over 4 years ago - EVE Online - Direct link

Transcript (by Youtube)


0s [Laughter]
5s hello everybody how we all doing hello
9s this is looking very good no we're all
12s good so today I'm CCP um you know for
16s those I haven't met me yet this is a CCP
18s Benson I'm a tools programmer from the
21s audio and graphics team for EVE Online
22s and this is one of our illustrious
24s concept artists it makes all the
25s beautiful artwork that you get to enjoy
30s as you see from this gigantic list if
33s people were a pretty massive team in
35s general but it makes sense when you
38s think about we don't only produce the
39s artwork that you play it's not just the
41s ships or the backgrounds but it's also
43s all of the tech that powers that we
45s manage the rendering engine and a lot of
48s the things on the front end of the
49s client so our plan for today so since I
53s have a concept artist with me we figured
56s it'd be nice to talk about the art
57s production pipeline that we have going
59s and our production there's a lot of
62s steps and you can talk about any one of
63s them but we figure what we'll try and do
66s is give you an idea about the entirety
68s of the pipeline to make a new ship from
70s the perspective of the concept stage and
72s so I'll start with a little overview of
75s everything that goes into the production
77s of a vessel and then we'll hand over to
80s Benson let him give us a run-through of
82s everything that goes into his concept
84s work and we'll see how all that ties in
86s to the rest of that pipeline at the end
88s we want to give you a little bit update
89s of what we in the art team X being up to
91s for the last six months or so a little
94s idea about where we wanted to go in the
95s future and at the end hopefully if we've
98s got some time we'll take some questions
100s all right so start with a little
104s overview of the pipeline so the first
107s stage as you can imagine is concept in
110s so at this stage we're going to explore
113s ideas we're gonna have lots of
114s conversations with gameplay what's the
115s role of the ship that we're trying to
116s make what's the point in it what's the
118s kind of feel and look that we want to go
120s for what's the kind of mood we're trying
122s to sell with a vessel that we're making
124s but the most important part for us in
126s the art team the crux of what this step
129s produces is essentially instructions for
132s everyone else in the pipeline needs to
133s do
134s so the objective is to communicate to
136s everybody in the team everything they
138s need to achieve so we can call this
139s vessel done so we can get our ship out
141s the door once we have this we'll hand
145s these concepts off to one of our 3d
147s artists they're going to work in
149s something like Maya or modal and build
152s out first a very low polygon mesh that
155s we're going to use in the client this is
156s going to be the eventual hole that
157s you're going to see in the game when we
160s finally get this done we actually get it
161s into our engine for the first time
163s we don't have to wait around for Tech's
165s referred to be complete we want to get
166s it into our engine as fast as possible
168s so we can see how everything ties
170s together and then we will either hand
173s this off to a 3d artist sometimes or a
175s 2d artist so at this point we're going
177s to paint over that hull we're actually
179s going to have people hand draw and
181s various programs to try and give the
183s ship the overall look and feeling by the
185s end of this step you get something that
186s looks pretty much like the final vet the
188s final hole that you want to go for but
191s the next step is to add all of those
194s all-important Eve details and that we do
197s entirely within our our engine using one
199s of the front end editors this is
201s actually the tools that I maintain this
203s one if you might have might be aware of
205s it already it's called Jessica my main
208s job day-to-day is actually just making
209s sure this keeps running and I can add
211s any new tools and flexible things for
215s our artists to meet yourself so the
219s engine detailing is going to involve
220s picking all the decals on for the
222s factions getting the boosters in place
224s getting the turret hardpoints so we can
226s fire our turrets to a ship making sure
228s the animations are hooked up but
230s obviously the most important part is
231s getting all those tiny little blinking
232s lights because no Eve Shep is complete
234s without them the last step of course the
238s all-important audio for us like him once
241s you've completed a ship it looks good
243s but it doesn't feel complete until you
245s have the audio in place so you can hear
247s all the animations playing through for
249s you and as a last step and this is more
252s important recently we'll do a lot more V
254s effects it previously are our holes we
257s keep the effects fairly separate and
259s most of our hulls would be animated to a
261s certain extent but they would just have
263s some little blank keys and some decals
264s but more recently we've really enjoyed
266s having a more flexible VFX pipeline
268s and we really want to get more of these
269s little electric pcs running along the
271s top of the hull and especially with the
273s Tri Glavine ships these giant balls of
275s pulsating energy in the middle that's
279s the last step once we've actually gone
281s through all of this is to hand off to QA
283s is going to double-check that we've done
285s everything correctly we've checked all
287s the boxes we haven't screwed it up
288s completely and kick anyone's ass that
291s has actually messed up so once that's
294s all done we can get it finally into the
295s game okay so keep that in mind just a
298s brief overview of what the pipeline is
300s what we're going to do hand over to
302s Benson who is going to run us through
304s the start of how we do concept thing hey
308s guys I'm CCP Ben so I joined the amazing
314s moment for me I had been playing the
315s games in stores and then 5 and the
317s artist of the game is a huge inspiration
319s for me I became a dad also so last year
322s was amazing so what is consoling
332s of course we want to deliver like a
336s whole kind of final mood image to get
338s everybody kind of pumped up for our new
