the ships take a nod from a lot of the cultural uh and creative influences that we grew up with. So, you you're always going to see something that inspired us uh at some point in time slowly work its way into some of our designs because that's what we grew up with. That's what we really enjoy. Uh I think, you know, more importantly, it's also what CR's taste is. It's uh kind of like right in line with the stuff that we grew up with. So,

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   um you know, I think the aesthetics kind of lends itself to something that we've seen reinvisioned more than something that we've never seen because we can't imagine what stuff's going to look like 900 years from now. Right. Right. Third question is from Wonder. Are we going to see more interior concept uh in the future? [Applause] Yes. Love it. Love it. Boom. Now, follow-up question, and this is my own win. I'm kidding. Answer that. Yes. The next question comes to us from Jack Cruz. Several ships in Star Citizen take on design influences from popular sci-fi and Covenant warships in the Halo series. I have some of the more iconic and memorable designs in video game history. The question, could we expect

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    to see a pledgeable capital ship uh such as the new Corvette uh have it design influenced by those of the Covenant? That's a hard one to answer. Um I know for me, like I said, I keep I I try to keep my references as real world as Um, we do have other spaceships that we look look at as, you know, as reference and inspiration as well, but we're definitely not sitting sitting down sort of picking other ships from other universes and saying we want to we want this ship. It really comes down to the purpose, you know, what is that we're trying to accomplish with the personality of the vessel, uh, what its purpose is, and then we build from there. We may use small elements that from other sci-fi universes that we've

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    seen. Uh but we're definitely not sitting there saying, "Hey, let's we need our version of exactly that ship." Right? That doesn't happen, right? To add additional information to the conversation. Um you know, and this isn't a direct response to the question, but one of the things that the design team is looking at, uh is using frequencies of light. So, you know, if you if you're using a red laser, you're going to have a longer band and it'll have less impact. If you're using, you know, a green laser, it'll be somewhere in between. If you're using uh blue laser, it'll be a shorter frequency and far more damage. Everything in between, all the various damage styles, al the various range styles that come along with that. Uh so the the complexity is um it's being discussed right now uh to

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    incorporating more real world style future laser effects. Right. Right. I think uh things like neutron weapons, proton weapons, we're treating more like practical physics instead of traditional sci-fi. Right. Right. So that the weapon itself will provide, you know, you knock a couple neutrons off of an atom and all of a sudden you've got an accumulation of something with extremely heavy mass. So instead of it being a beam weapon, it is a beam weapon, but it's like you got hit by a bus, right? Okay. So the next question comes to us from Kaiser Sosa. Great name. What is the purpose of the bed and living quarters on smaller ships? It was originally thought of uh the only way to save and log out in space. Uh many thought it was the

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    balance between the single seaters right now. That's where it's still at where that the future. Well, it's you go out into space, hop into your little bed, go to sleep, and that's how you can kind of log off in space and it might save your state out there. Uh it's still something that we have to prototype and test to see if it actually makes it in as a game mechanic. Um, so I guess the answer to that question as well is uh maybe. What about uh things that you're working on right now like the component swap? Well, yeah. So components ultimately what we'll want to do is uh build our components which will include beds and sinks and toilets and bathrooms and things like that. Uh build it so that we can just use them on every ship or as many ships as possible so we can reuse

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    the assets. And that bakes in the ability to potentially customize the interiors. Now, do not take me at my word at that because the smaller ships are all basically custom interiors, right? You will not be able to swap out an Aurora bed for a Mustang bed, for example. That's not going to happen. But it might be possible in the future. We're kind of trying to build our assets to make that a possibility later on. Now the other components such as fuel tanks, uh, uh, ammo boxes, um, power plants, ballasts, like we have I don't even know how many in the tens of different types of components, which are all completely swappable across all ships of the same class. So, there's a little bit of that going on. And all of

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    those components definitely have heavy gameplay implications. For example, if you have a ammo box on one side of your ship, that is now adding mass to one side of your ship. The handling of your ship is going to take a hit as a result of that. The uh uh the avionics will still compensate in order to make it as unnoticeable as possible, but the moment you start using the weapon and the weapon starts drawing ammo from the box, you start losing mass, which changes the handling of your ship. And every component depending on its location on the ship will affect the mass at that location which then changes the rotation speed. It affects the physics in a major way. And I'm not the best person to talk about how the physics work. Uh but the whole thing is going to be awesome. Right. Yeah. It's going to be really cool. Right. Here's a good question. Uh

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    this question is from Rancid. Rancid asks, "When in the PU will player ships be distinguishable distinguishable from NPC ships?" Uh, and the question continues, "By not having unique identifying colors or symbols, it could make players think twice before engaging in a ship." That's an interesting gameplay question. Um, right now that has to be play tested to see. I'm a really big fan of not really giving you an obvious distinguishing element between the two because I do want the world to feel one extremely cohesive and I want there to be weight behind your decisions. So, if you decide to attack a ship, you may not immediately know that it's either an NPC or a PC player, and you may change your

