Inside Star Citizen | Dev Diary: Digital Hairdresser

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   This was uh that's the first thing I must say. My career took a curve. I was a lead character artist uh at another company. One of the things that scared me the most at that time was uh was hair because it is one of the hardest tasks and I just tackled it so well I guess that I started to get praise for it. Praise in a way that I never got as a character artist. And that's how how it went. I never planned to be a digital hairdresser of any sort. I've been in love with with Star Citizen since ever. It's been actually my dream for all along. When I started learning character art, this is what I wanted to work. When I started here, one of the

2. 00:00:48

   things people were making fun of me, former colleagues were like, "Oh, great, Andre. You just signed a contract to make hair for a game. Everyone wears a helmet." And that made me think, rest assured, nowadays I'm proud to log into Star Citizen and just see that a lot of people is now wearing their hairs and and and not not the helmets. When I got here, the first thing was to try not to scrap everything that was made. Obviously, there was a lot of things that were properly made. They just wouldn't fit for every purpose that we wanted. The first hair I created took me a bit of time. The first results were kind of disappointing. I was still learning the tools, learning the process, learning the new engine that we use. But after like three weeks, I managed to create one hair. We finally took it to a to a meeting. My first time in front of CR. I actually made sure I read everything that CR has written

3. 00:01:35

   about hair that was on our on our register. So I knew what he wanted. I think that was kind of smart because it had an impact on him immediately. The next morning after that meeting, I wake up with a message on our creative chat saying something how happy he was that uh we had finally someone that was tackling uh hair in the way that he wanted. I'm like, "All right, okay. We're on the right path." I thought during this process, Ian actually told me, "Okay, Andre, what do you need to make this work for both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen?" And I'm like, he wanted to have 70 hairs from February till December so that we can we can do the first chapters of Squadron 42. Doing my maths really fast. If I was to do it myself, it would take like 2 years. Even if I take like 3 to 5 days

4. 00:02:24

   per hair, normally a hair before I arrived was taking 20 to 40 days. The only solution was to hire more hands, to hire more people, and I needed people that would hit the ground running. It had to be people that I knew that could do the work. And in that sense, I presented the proposal to Ian and to CR. They agreed to everything. And that's how we did it. We we basically put the guys in. Uh instead of 70 hairs, by December, we had 130 hairs. Uh because we did not only do the squad ones, we actually revamped the character customizer. We added beards, which weren't even in the plan back then. It was a bet, a risky bet. But I took the process under my under my wing. I I grabbed the guys and it worked. So, and and for that, I just I got I got some praise and got some recognition. uh in the company which uh comes with the risk that I have taken of

5. 00:03:11

   course so where do we start with the hair there must be an idea first an intention of course Star Citizen is a bit different from Squadron in Squadron we're trying to do digital clones obviously in that case we're going to take as much pictures as much references of the real person and try to mimic that into the video game as for Star Citizen which is a bit more broad sometimes require a concept sometimes we we have a more broader idea that we want to go we are production artists we are not concept artists. So that's not what we do. What we really need to work is that the idea comes solid at us and it's very clear what what's intended. Whatever references we we can use, we'll make a mood board and from there start our own our own uh [Music] development. It's important to understand that the system that I

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   implemented here, it kind of removes from the artist the ability to mess it up in the sense that I control the textures and the shaders. So that means the beginning of the process and the ending of the process. I've tested them. I make sure they work. And so I give to the artists the pleasurable part of just doing the asset itself. And therefore there's no fruit salad. What what we want is basically a quality that is standard that stays the same throughout the game. And if I gave them the ability to create their own textures, we would have hairs would some would be very thick, some would be very thin, some would be different and it would render different. So I remove these two parts of the process of the equation by sorting it myself giving them the only the pleasurable part that I don't have any other word for it. Sounds kinky, doesn't um He's not wrong. Enjoyable. Enjoyable. Enjoyable. I guess

7. 00:04:47

   making hair for games has a lot of limitations to it. Our game being fast-paced and all uh MMO, the way to keep it performant and the way to keep it working is by trying to establish limits of how far you can go. When I started, I remember the lead tech artist telling me, um, Andre, there's no limit to to what you can do. Just just just go. You know, there's no budget of of try count. there's no budget and I'm like how can that be? I mean I've been doing games for a while and there is limitations. Okay, he was just he was just letting me be free enough to create and letting me establish the limit so that they can then adapt. I was very conservative. Uh we all have performant hairs. Some in Squadron 42 are a bit heavier because we just need to hit that quality bar. But mostly are all very performant. What what you do is just you just use what you need and you don't use

8. 00:05:34

   what you don't need. Basically, what are you working on for 2025? 2025 comes with creatures and more hairs for the for the character customizer. That's the main thing. There's also armors that going to start to have a bit of hair. Uh hair, not hair, human hair, but you know, types of fur or types of synthetic hair. So, we created a lot of hairs which are recognizable. We were trying to break barriers. The the character customizer is like this nowadays because we were trying to push the shader and see where we could go. tools programmers and shader programmers were coming to me and say, "Hey, Andre, I didn't know our shader could do this type of things." And as I got this type of feedback, I was, "Okay, let's let's push this and see how far we can go." And so, we have a bit of a range which is a bit too wide for now in terms of hairs that we're using. One of the last meetings with CR regarding this aspect. He just he told

9. 00:06:21

   me, "Andre, what we need now is is Jared's hair is Andrea's hair. Move away from the outrageous, move away from the military hairstyles." That's the direction for now to to get establish a good solid base of hairs. And on the creatures, we we we're going a bit wilder now. We're starting to push the limits as to fully covered with fur creatures and stuff like that. Before we started with small patches of fur here and there on the creatures, and now we're just making all things together. Well, I'm eager to to do hairstyles that will be longer than the limitation that we currently have. Our current limitation is is the shoulders simply because of the way the armors work and the helmets work and we don't want it to be clipping all along. So, um I'm really looking at the day that we can make hairs that are longer. Um and I'd love to to do like a big dreadlock that goes straight

10. 00:07:10

    down. Yeah. So, I'm really really proud of my team. Everything that I set here is basically a teamwork. My team does not involve only the people under me. It also involves the people above that feed me with stuff and that help me get better. The hair story here has been a success and it's been a success because we're working together and that's the only reason that's I wouldn't be here talking or or doing anything. I wouldn't have been a Citizen Con stage uh without any of them. So uh that's very clear to me. We are now through a moment that that we can create any air style that we want. Uh and I'm I'm very proud of that. And with more than 30 new hairstyles

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    scheduled to make their way into the persistent universe across each remaining patch this year, the options for self-expression in Star Citizen are just one more way 2025 will continue to deliver more content than ever before. Now, I also want to tell you about this new Squadron 42 spotlight that's being delivered directly to inboxes right now about every two months or so. It comes with timed exclusives, never-before-seen visuals, audio files, story information, all that kind of stuff included. So, don't forget to check your inboxes for that. And then, of course, opt in through the account settings on the website if you really want that content before everyone else. And then of course for those of you with friends, nobody here. With friends thinking about trying out Star Citizen, our very first freefly of the year starts today with six vehicles to choose from. The universe truly is better with

12. 00:08:46

    friends, or so I'm told. For Inside Star Citizen, I'm Jared Huckabe. As always, thanks for letting us share the people and process of game development with you, and we'll see you all here next week. It's Wrestlemania weekend.