341s feature but oftentimes it's the coffee
344s break points it's the yellow sticky
346s notes that are the most important part
349s in the beginning and then we go from
352s there to something like this but the
355s sticky notes are very important so
358s scribbles on paper on to delivering a
361s final mood Tim it's Legolas its what I'm
365s gonna hint that a little bit but I want
367s to start by talking a little bit about
369s our past process and then kind of our
372s current process of coming up with
374s concepts and delivering concepts and
377s then a step by step guide in creating a
381s new vehicle for a moment and then a
383s little bit of future stuff so in the
387s past concept artists were much more like
392s making high detailed illustrations for
395s you know a longer period of time to be
399s able to
401s get 3d artists and to kind of push that
405s further down but there was a much longer
410s time before 3d was introduced and it
414s became kind of like harder to modify
416s these really nice illustrations so what
419s we're doing currently is that we want to
421s get much more disciplines within the art
424s team on board right away and get
427s conversation started get 2t and 3d back
433s and forth very early on I mean the
436s concept art is currently now are able to
438s do 3d block cuts with a fairly good
443s quality but you always need that extra
445s finish and then we get visual effects in
449s audio to kind of get that extra oomph to
452s the concept and then we have this
457s process repeated if we feel like we're
459s not and nailing it so what is the mood
462s we try to establish the mood in the
465s beginning this is a fairly small example
467s of the mood that we had regarding the
470s neutral alien ships describes kind of a
475s question opening jaws three-part breakup
478s it sparks a lot of conversations gets
482s the things going and then we try to kind
484s of come up with a new vehicle designs
486s within this mood
488s so that's on to the thumbnail face and
492s then on to block outs where we try to
494s get these thumbnails into actual volumes
497s where we can look at them in different
500s light and and actually get kind of a
504s better understanding if the thumbnails
507s actually make sense
509s because often times they don't and then
512s there's an over painting phase which is
515s like a more detailed approach to kind of
517s the functional aspects of this ship
522s so minds to paper we're trying to escape
526s the week-long illustrations we want to
529s go much faster into conversation with 3d
534s artists
535s and establish goals right away get some
537s prototypes running answer questions on
541s if the concept has any like technical
543s limitations and if they're worth the
546s pursuit or if we need to reconsider what
549s we're doing the process takes the same
553s amount of time but we feel like we're
555s delivering a much higher quality product
559s so here's an example of a call that we
562s had in mind we got the roll for the
564s heavier soft cruiser very early we
568s wanted to do much sort of a perfect girl
570s version with kind of to keep in mind
573s kind of how the empire's would modify
575s them and also at the same time if you're
579s modifying something you can strip it
581s apart and you kind of put it back
583s together but you leave out things that
585s you don't need like the hood because who
587s needs it and you want to see like more
590s of the kind of the technical foundation
592s that was kind of the goal that we wanted
593s to go for and the same thing was kind of
596s the red line down the Domino's with the
601s new process we got this kind of blocked
603s out and fairly finished in a matter of
607s days and then it was all about just
609s finishing coming up with vehicles it's
616s not just you know whatever feelings you
620s have in the day time it's more you can
622s break it down into into an actual
624s process which I'm gonna go through now
629s so it's not a dictating checklist it's
635s something that you fall back on you keep
637s it in mind and but and it's very good
642s because it has like a like an importance
646s from top down so we start with the shape
652s which is the most important part it's a
657s thing that you always remember the
658s silhouette it's the essence of creating
663s unique vehicle for the game
666s it is what penetrates your
668s subconsciousness it's it's a things that
672s you see on the back of your eyelids when
678s we're coming up with silhouettes we
682s oftentimes think about you know past
684s designs and we have already established
686s and perfection moods we have guidelines
690s in-house that we try to follow and
694s sometimes not but this process kind of
700s establishes the frame that we were gonna
702s go with into the future with with this
705s design and then then we can have like
708s internal debates very heated debates
711s about symmetry versus asymmetry or
714s horizontal versus vertical designs and
717s in this face we also kind of start
720s thinking about functional bits and for
723s example turret locators which is very
726s important you don't always know in
729s design what you want
731s so this states is very important in
734s eliminating things that you don't want
740s when we have the shape it's just a 2d
743s plane so we start to kind of track it
746s out and make it and turn it into a
747s volume and we do that with grayscale
749s values usually so we kind of pull the
753s shape out of the black silhouette and
755s when we're doing that we are already
757s starting to hint functional things on
762s the weaker when you're distributing
767s these shapes and values on top of the
769s silhouette it's kind of important to
771s keep the distribution of shapes and
773s details in mind because it's very easy
776s to come up with a very noisy image or or
781s noise the design and we want to of
784s course make it more interesting and have
786s points of interest and such things like
789s you can see in this example where
792s there's a
794s good there is a good foundation font a
797s tional shape and then you have clusters
799s of detail around the piece this piece
803s was made by CCP look so smoothly and is
806s an example of a good sense of flow where
810s you have a point of interest in the in
812s around the circular piece and then kind
817s of like an easier out hull shield