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    mind depending on the two. Now, the cool thing about not giving you obvious uh identifiers on a ship is that that then requires you to get a scanner, right? It it adds to the gameplay loop. So, if you do get a scanner and scan the ship, then you might now have the information that you need to make that decision. So, I prefer going that route. Ultimately, it comes down to game design and they'll make, you know, the best decision for the game once it's play tested. But my vote is uh don't distinguish, right? I think uh, you know, to add a little extra color to that as well, I think that the the uh lighting schemes on various style ships will also play a a minor part in that. So, when we get down to a lot of the pirate ships, their visible markers at a distance based off the lights and any

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    type of material use will show them as being potential enemy at a glance. But to Daniel's point, uh that you may not actually get a sense of friend or foe. Um, and you may not want that sense of friend or foe at at a at a glance because you want that interaction. you want that that you know there's a little more thrill about um you know being able to sit back watch before you engage and if you're engaged or if there's some other marker that comes at you that says oh okay they're firing on me it's probably a bad guy that then it triggers that that engagement right um you know the classic style gaming where it's like you go to your nav point and all of a sudden there's four or five blips of red it's a Arcadey and that's something that

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    we've been trying to avoid, right? Yeah. We have a question from Nostromo 1977. Can the art team create cultural goods for the PU such as paintings, sculptures, porcelain, etc. And will they have any inherent value to the players, but would be highly contested wealth for powerful NPCs? I don't want to say no. We haven't discussed that on the PU side. Uh, so it's not something that potentially wouldn't happen in the future, but I can't say that it's happening now. That hasn't been in discussions. Right. The next question comes to us from Dr. Big Money, also a great name. What will the art team's role be in uninhabited planets? Will you guys essentially create planet texture sets and then the procedural stuff will kick in? Can we

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    expect to see planet side environments that require special equipment uh just to pay a visit such as different atmospheres, different breathing suits, temperature protection, gravity protection, visibility differences and so on. Well, right now the art team is focusing on building out the inhabited locations and we will have uninhabited locations as well. Now, in the further in the future once the game is released, I know that we're going to be doing uh R&D on potentially procedurally generated planets so that we can expand the number of locations and we will still have to create art for that as well, even if it's procedurally generated. Uh so the answer is yes, we will we will be building art for all locations. Are you sure about that? Is that your final answer? I don't know how else we would see art even if the

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    programming it's just not the way our game is built. So I'm pretty convinced that we'll have artists building art even for procedurally generated planets. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the the methodologies that we're using right now is split between 9010 and then 1090. uh and that means that uh the majority of the encounters that you'll have on a autogenerated planet will be autogenerated encounters versus the other side which is you go to a planet like Terra and the experience is going to be very well crafted. Mhm. Uh so it depends on which planet you go to uh which system you're spending your time around and so on. Something that was also brought up in the question which is really interesting is uh the breathing apparatus the you know how is your ship impacted by planets

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    with higher gravity those conversations have been discussed and they're in the works um the details are to be determined. Yeah. Well, I mean, one easy way that we could uh so example, you mentioned how ships might be affected by different atmospheres and temperatures and things like that. Because of the way we're building our damage system, uh we may be able to leverage that in order to apply effects to the ship based on the experience that the ship is getting, right? So if you go through an especially hot environment and that's peeling off your paint or whatnot, we have the technology built in to leverage that in order to like actually affect your ship in that way. So you know if you go through a crazy hot planet and leave now you may look scorched. Right. So the foundation for doing that exists.

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    Right. Right. So the next question comes to us from Akia Kaoshi. So far the art direction has been fairly western feel. uh will we see more non-western influences such as Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc. in upcoming locations? So, I'll take a first stab at that. I think that uh um Dan will take the second part of that. Uh the short answer is uh is going to be yes. um the way that we're approaching the planets right now through a lot of our sci-fi sci-fi influences um and we're talking you know more desolate planets from Star Wars Luke's home planet um you know to Hoth but we're also looking at components like

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    Bladeunner and basically we're drawing from all of our experiences uh and a lot of those are going to uh not just feed back into the persistent universe But we're going to have to continue to build out the persistent universe style, the structures, the environments because you do want to show cultural influence um uh and how it's impacted uh planets. That said, the way that we've been approaching a lot of these things is is through um through as much modern reason as we can, which is um a 100 years from now, what happens to uh human space exploration? Well, we colonize the moon. We colonize Mars 200 years from now. What does it look like? Okay, now we've jumped out to

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    maybe Ganymede or somewhere else. 200 years after that, we've gone out to the next maybe the edge of the solar system. What happens with planets like Mars is the next wave of construction. Uh so the the traditional cultural influences are really going to be determined by um whoever's providing the finances to that location. Uh but I think more importantly they'll be building on top of the um the structures that have been been put there. So if you look at a base on the moon or a base on Mars say in the next 100 years you're going to find it's very modular very container style system or setup. Um it's more akin to I think cowboy bbop in a lot of ways or the

