Well.. an abbreviated version of it. Â The art guys over at Blue Lizard have given us a bit of insight into how they get the ‘Mechs built, rigged, textured, etc… to get them added into the game.
Rather than copy/pasting the entire post, I’m just going to highlight some of the bits I think are most interesting.
From the pre-production step:
The thing is not only to make a cool looking ‘Mech, even if this is a really important part of it: We also need to take into consideration the ‘Mechs stats; how many weapons there are, where should these be positioned; if it’s a fast light ‘Mech or a slow heavy ‘Mech. All of these parameters help make a ‘Mech believable and enjoyable at the time of playing the game.
Sometimes, to keep a nice aesthetic, we have to sacrifice some of the information contained in the datasheets. For example: a ‘Mech that has too many cannons on a small area will not look good and will not seem realistic. So, we have to redistribute the cannons to different areas or change the amount to that part.
This is good (to me), because it shows that while the new art guys are trying to follow the TRO, and stick to canon..sometimes, there’s too much cannon for canon. Â Being able to adjust the ‘default’ look of a ‘Mech, so that it makes more sense (instead of trying to cram 3 PPCs into a single torso because the original TRO artwork did), it helps with the believability of the ‘Mech’s appearance.
We also find out that the ‘Mechs live in 3DSMax…as 3 Million poly models!
We make a highly detailed high polygon model first. This model is going to have the really small pieces and details, like bolts, nuts, cables, lights, etc. We are talking about a 3-million polygon model. This model is pretty much impossible to make work on a web-based game, but it serves as the base for a lower polygon model. It also gives the low polygon model all the richness and lightning information inside the game’s engine. It’s important that the low polygon version have the same silhouette, so that every little detail is going to be ”baked” onto two different textures, the occlusion map and the normal map.
Quick side note.. Dear BLG guys.. I would LOVE to get some 1080p wallpapers of those 3 Million poly models!
For comparison.. Star Citizen is going to push the envelope, and use in-game models that have hundreds of thousands of polygons. Â Yes, there’s a difference between live/reference work (any of today’s video cards would probably go up in smoke trying to render multiple million poly models in ‘real time’)… but that means the reference models in 3DSMax, must look amazing.
It looks like we may see some high rez maps too:
It’s not just the ‘Mechs that make the game: There are also the environments. When the project got onto our hands: We decided to bring more life and interaction to the world beyond generic settings like jungles, mountains, etc. We want them to be recognizable places of the story of MechWarrior, and we want them to have something that makes you feel like part of this story. That’s why we are trying to give them more detail like particles, sand storms, fires, explosions as well as animated props to bring some level of reality to these places.
And speaking of the world…. here’s a shot they shared of a frozen map:
Very nice update from the BLG guys (via the always nice Viterbi from IGP). Â Looking forward to more from them!