819s plates with less detail it's a it's it's
822s you know points of interest points of
825s rest so soft and hard that is the states
834s where you kind of emphasize the style of
836s the vehicle going from like soft and
841s elegant to heart and military this is
844s the highest contrast between like Cal
847s Terry and gallant the design for example
849s it's very much of course dictated by
852s past the science law and like our
854s guidelines and we want to steer it of
858s course keep steering it in that
859s direction even though we oftentimes
861s explore like a variance on that and then
865s we have the neutral avians family which
868s is like a mix of both and that has been
871s established and will be kind of the
873s ongoing design into the future then you
880s want to clean up the different shapes
884s establish kind of basic functionality of
886s the vehicles you know shield plates and
889s Jim pacts bolts and cables and so on
892s here's an example on the left side of
896s line-drawing on top of the Tri Clarion
898s arc and kind of the resulting texture
908s this is actually the first no yeah this
913s is a shift actually er I I worked on now
915s and in the past months where you can see
917s also kind of how the this process of
921s making this line breakup can lead into
924s you know of course guiding the the
927s texturing process which we will go
929s through a little bit later so back to
934s Johnny on the pipeline alright so
937s normally when we're going through the
940s straightforward process we wait until
941s the concerts actually finished before
942s moving on but so far in this process in
945s making concept we have our silhouette
947s we've got our shapes defined it's got a
949s good volume probably got a block out at
951s this point you could actually take it
952s from here and start building 3d mesh and
957s the main thing that you want to do here
959s is build a low polygon version of the
962s ship something that's going to perform
963s well when you actually put it in game
964s and since the concept encase you can see
968s one of the the early block hooks for the
970s Tri gleaming and frigates doesn't look
971s exactly like it does in the end but you
974s get the right idea
975s puts the shapes in the right place and
977s when you have one of these they're great
979s for doing things the paint over phase so
983s you can see here where concept artist is
985s put it in 3d taking a screenshot brought
987s it back drawing lines over it to go
989s through that checklist of that checklist
992s process but with that block out you've
996s already got the idea in
997s three-dimensional space and it'll
1000s probably done using volumetric editor so
1004s there's something like 3d coat which
1006s will let you use little voxels kind of
1008s like really granular minecraft to
1011s actually put together something looks
1012s the right shape but when we actually on
1015s to get a performant in the game we need
1016s to build a proper mesh so this has to be
1018s done by one of our 3d artists ultimately
1021s built in Maya but those sometimes use a
1023s program called modal was quite popular a
1025s blender binary which you can pick up
1027s anywhere so once you have the low
1031s polygon version of the ship you're going
1033s to be missing a lot of the details so
1035s you can probably get a lot of the main
1036s shapes in there where you want to have
1038s those soft and hard edges and you can
1041s also
1041s and some of the things like where you
1042s want to have paneling and things on the
1043s model later on but you're missing a lot
1046s of the fine grain detail it's not going
1047s to be super smooth along the edge of
1049s like metal plating on your ship you're
1051s not gonna have the little groove that
1052s catches some of the light so what
1054s they'll also do at this point is make a
1056s really high polygon version the the
1058s picture here on top is actually the the
1060s high poly one has way too many polygons
1063s to see at this resolution and size so
1066s once they have this what they can
1068s actually do is they've got a lot more to
1070s work with and they can take a lot more
1071s time putting in the little granular
1073s parts that they want in it they want to
1074s express to make it feel and look more
1076s like the concept they had originally and
1078s at the very last step of this we do a
1081s process called baking where we'll take
1083s that high polygon version using some
1086s math magic we can project it onto the
1087s low polygon version and it'll generate
1089s these two images the first one is the
1092s normal map ten years ago you might have
1094s heard it referred to as things like bump
1096s mapping but this is a way of kind of
1098s cheating geometry a little bit the
1101s polygons are triangles and they give you
1102s the main shape but this is a way of
1104s saying well let's just pretend that
1107s that's a little bit more granular
1108s surface it's got different angles and we
1110s can play with how the light reflects off
1111s of it using this map so the colors are
1114s actually dictating three-dimensional
1116s directions which give you the direction
1118s of the surface and where the texture is
1120s laid by wrapping this around the hull it
1122s gives it that extra level of detail the
1125s second map the occlusion map is a
1127s another little trick that we use to give
1129s a little bit of shadowing very cheaply
1132s to our assets so this is when you're
1134s doing little grooves along where you've
1135s got an overhanging edge there those are
1138s areas that are unlikely to receive much
1139s light so they should always be a bit
1141s shadowed compared to everything else if
1143s you think about like the corner of a
1144s room received a lot less light than the
1146s rest of the walls and it'll tend to be a
1148s little bit more shadowed and being
1149s occlusion or the occlusion map allows us
1152s to kind of pre calculate this shadowing
1154s and just put it over it's kind of like
1155s pouring ink over a 3d printed model to
1158s let the ink flow into the cracks and
1160s darken it a little bit once you've got
1163s it hooked up once you've got all of
1166s these things done in the modeling phase
1167s you can just put it straight in the
1168s engine and you get this kind of Luke and
1171s at this point with just the normal map