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    movie moon than almost anything else. But then say 200 years from now, you don't just scrap those structures. You now start building on top of it uh with something a little more modern. So there's a the art director who's driving that uh Mark Skelton uh and uh Corton uh at the Montreal studio. They're spending a lot of time focusing on um what those rings are. Uh and then what happens when uh the um humans leave our system and they move out to the next system and that first system that they move out to is a terraform planet. Now you've got jump capabilities. That planet is now a complete overhaul of something that we've seen before. So may it might not have any of the flavor that you're

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    you're used to, but it may be um it may take suggestions from Dubai or you know a couple other really really ultramodern cities. But a lot of those things are being explored um and the art direction that uh that we've got from that so far suggests that we're going to be taking nods from all those components u but not being uh it won't be exact. Uh and a a good way of looking at that would be something like Naboo. Nabou had you know kind of a renaissance style architecture to it. At the same time it had uh you know a lot of the kind of modern-day Star Wars techy stuff as well. So you know depends on the lens that you're looking at the the environment from but uh so short answer yes long answer it's a little more complicated but it's going to take

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    nods from a little bit of everything. Yeah. And we we have several locations on Earth. So we will probably draw directly right from the cultures at those locations, right? And we have uh landing zones in Russia, China. I I would expect that those are influenced by those cultures, right? So yeah, definitely. Question uh is from Demurus. Are there any plans to allow custom coloring to our ships using RGB sliders on various layers, channels or channels of the default ship skin? So, right now we actually have all our shaders set up so that you can theoretically tint stuff with the diffuse channel, specular channel, so we

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    could do really big significant material changes and color changes, but it's yet to be implemented in programming. And a lot of the older ships that have yet to be updated with physically accurate textures still need to be brought to that system. But once it's all in place, you should be able to take like the M50 for example and make it black or you know you have constellation, you want it blue, should be able to do that. Um it's still yet to be pushed through design, but I think it's definitely a possibility in the future. Would you say it's a lot like buying a car? So, the question is kind of like buying a car, right? This person wants full control, full RGB control, but as a manufacturer and the artist for or for

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    the style guide, you'd want to limit that that range. Can you talk a little bit about maybe that plus also the various uh material types, gloss versus pearl and so on? Yeah, so it's a little bit complicated with physically accurate textures. Um, and we do want to keep design consistency throughout a game. Like be a little bit distracting if somebody flew through the universe with like a pink retaliator. That'd be weird. But what we'd probably end up doing is giving you different surfacing types and different gloss values, maybe different color values as like little swatches that you could see. Almost like if you've ever looked at car paint, they have orbs that you could see the surface on before you know you get your car coated. And you probably able to see

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    your ship and we give you a really wide range. So it's not like we'd be limiting you too too much, but you know, pink retaliators in our universe. The next question comes to us from Argorn BH. What photographic or other source do you use to inspire the space artwork in Star Citizen? For example, how do you determine the colors and shading used in star types and the various planets? Planets are a little bit I can talk about what I use when I'm doing surfacing on ships. And normally what I go to is I have one of the popular resources among a lot of artists especially at our company is Pinterest. We have running galleries of a lot of stuff and I'll look at a lot of

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    airplanes, a lot of tanks, a lot of cars. I just slowly whenever I see a surface that I like, I grab it, I put it in a folder, and I save it for later. So, I have a library in my head of like if I was going to go build an Aegis ship, I'd be like, "Okay, so Aegis is kind of militaristic, scary, industrial." panzer that black slightly glossy paint, you know, that kind of thing. So, it's not so much like a matter of texture reference for photo source. It's just like building up a reference and you you always one of the things I keep catching artists doing is they will constantly look at other computer

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    graphics to draw inspiration from. And the key to creating believable materials is drawing all your reference from real world things. Mhm. Exactly. Uh I think to add to the the question and round out the persistent universe, you also touched on it is that we are building a universe that is uh meant to be accurate. Uh, so if there's a red giant or there's a brown dwarf or there's a white dwarf that we're shooting for something that is is meant to be plausible. Um I don't I don't think I think that from the concept creation side, you know, the concept artists go through and create the look that they want um based off of, you know, feeling they're trying to

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    capture, but then they the production artists get their hands on it and we dial it in towards real world. That's all the questions for today. We want to thank the subscribers for making 10 for the artist possible. We also want to thank all the backers for making Star Citizen possible. Uh, I'm Lance Powell, supervising art director for CIG. And I'm Daniel Kaminsky, surfacing artist at CI. You put a question mark at the end there. There's a little bit of a question mark there. I'm definitely a surfacing artist. And you're definitely with CI and you're definitely here. I don't know. I might be on the moon. Bye. Good night. Hey guys, thanks for watching um Temp

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    for the Chairman. Uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes, go here. If you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content, go here. And uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of Round the Verse, go here, please. And I will see you in the verse. Come on.