All Work and No Play... (RFA Part 2)

Since my last post I've done depressingly little art outside of work, a handful of mediocre sketches (and almost all the sketches were of heads and faces rather than figures) and a rough mockup of a book cover that you won't get to see for a while in case it becomes the cover to an actual book. Other than that I'm sick today, which meant I didn't go to work - this is a shame because I'm rather enjoying what I'm doing at work right now. Since I'm stuck in the house though I'll write a blog post instead.  Lucky you.
As with the last (and probably all future) Work and No Play posts this will consist of an image dump followed by some idle thoughts.  Today I'll be continuing with the work I did for Red Faction: Armageddon, this time focusing on the Marauder vehicles. Clicking the images will make them larger; just like Leon.

Marauder Combat Buggy
Art Directed by Chad Greene & Susan Cenci. Concept by Steve Holt

I don't think I explained the process for these models in the last post, possibly because it wasn't relevant for any of the images; this time it is though. When building a vehicle for RFA two versions were built (more if you take collision into account, but I won't here). The first was a high detail "high-poly" version (poly referring to polygons). This was built to closely follow the concept (although changes were sometimes needed) in as much detail as possible - commonly the number of polygons in these models was in the millions, a far higher number than any game could currently handle. After that a "low-poly" version was built. This fell in the range of a few thousand polygons and was what appeared in the game itself. Polygons used for in-game assets are pretty much always triangles - for the high-poly they could be anything from 3 sided to 10 sided, but are usually 4 sided polygons.

The reason for building the higher detail version was that the detail information can be "baked" into a texture for use in the lower detail version; thus giving the appearance of a much more detailed model. This isn't trade secrets being divulged here; the majority of modern games use much the same technique for their assets, and the techniques can be readily read about on forums and blogs around the internet, but it is worth knowing what "high poly" and "low poly" are actually referring to.

For this version I actually had to build the low poly version twice. The original concept for this vehicle was that you would get to drive it, however it's role was more or less replaced by the Marauder Light Walker (made by Michael Clark) and so the Combat Buggy was relegated to enemy status; when it was realized that the vehicle would not been seen as close up as originally intended I had to build it again with fewer polygons. It appears in two or three areas in the game, but it's sadly easy to miss it as it's usually quite a distance from the camera.

The first two images here show the original version in beauty renders (I don't think I have any screens of the final lower version). It's worth noting that I didn't come up with the green metal used by the Marauders, that was taken from another vehicle - I think in the final game some of the yellow glows were changed to purple too, but this was as it was when I finished with it.

The Third image shows a wireframe of the High-Poly version. None of the pieces is rendered as solid here - just some of them have a dense enough mesh of polygons that they look it. You'll note the lack of the tire tread pattern - that's because it was added later as a texture rather than modelled into the wheel (If you look carefully you can sort of see it where the wheel overlaps something behind it). This was a good way to save time on something that is basically flat against the curve of the tire. I quite like this image as it has a real X-Ray look to it.

The last image is of a version that wasn't used in the game - this is the high-poly version as no low-poly was built. This one has a shorter engine block and is short a set of wheels at the back. I preferred this one, but it was felt that the six wheel version better reflected the Marauder design sensibilities.

Marauder "Inferno GX" Gunship
Art Directed by Chad Greene & Susan Cenci. Concept by Todd Marshall.

The Gunship had an interesting development path as it's concept was very different right up until it was time to actually make it. The initial concept was less compact and maneuverable looking. When the time was approaching to build the ship Michael Clark was constructing the smaller of the two Marauder walkers for the game, and I looked over at a point when it lacked legs. "Y'know," I said "That actually looks like it would make a badass gunship."

We mentioned this to Chad (the art director) and he agreed, so the whole thing went back to Todd to make the same basic form into something that could fly. The result is what's shown here. It also gave me a starting point, since the concept was based on the walker I could re-use some of what Michael had constructed for it. I modified it a fair bit, but it was still nice to have a base to work from.

The first two images shown above are of the high-poly model. I tried something different here, where I textured the high-poly version and then "baked" that texture information down to the low-poly (in the same way that I usually bake down the detail into a normal-map texture). This worked out quite well for the most part, although there was still a reasonable amount of work required on the low poly version too, but again I had a nice base to work from.

The second two images are of the final game ready model. Unfortunately due to some changes in the game design from the vehicles initial inception you barely get to see the exterior in the game. You do see quite a bit of the interior, which I also built, but I don't have any images of that handy. Aspects of the colouration were once again changed after I had left the project - most notably the yellow balls changing to purple. Could have been worse, could have changed to blue - who wants their gunship to have blue balls?

One thing to note, about both the interior and the exterior, is that it hearkens back to the Pyro GX from Descent, which was the first game Volition did back when it was still a part of Parallax Software.

Marauder Heavy Walker Cinematic Interior
Art Directed by Jasen Whiteside, Chad Greene & Susan Cenci.
Initial concept by Steve Holt.

The exterior of the Marauder Heavy Walker was the work of Michael Clark and Todd Marshall, but when it became clear that an interior was going to be needed for cinematic cutscenes it fell to me and Steve Holt to create it.

Steve did an initial concept, but I had to make a number of changes in order to fit it into the interior space, which was more ramped than we had initially realized. Other than that there's not really much to say that the images don't make clear, except that as with the LAV interior it needed to appear to be of a resolution the game engine could handle, even though the cutscenes were to be pre-rendered.

That's quite enough for today. Only one post left regarding Armageddon I think, and then it'll be on to other (older) games. I shall try and get back into the groove on the sketching and such, otherwise I'll be running out of things to post about awfully quickly.