1174s of the occlusion map
1175s it's got the right shape it's not got
1176s any of the colors and there's nothing
1178s that expresses the kind of materials
1180s that make up that hole but all of the
1182s shapes are in the right place you've got
1184s that silhouette captured you have all of
1186s those lines breaking up the geometry and
1188s between those soft and hard areas on the
1190s hull and it ultimately has all of the
1192s right shape it's also at this point that
1194s we've probably got a lot of the
1195s animations done it's become increasingly
1197s important to us over the last few years
1198s it's also something that's evolving in
1201s how we describe in the concept in phase
1203s which parts we want to have move which
1205s parts we want to give it a little bit
1206s more vibrance okay so we'll go back to
1211s the concept and see where we go from
1213s that that section there so we're onto
1218s the material States this is where we
1221s give the ship more functional depth to
1225s the values that we already have
1226s established and it starts to already
1228s look more like a like an EVE ship so
1232s this is kind of like going from
1233s grayscale on the left to kind of hooked
1236s up version of the ship and game where
1240s you have the material selections
1241s correctly mapped
1250s then we have the decals it's a stickers
1254s logos and bling keys it's a thing that
1257s kind of is very important in grounding
1260s the ship in the universe the molesta in
1267s this process is the color it's not last
1272s because it's the least important it can
1276s come in at any point in the design but
1280s usually it has been established already
1282s if it is signing within a family of
1284s ships and it's also important when we're
1291s concepting effects we want to give that
1296s ship that extra kind of layer of of
1298s visual you know that's and and they're
1303s the colors is very important in selling
1305s their the mood and this is a this is a
1312s concept image it kind of describes how I
1315s felt in my belly this morning but but it
1321s is an older concept of the entropic
1323s disintegrator and we have moved a little
1327s bit away from that currently but this is
1330s kind of where it all started
1336s color is also very important in your
1338s skin two signs they're kind of the whole
1342s color spectrum is on the table pink also
1347s where we where we explore you know
1350s shapes patterns color hues and all types
1354s of effects we have been kind of pushing
1360s the ads of what we want to deliver with
1362s with skins and and we are still making a
1365s lot of exploration that we're not
1366s showing you guys but the recent skins
1370s kind of show that that that there are
1374s guys that are mainly doing skins like
1377s CCP blue screen and CCB school bus
1381s they are they are doing some really good
1384s stuff here's the in North skin we wanted
1401s to of course give the skin to our newest
1404s Zeppelin and the concept for the even
1410s north sporty and sleek making use of
1414s natural colors some hints of snow and
1416s ice and some sticky maple syrup
1423s [Laughter]
1427s excellent skin back to the pipeline
1434s okay so with the concept complete at
1437s this point once it's gone through that
1438s checklist and then we've had a lot of
1440s internal arguments had our back and
1442s forth we've eventually got it through
1444s our 3d modeling stage we're ready to
1446s texture it so texturing the texturing
1449s process it's really about adding that
1451s that paint on the top the we in the end
1456s we and our pipeline need eight of these
1458s eight separate maps and the reason we
1461s have these is because we move to a
1463s pipeline which was on a dev blog in 2014
1465s called PBR physically based rendering
1468s and what this does is it gives us a more
1470s realistic light interaction with the
1472s surface of each of our ships which gives
1474s them just an overall nicer look if you
1475s want actually the details of that you
1477s can go back to this dev blog from 2014
1479s and our pipeline seems a little bit from
1482s then but most of the maths this
1484s explained on this page is still the same
1485s if you're curious about that but from
1488s that modeling phase with our high poly
1490s and low poly we've already got our
1492s ambient ambient occlusion and normal
1494s Maps done so the next one that we can
1497s actually pick off really quickly is the
1499s dart map it's very simple it's just that
1500s map that we fade in as your ship gets a
1502s little bit older we start from bleeding
1504s in around the edges this we can generate
1506s pretty easily with a program called
1508s substance painter
1508s it takes a lot of configuration with our
1510s artist but it's one of the easiest ones
1512s for us to do but the rest of these well
1514s they get done by hand
1517s mostly by someone like Benson here
1520s sitting with Photoshop drawing on an
1522s image and then watching it pop up on the
1524s script another monitor on top of the
1526s vessel the first one probably the most
1528s important is the albedo so this release
1531s back to the materials part of the
1532s concept where they're deciding whether
1533s an area's carbon-fibre they want little
1535s details of piping working things or a
1537s vent over the top of the hull this
1540s albedo map is where you can express
1541s those final details they're typically
1544s black and white we allow a little bit of
1545s color in ours but their black and white
1547s because most of our color is added in
1549s engine so we'll do it later by defining
1552s which faction we want to have or which
1553s skin we're going to apply but what we do
1555s is we will shade that albedo map and the
1558s orbital map essentially represents how
1560s much light gets reflected off at the top
1562s of the surface it's like a sheer quality
1564s or reflection and reflective nature of
1567s it
1567s this is coupled with the one next to at
1569s the roughness map which gives it the I
1572s guess how shiny it is the rougher the
1577s surface the more the light is going to
1578s bounce off in every direction and look
1580s really matte and really scuffed up but
1583s if you make it brighter on this map
1584s it'll start to get shiny up to the point
1586s of being almost Metro like shine and so
