All Work and No Play... (RFA Part1)

So as some of you may have ascertained by now I work in the games industry for a company called Volition. It's a fairly well known company, predominantly for the Saints Row games these days, but also for the Red Faction games and some other stuff you may or may not have heard of. I've worked on a few titles there at this point, predominantly as a vehicle artist. I've asked if it's OK to show some of my work from shipped titles (shipped means "finished" basically), and this is apparently fine as long as I don't slip you any source art (the actual files that end up in the game). I'll be starting with some of my work from Red Faction: Armageddon.

A slightly different format to the usual for this series. Almost every image will be 'click to expand'-able - sometimes by a lot. There will be a Big Image Dump with small descriptions followed by some commentary and then onto the next thing.  The number of pieces per post will vary. Here we go then:

Red Faction "Razorback" Light Armored Vehicle
Art Directed by Chad Greene & Susan Cenci. Concept by Steve Holt

Game Engine Renders of unused clean version. Also the only look at the underside.

 

 

 

Beauty renders of the two used versions: Surface and Ice.  Also two looks at the rear door opening on the interior - more on the interior in a minute, but it isn't actually inside the vehicle in the game.  The final shot shows the ramp that was a last minute addition for a cinematic sequence.

Orthographic Views of a moderately dirty version to better show the dimensions and form.

This vehicle went through a number of changes in it's function throughout development, but once this concept was settled on it changed very little overall, but had lots of small changes for various reasons.

The "tower" to the front right of the vehicle is a turret emplacement - at one point it was automated, and then it was to be manned. Eventually it needed to be automated again, requiring it to be sealed up - but the manned version can still be seen briefly in one of the cutscene cinematics.

Two versions were required - one for above ground covered in dust, and one below ground covered in ice and frost. This was done by creating one base version (The clean one seen above) and then texturing ice and dust on top of it. The dusty one was originally quite a bit dirtier, but it didn't read very well in the environment so the amount was reduced.

The main difference between the final design and the initial concept (other than the interior) was that the original concept had an enclosed area over the front wheels rather than the separate fenders. These had to be broken off to facilitate the front wheels turning. There was a version with no fenders at one point, but I can't find a render of it - maybe I'll do one for the next All Work post. Whether I do or not it wasn't used in the final game. The concept also didn't cover the materials the vehicle was made of - carbon fiber and ceramic plate; Not the most standard of military finishes. Makes it look like it wouldn't look out of place in the Batcave, but it works in context. There were some destroyed versions of the vehicle made by Angela Lee derived from the intact original too.

It's nickname is the Razorback because it looks a bit like a warthog - but that name was already taken. 'Razorback' sounds cooler anyway...

Red Faction LAV Cinematic Interior.
Art Directed by Jasen Whiteside, Chad Greene, Susan Cenci.
Initial Concept by Steve Holt

The interior of the Light Armored Vehicle landed in my lap fairly late in the game. It was known that a detailed interior would be needed for cinematic cutscenes, but somehow it had slipped through the net and not been assigned to an artist. A low detail version had already been created, but for the cutscenes a much higher detail version was needed.

In an interesting twist the interior would need to appear as a level of detail render-able by the game engine, even though the cinematic would be pre-rendered (not dealt with in real time). This meant that while the interior had a great deal of detail, it's actual polycount would be fairly low, and the procedure for building it was very similar to any other game asset, and a lot of the detail is actually done using Normal Maps (texture maps that simulate depth) baked from a high polygon original. It would also need to match up to the exterior model that was already built.

I'm quite pleased with the interior - it looks lived in and knocked about without appearing to be overly grubby. It's detailed enough that there's always something interesting in the frame, but not so detailed that the eye is drawn to it over the important character work in the scenes.

The only other thing of note really is that the Hammer on the wall is the iconic hammer from Red Faction: Guerrilla (the previous game in the series), originally designed by Glenn Israel, modeled by Josh Powers and then reworked by Michael Clark. I reworked it again for this interior of course.

I think that's enough for today. I'm away for three weeks starting on Tuesday. If I can I'll get another post in before I leave (more game asset stuff), but if not it'll keep until I get back - I've lots more where this came from.