Why's It Taking So Long!?
WildStar Concept Art
Wall.
UVs of Wall.
Button Thingy.
UVs of Button Thingy.
A Temple Ruin in UDK (WIP).
Temple Wall Diffuse.
Temple Wall Spec Map.
Temple Wall Normal Map.
CG asset I modeled, UVed, textured, lit, etc. Every piece needed to be UVed so it could be textured properly.
Dem Bones, Dem Bones! And joints, of course.
Controls for the rig are colorful.
Every fan is impatient to get their hands on WildStar and I'm no exception. Still, I'm a bit more patient for knowing the IMMENSE amount of work that is going into this game, and I'm here to impart that knowledge, more or less, to all the other impatient Nexians out there.
I'll be including plenty of screenshots to help explain the Pipeline process, and only the concept art will actually be from WildStar. The rest will be mostly from my own projects. If I don't give credit for something, then it's my own work.
So…where does a huge, wicked amazing MMO like WildStar start? In the mad depths of dark brains steeped in eerily glowing elixirs, of course!
Not buying it? Ok, actually it starts with an idea, which turns into a story. Beginning, middle, end, and all that. But this is a game, not a book, and these stories are intricate and intertwined. Storyboards are a good next step in the planning of a game; how it will flow and what challenges will be faced in order to progress through the game.
A game design document is also extremely important and details everything from User Interface and menus to character backstories and world lore. Props for lore!
Next the "look" of the game must be nailed down. The feel of a game's world, environments, characters, weapons, armor, items, flora, and fauna is very important. That's where concept art comes in. The concept artists get a verbal and/or written idea of what is wanted in the look and feel of a game and then they're expected to produce magic.
And did they ever! Once character, NPCs, props, and item concepts are approved they go to the 3D artists. This is where the more in depth explanations come in.
To keep things easy, let's say we're going through the entire process for a character. First the concept artists give the 3D artists what is called a turnaround. This includes a front, side, back, sometimes top, and a 3/4 view of the character to be modeled. Modelers have many different techniques they use to get results, there is no singular correct way to do it, but edge flow and avoidance of NGons are important. Every model starts off grey, unless the modeler likes to use a different material. Shiny materials help show flaws in a mesh, so are useful at a certain stage of the modeling. This model has no tris because she was not for a game, but you get the idea.
Once the character and his/her clothes are modeled, then comes the horrible part of UVing. Basically, UV mapping is taking a 3D object and unwrapping it into a bunch of flat parts that can be textured easily. Trust me, it's only fun if you're insane.
Now, I haven't UVed the model above, but I have UVed plenty of others so I'll show you a few shots of that.
Once a model has proper UVs all laid out nice and tidy, the texture artists can get to work. Sometimes the modeler is also the texture artist, sometimes not. For a game like WildStar the textures are hand painted, lovingly and with much cursing and drinking of coffee…perhaps with some tipples of harder stuff when the going gets too frustrating. I read somewhere that creativity is heightened by having a drink or two and am certain that's a scientifically proven fact.
Some of the textures might actually be Shaders, which are materials pre made and used on more than one asset. Custom shaders make texturing easier, but you can't go overboard on them if you want to keep that painterly style.
Then there are the diffuse textures which couple nicely with displacement maps (for saving geometry while still getting that kick-ass detailed look), spec maps (we don't want the specular highlights getting all wonky, do we?), normal maps, and etc. Yeah, it gets really complicated very fast! Of course, modeling and texturing for movie/TV assets is a bit different from working on game assets. It depends on the platform and used to be extremely limited for games, but now games can get away with using a few thousand more polygons than they used to. Which is nice for us, gives us plenty of eye candy on our quest to rule Nexus.
So, we have our character modeled, UVed, and textured beautifully. Now for the rigging. And oh boy, is that fun and time consuming. Actually, if you're good at it, it's not that bad. It takes a special kind of crazy to enjoy it, and I know plenty of people who love it. I couldn't find any of my rigging stuff, so I'll show off Aaron Green's rig. The gryphon was modeled by Adam Woodward. You can't see them, but it was also textured by Pedro Flored and lit by James Norem.
The back bone's connected to the shoulder bone, the shoulder bone's connected to the…wing bone? You can easily see how complex a rig can be!
So, we have bones, and things called Inverse Kinematics (IKs) that make it easy on the animators by letting them move a hand and having the arm follow it as it would in real life. And just when you think you're done by getting the skeleton all up and working…you realize the actual mesh, or skin, of the character doesn't follow along! Why not? Well, you didn't bind it to the bones, of course! So then you get it all nice and bound and…what the hell….the upper arm moves when I wiggle the little finger!?? Yeah, next the rigger has to set up the skin weights, which tell a certain area of mesh to follow along with this joint or that joint and taper off the area of effect based on….what looks good…it has nothing to do with mathematics at all, nope, uh-uh.
Pro Tip: Don't ever ask Aaron how to do stretchy IKs unless you REALLY want to know.
THEN comes setting up all the controls so the animator isn't as confused as a chameleon in a bag of skittles.
Part of setting up controls is making it so the animators can manipulate many different aspects of each part. Take the claws for example: You have the Toe controls, where you can move each joint separately or use those handy IKs and curl the toes like they would in real life. This one control manipulates each of the three joints in all three front toes, as well as each of the three joints in the back talon. See how handily these are all labeled?
If it's a character that has facial expressions, the rigger will set up what is called blend shapes, and these will let the animators quickly pick a facial expression…which they will then tweak till they get it right or until they fall asleep at the computer, whichever comes first. Long story a little less long than it could be…rigging is complicated!
Pro Tip: Aspiring animators (and grouchy ones already aspired) should always be nice to the people rigging the models they'll be using! A happy rigger makes an easier time for the animator.
Speaking of animators…the next step in the game are the animations. If it's a playable character she'll need a walk and run cycle, a jump, an idle or two, a sit, and whatever combat animations and emotes the game designer needs. Which means animators are going to be busy for a while manipulating all those joints!
We haven't even touched on the UI artists, who make the User Interface and menus all pretty. There's a great WildStar video from PAX on how the artists build the world and place all those props, trees, flowers, buildings, NPCs, and etc.! Lighting for the world is also extremely important and is done in the game engine. All these steps need to be done, and done well, for EVERYTHING in the game. Even plants and trees need to be rigged and animated. Not so much walls and ground. Terrain is another massive thing to be modeled and put into the game engine.
I also haven't mentioned the extremely important Programmers and the massive amounts of code they'll be slinging around this entire time. Programmers make everything work the way it should, from making sure your characters don't fall through the ground and setting up NPC paths, to finding and fixing all sorts of bugs...among many other things!
So, there's my longish-quick overview of almost everything that goes into making just ONE asset for a game. And that's why our desperately awaited WildStar is taking so long! Do you feel like showing the WildStar teams some love now? I hope so.
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