1588s what you've got is the combination of
1590s those two maps how much light or reflect
1591s and that the way in which it will
1592s reflect it give you much of the
1594s character of the ship that you're going
1595s for in the end the two over here on the
1598s right the paint and the glow there
1601s obviously look basically black that's
1605s because there for real fine details the
1606s paint map we use reasonably often mostly
1610s to do little fine details of painting
1612s where we don't want the color to change
1613s later on or be changed by switching
1615s faction well the glow map is for all
1618s those tiny little windows are gonna
1619s flicker when you go into hull so the
1621s mask map the last one here in the bottom
1623s left corner this is what lets our system
1626s know when we are choosing some faction
1629s or we want to go for a color scheme this
1631s map is tells our engine where to put the
1633s colors where to replace the color on
1635s that albedo map so if you layer them all
1637s for the top of each other essentially
1638s the mask map has four values in it for
1641s different values of black white and two
1643s kinds of gray and what they do is you
1645s can define an area and say this is
1646s material one and we'll paint it white
1649s and you can have another area that's
1650s black no sets material to later on when
1653s we actually get it in our system that
1654s means it's very easy for us to just
1656s flick through different color schemes or
1658s apply our galantai scheme or a navy
1660s scheme whatever it is and it wickley
1663s just replace all of the colors on the
1664s map so we can see the overall look of
1666s the ship so at this point you've got
1670s something that's well painted up we're
1672s probably giving it to a concept artist
1673s to work on for a week or two weeks they
1676s got all those fine little details in
1677s there put all the little bits of
1679s character into the overall image and but
1682s the next thing you have to do to make
1683s sure that it feels like a complete ship
1685s is all of the in engine detailing so
1687s this is where we go back to the the
1689s decal stage of that concept where we're
1693s going to add in all of the little parts
1694s that give it character so the first
1698s thing that we have to add is all of the
1700s visual details so
1701s this is placing decals picking on the
1704s blinkie's adding the kill marks we have
1706s to have that put in someplace will even
1708s mark out areas which will get damaged so
1711s that these can come through and finally
1714s adding things like you know a haze
1715s effect over bay areas and having things
1718s like the boosters put in the right place
1719s and are working but the next step you
1724s may not think about so much from us but
1726s what will I have to do is that shield
1728s that you can see illuminating when you
1729s get shot out we have to make sure that
1731s that's defined somewhere as well and
1733s actually you can see here there's lots
1735s of these tiny little blue orbs with
1737s arrows sticking out of them over the
1738s creek over the top of the hull these are
1740s actually damaged locators which well we
1742s can generate a little bit and mostly
1743s have to be catered by hand by one of our
1746s artists what they're actually doing is
1748s picking an area for you to be shot at so
1750s that when we play one of the damage
1752s impact effects of a projectile smacking
1754s into your hull when we overlay the the
1756s damage effect over the top of it it
1758s doesn't do anything crazy
1760s particularly it's really bad if it goes
1761s aren't an edge intends to bleed over
1763s different parts of the geometry in a way
1765s we don't like so what they have to do is
1767s make sure that they've surrounded the
1768s entire ship in these points and make
1770s sure all of them are in sensible
1773s locations that don't go crazy and so the
1779s final stage as we say adding the audio
1782s quite often the audio comes at the end
1784s once we've got a good established idea
1787s about what the ship is and what kind of
1789s animations are going to be in place and
1791s we've probably got something already
1793s kind of hooked up an engine for our
1794s audio team to play with
1796s we'll start having them craft the actual
1798s sounds for all of the ships so the
1802s important part of this stage I have no
1804s idea how that guy actually makes all of
1805s the audio that we do i've tried looking
1808s into it before but it's beyond me a
1810s little bit but what we'll do is at this
1812s point we'll just make sure we've got it
1813s hooked up and it plays at the right time
1814s with the right cue also at this point
1817s we're not allowed to touch any of the
1818s animation speeds again or the audio
1820s director will get very angry and the
1823s final step and this is the thing that we
1825s want to do a lot more of and this is
1827s tying VFX into our holes
1829s our holes used to be know very stocking
1832s standard they were just very solid
1834s shapes
1835s we're very identifiable and we love the
1837s look of them but giving them a character
1838s with the way that they can move and they
1840s can morph it's just way more interesting
1843s for us to do and adding on to that
1845s ability to express character in new ways
1847s is the V effects so with a lot we've
1850s invested a lot of work in the last
1852s couple of years and to getting our VFX
1855s pipeline a little bit more robust and
1857s that means we have way more opportunity
1859s to use the effects on top of the hull
1861s this was really important for the for
1863s the Treg Levine ship suite this was a
1865s time when we went really deep on the
1867s concept side into what we want the V
1869s effects to look like and really use that
1871s to bring through ideas for the the ships
1874s we were making but I figured it would be
1877s fun to actually see this in action so
1881s again this is Jessica the program that I
1882s maintain it's built on top of the client
1886s so actually uses a lot of the the same
1888s infrastructure as the client that you're
1890s playing on but with our front-end that
1893s we built on top of it which allows us to
1895s do all those detailing processes this is
1897s actually me this video was getting quite
1900s all the views that in quite a few places
1901s but not being an artist is very hard for
1903s me to recreate this it's very time
1905s consuming the I really liked what CCP
1908s angler did originally with the detailing
1912s for the vector II designed so I decided
1915s I would sit down and try and recreate
1916s this myself a little bit and you can see
1919s me trying to like get the decals in the
1920s right place and I've tried to copy all
1922s of the things that he's done you can't
1924s see here but I've got on another screen
1925s a picture of the ship for a reference so
1928s I can see what it looks like as I try
1929s and get everything in the right spot one
1932s of the nice things there's a the in the
1934s bottom right you can actually see our
1935s interface for our which is what we call
1938s the space object Factory if it's an
1940s object in space it's a space object and
1942s this builds them so it's a factory and
1945s what we can do here is it's all you also
1948s notice if you talk to artists we don't
1949s know the names of any of these ships we
1950s call them by codes there's one is gc3 a
1953s nice inventive name so what we can do
1957s here is we can define we can define our
1963s factions when we say faction we don't
1966s mean the same thing as in game
1968s what we actually specifically mean is
1970s essentially a color scheme so we have
1973s things like the asteroid faction and the
1976s rock faction and then a rock base
1978s faction and then I think we've got
1979s things like beat one two three four all
1982s the way to ten but what we'll do is
1985s we'll use this to kind of give the color
1987s scheme that we're looking for when
1988s adding all these little details and
1989s it'll do things like decide which decal
1992s that is I'll put in a code for that and
1995s it will go oh you're using this factions
1996s we'll use this specific decal for that
2000s area one of the things I really liked on
2006s this was actually when he did the bling
2007s keys on it and he made this lovely
2008s circle around them around this this
2012s little midsection to give her a back
2014s character where it blinks around and a
2015s lovely lovely circle but yeah it's it's
2020s good once in a while to try out the
2021s tools that you've made for your artist
2023s and then you feel really bad about all
2024s the work that they actually have to put
2026s in as you can see it's taking me quite a
2028s long time to make a second blinky it's a
2031s lot of effort so one of the things you
2037s can do I'll be safe you've already got
2039s an artist that you're copying is in the
2041s end you can actually just give up yeah
2046s so if you just tell it will reload the
2049s ship and you can just pretend you did it
2050s which is super nice okay so that's there
2054s the whole process end to end when we've
2057s gone from our concept through it to our
2058s final hull and we've gone through all
2060s that texturing work and we put all the
2061s little bits together and hopefully by
2063s the end of that we have an asset that
2065s you can all enjoy
2071s so what have we been up to we are
2078s creating more of these three tickets
2081s that capture the mood of the factions
2084s and the empires and they come already
2088s textured and ready to be a set being as
2092s assembled so it's a little bit like
2094s playing special space Legos we get a lot
2099s of variants really fast with a really
2101s small amount of set pieces and we get in
2106s my opinion really nice designs and these
2109s were concept straight in 3d so no
2113s drawings required and the results are
2117s quite unique in my my view and this
2122s return by CCP left rook and CCP angler
2126s and I was not needed on this task we've
2132s been thrown together is that allows us
2136s to get more variation on the assets that
2137s we put out so rather than just making
2139s one tower we'll put in every site that
2141s we use throughout the game maybe we can
2143s have very quickly a selection of five
2145s six seven of them then we can spread
2147s them around a little bit more give all
2149s of space a little bit more variation in
2150s character
2158s I've kind of like to I think it'd be
2161s nice let people decorate space
2162s themselves with these but there's no
2164s plans for that kind of thing yet most of
2166s these will remain internal let's whit
2168s will see a bit of ambient life with the
2175s same set of kind of pieces we want to
2181s get more depth to the EVE universe so we
2185s are considering going from just simple
2187s blinky light traffic to actual volume
2189s traffic here are some concepts for some
2194s 3d shuttles made from a small set of
2196s pieces and this can be expanded very
2199s rapidly here are some more shuttles made
2206s from the same set or similar set with
2209s the possibility of also turning and be
2211s into security traffic they don't mess up
2214s some possibilities more variants of
2220s traffic with the same parts some
2227s civilian escort vessels you can see the
2229s setup in the right top right corner
2232s trains and buses where are all these
2235s people going some industrial traffic
2241s cargo shipments in station traffic
2249s more industrial parts and also different
2252s kind of scale and that they were also
2255s trying to capture kind of like out of
2257s the how do these parts function when
2260s they're built in small scale up to a
2262s much larger scale and if we can use the
2265s same parts here the pieces have already
2271s been hooked up in the engine what we are
2277s hoping to do with this remember the the
2279s little lights that fly around the
2281s citadel's that we added them to look a
2284s bit like the headlights of traffic when
2286s you're high above in a plane so the hope
2288s is that at some point we'll be able to
2289s use more interesting things like this to
2292s give that same kind of idea of the
2294s civilians that also occupying you-you'd
2296s and living out their lives around you as
2298s you fly your ships so just give life a
2300s little bit more of a character maybe
2301s Express little bit about the environment
2303s that you're in
2304s about where traffic tends to go maybe
2306s kind of have them flying off in places
2308s that players tend to travel off in build
2310s kind of traffic lanes throughout the
2311s system so we're hoping to do this and
2314s hopefully we'll be experimenting a bit
2315s more with this in the coming months and
2317s we'll see if we can get something cool
2318s out to you guys can you kill them I
2325s don't think that would let us do that be
2327s cool some read the signs also we're
2334s always looking into redesigns we've a
2336s list of ships we're always listening to
2339s you guess if you have some comments be
2343s sure of that
2347s [Laughter]
2350s so we're a concept artist joining the
2355s team fairly recently he's been doing
2358s really good he did this a Tron redesign
2361s CCP Maki
2363s that's not his official CTP name he
2366s still con something about but he's from
2368s Italy it's really good
2370s he's doing some some interesting
2372s concepts on the a Tron redesign we're
2374s kind of pushing the silhouette in
2377s different directions again heated
2381s debates exploring material different
2391s materials and turret locators you can
2393s see we are already pushing the turret
2394s locators there in the in the black
2397s circles very good to get them
2400s established very early on to actually
2402s make sense and kind of a more soft
2406s version so here we're going for an
2408s example like back and forth with snows
2411s to be like more animation exploration of
2418s course we want to much more animations
2420s to kind of just get much more depth to
2424s to these vessels to sell the remote and
2427s the idea of like where they're coming
2429s from and what they're doing here's a
2435s burst 3 design here we see a line
2438s drawing on top of a 3d model so this
2441s ship has already gone pretty far in the
2445s inner and the concert process we wanted
2449s the simular to be a little different and
2452s closer to kind of our recent military
2455s designs and the tattoos couple different
2463s silhouettes I mean that's what we want
2465s we want tack tools to feel different and
2469s some animation exploration tack and
2475s visual effects
2478s so on the tech side of things for the
2481s last six months or so we've been we
2485s haven't had as much in the way of
2486s brand-new tech to do so we're really
2488s doubling down on building more robust
2491s systems so going back taking old systems
2493s and completely replenishing them maybe
2496s doing some of them from scratch some of
2497s them just get a bit of a refactor bit
2499s with the aim to give us a better basis
2501s for the next couple of years in that
2504s realm you might have heard a couple of
2505s the big tech noma at big ticket items
2507s obviously the 64-bit client and the plan
2510s to move to dx12 to give us some dx12
2512s support but this is all just giving us
2516s putting as a good position so we can
2518s start doing more playful and interesting
2520s things and here you mightyou this should
2523s already be out this is a complete
2525s refactor of our old sons moving them
2527s into our brand new planet tech and as
2529s you can see there is ZERO difference
2531s between the two so it makes no visual
2533s difference to anything you see in the
2534s game but for us it means that we can do
2537s a lot more with that system it's a lot
2539s more flexible for us it's a lot more
2540s stable more robust it's also easier for
2542s us to tweak now one of the problems is
2545s when you've got a bit of a messy
2546s codebase making any of the changes you
2548s want to do is too much of a nightmare to
2550s even think about
2550s so getting us the point of cleaner
2552s codebase means we can actually think
2555s about taking on some of those those
2557s operations one of the things though
2560s we've always been a bit unhappy about is
2562s the quality on low we prefer that you
2565s are played on high all of the time so if
2567s you could just do that that'd be great
2568s we can drop low but the the hope is
2576s though that we can actually just have
2577s higher quality law effects without
2580s hitting the performance too much and
2585s obviously this was a big problem for our
2588s VFX artists in particular because of
2590s this one little detail on the wormholes
2592s just why we've been looking at them
2594s recently where you can see the nebula on
2596s the other side of the wormhole when
2598s you're on high settings but not on low
2599s so that means it's gameplay missing
2601s gameplay information in the scene
2602s missing when you're on low settings and
2604s we really don't like that so that's why
2606s our VFX artist CCP Mercker
2610s has been working on this so that we can
2613s actually get the the the low shader
2616s quality to give it more of that gameplay
2618s information just look at little bit
2620s nicer and this is actually just thanks
2622s to a change that we made two weeks ago
2623s or three weeks ago I think where we
2625s finally managed to get around to this
2626s the problem was before tech wise what
2629s you could do is you could take a high
2630s quality effect and when it's on low
2632s settings you can turn things off but
2634s that's your only option so if you have
2635s to turn things off for performance
2637s reasons you had no mechanism to turn
2638s anything new on to replace it but what
2641s we did is we made a little pipeline
2643s rearrangement there a little tech change
2644s which means that he's now allowed to
2646s actually go in and say okay well on low
2649s settings turned this bit off but put
2651s this thing in an in in its place sorry
2654s if anybody's feeling a bit queasy but
2657s this was the important part of trying to
2659s get the the low shader quality version
2661s of the wormhole to actually give you the
2662s name be on the other side along with
2666s this since we're also already doing
2669s below there's no reason to not go and
2672s just touch up the high so one of the
2676s things that mercury wanting to
2677s experiment with was I'm giving the
2679s wormhole more of a 3d look make you feel
2681s more part of space less flat in
2684s particularly keep that middle part still
2686s fairly flat gives it that weird space
2688s warping look but these are still work in
2691s progress but and the idea was to give it
2693s something that felt like it was rotating
2694s around and the last bit is actually and
2699s for about a year year and a half we've
2702s had a new piece of tech that we're using
2705s for a lot of our ships we just call them
2708s controllers it's a very simple idea
2710s before if we want to play an effect
2713s based on something that happened you
2715s press the button in the game we want to
2717s play some effect that happens or a ship
2719s warps in we want to play an effect some
2720s exhaust pumping out or whatever before
2724s we'd actually have to have a programmer
2725s sit and type that in using the
2728s controller system we've managed to move
2730s to a pipeline for a V effects where a
2731s programmer can simply identify the Vote
2734s the information that an artist might
2736s want redirect that into a bucket and
2738s then it's the artist that gets to pick
2740s it out and hook it up and this meant
2742s that when we
2743s our ships we can have things like the
2744s exhaust shooting off when you go in or
2746s out of warp but in particular
2748s particularly importance here is by tying
2750s in the gameplay information we can take
2755s the the old version of the wormholes
2757s which would express their stability and
2759s give them a whole new look so there's a
2761s little bit more identifiable but this is
2763s also more flexible pipe line for a VFX
2765s artist in the first place allowing them
2767s to have a lot more fun with expressing
2769s game mechanics and gameplay information
2771s directly in the artwork that we provide
2773s in the game and so hopefully this is
2775s going to form a good foundation for more
2780s visuals in game that give you valid
2782s information about what's happening in
2784s your surroundings last little change I
2789s can't actually remember if they spun out
2791s already or if it's coming out soon as a
2792s tools programmer and I tend to be a few
2794s releases back in terms of my schedule I
2797s have to get everything done before
2798s everyone else starts but we are adding
2801s dynamic reflection maps previously if we
2805s wanted to make your ship look shiny and
2806s reflect the nebula round you we had to
2808s pre calculate this which meant that we
2811s couldn't do things like add in the
2812s planets we're trying to get more of this
2814s a bit more on dynamic nature of the tech
2816s to allow us to take the assets that are
2819s a wonderful artist make for us and couch
2821s them better in the environments that
2823s we're placing them in so I think you can
2825s I like the way that you can kind of feel
2827s that this just fits better into the
2828s scene with just a little bit of extra
2830s lighting come from and coming from other
2832s sources ok so that's everything I think
2836s we have for today so thank you all for
2840s coming it's been great
2841s [Applause]
2854s if anybody would like to we've got time
2856s for three questions if you want to come
2858s up and grab that mic hi I regret it
2863s already
2866s hi I'm kind of a new player to the game
2869s I think it's the giggles for my dad it's
2871s like that we're doing as a blind
2872s exercise and I've come from things like
2875s warframe or other games where I see all
2878s kinds of ships and the first thing I
2879s wondered when I saw the EVE ships is why
2882s are so many of them so asymmetrical I
2886s literally named my first a Tron tumor
2889s because it looks like it had a tumor in
2890s the wing asymmetry is beautiful okay
2904s what's the idea behind the art I mean
2907s what are the reasons we want to keep at
2909s a cemetery is actually just because it
2910s gives it a more unique look so we're
2913s quite happy with the art stuff that was
2914s established in the beginning we want to
2915s keep that going it's also again when we
2918s go into redesigns we don't want to
2920s completely throw away the ideas of the
2922s past but it just it's it's rare to see a
2925s cemetery in and the core art style of a
2928s game and so we just love having it so
2930s we're really enthusiastic about keeping
2931s it high so when I look at the ship
2941s models I love to sort of get an idea of
2945s in my head of what they look like inside
2947s and one thing I've always wanted to ask
2950s you guys and this is the perfect
2953s opportunity when you're putting the
2956s lights on the ships okay and you're the
2960s thing that really stands out in the back
2962s of my head is and the one that screams
2965s at me the most is think of something
2968s like the prophecy it's got all these
2971s little glowing golden or yellow like
2975s boxes they look like windows is that
2978s they're supposed to be or
2980s something else in your guy's mind and if
2983s so what purpose do they apparently serve
2987s at the time they look cool oh they look
2993s cool but like in your mind what are they
2996s supposed to represent or are they just
2999s decorations both I mean decorations
3003s mostly oh yeah
3004s but I mean it's also for you to
3005s speculate on you guys trying to improve
3015s the appearance of the ships from the
3017s outside the reflectiveness of the
3020s universe around them wouldn't really be
3021s the idea of when they're tethered that
3023s spot side of the ship being lit up more
3026s from the tether I mean I think for Doby
3030s not so for a lot of review facts we
3031s actually add lights into them already so
3034s they already have a kind of reflection
3035s on them so I think we used to avoid this
3038s quite a lot we have a lighting and tech
3041s it's called forward plus rendering it
3045s allows us to have a lot more lights than
3046s the scene anyway so we're always trying
3048s to add them you might notice we do
3049s things like on your on the fires on Rex
3051s now we have little fly lights to kind of
3053s illuminate the rest of the hall around
3055s the fire so if it's not being eliminated
3057s already by the tether when we inevitably
3060s get in our years of renovation of this
3063s game
3063s we never they give inevitably get back
3065s to taking a look at that they'll
3066s probably be some more elimination put on
3068s that as well thank you very much
3076s we are running an art corner outside the
3079s PvP room
3079s don't hesitate the common pocus we're
3082s not working we're here for you guys so
3084s just please come if you have any
3085s questions want some tips on art stuff
3088s you know want to start from arguments
3092s we're ready please drop by we will be
3096s starting it after the AMA later and
3099s we'll see you back here for the ena
3101s [Applause]
3105s [Laughter]
3109s you