I was really looking forward to making the Art Book. For the cover page, I took one of the final few boards from the storyboard and lined and coloured it, trying to stylise it to differentiate it from the short enough so it was obvious it wasn't just a screenshot of a background from the short.
Then it was plotting out what would be in the Art Book. I looked over everything we had made for the short film in our Google Drive folder and made some bullet points of what could go in. I went over my notes and put down the final lot of what would be in the book.
The concepts and ideas page wouldn't have too much on it, since we were fairly quick to come up with what we were doing, I was however able to find our original Google Notes documents.
The character design section would be bigger, since each of the team designed one of the three characters and we all put much effort into finding the right reference material and honing down the designs. In this section I made sure to note down the specific designers and some of the inspirations.
The final keys for the short were fairly quick. The Peace-Keeper falls onto a broken pipe and gets impaled. He slides down a little, slower at first, then faster to a stop, grappling with the pipe to get free, but relaxes as he dies.
Rusty is also impaled, but falls slower as he is lighter. He motions for Lizzie to go on before relaxing to show he is dead now as well.
Now the keys were all done, I did another few run throughs to make sure the timing was alright. After I was happy with it, I changed Rusty's frames to linear rather than stepped, and went through the entire timeline to make sure there were no glitches and everything was timed correctly.
I did the same with the Peace-Keeper, although he needed more tweaking, as some parts of the animation like the roar or the pre-fight shots didn't have key frames to keep certain positions longer, so they had to be added.
I went back through the entire timeline again to triple check everything looked right before saving the project file and handing it over to Tom, the renderer.
Keying out the fight sequence was much more difficult, since two models physically interact. I started with the beginning of the fight, where Rusty runs behind the Peace-Keeper as a distraction to attack. In the original storyboard, that is all Rusty does before pouncing on Peace-Keeper's head, to which the Peace-Keeper rears up on his hind legs and falls back into the pit. As I was beginning the keys for it, it felt strange for a military machine designed to fight and kill to not be actively attacking, instead only defending.
So instead, I keyed out Rusty's distraction run as a defensive one; the Peace-Keeper rears onto its back legs, clearly ready for an attack, and attempts to slam its weight on Rusty as he runs by. The Peace-Keeper misses, so tries catching Rusty's back legs, but Rusty is too fast. Rusty does not run away either, he turns back to the Peace-Keeper preparing for the next attack.
This turned into my favourite shot, as without even realising, when the Peace-Keeper hops to face Rusty at the end of the shot, his legs aren't in optimal positions to carry his weight, but getting them to the optimal places from the previous position stretched the joints in a way I wasn't happy with. In an experimental attempt, I had the Peace-Keeper hop again to get his legs in the best position for carrying his weight and preparing for a fight.
After keying these positions, I worked back through them to time them correctly and I found the end hop looked great. His weight was clear in the height of the jump and the follow through of the landing, while also showing he had the strength and energy to be a deadly opponent in a fight.
Now the stage was set for the interactive part of the fight.
I started with the Peace-Keeper, who, in the storyboard rears up and grapples with Rusty, which makes him step back and lose his footing over the pit. I started with the rearing up, which wouldn't need as much preparatory keying as an active attack, since it was a defensive manoeuvre. I kept his forepaws in the general area where Rusty was planned to be, obviously allowing space to make it easier to alter later. His left backpaw makes a step back, trying to keep the flow of movement from his head to back, which slips through to the empty space of the pit.
I planned to continue with the fall into the pit later.
Now it was time to deal with Rusty. I keyed out the anticipation before the pounce, then the jump itself. Rusty intercepts the Peace-Keeper's rear up, and I went back to alter the Peace-Keeper's forepaws so he was holding onto Rusty better.
Now the keys were done up until the point the Peace-Keeper was falling.
While writing out the
essay, I obviously had to research the subject, but since it so recent,
especially the use of 3D graphics, I found some difficult finding much on the
subject. However, I was able to find a few online articles.
Initially, I had some difficulty thinking of a practical to
reflect the research aspect, but while I was doing the basic outline of
the essay script and looking through some research material, I had the idea to
create some basic models to show the capabilities of modern, publicly available
software.
Since I have access to both Autodesk
Maya and ZBrush 2021, I could use either to create a couple models to show the
capabilities of modern software, even by an untrained person. I have used both
a little before, so I knew what kind of digital modelling both software
offered; Maya is more technical, whereas ZBrush is more digital sculpting.
I decided to use both, creating
an inorganic object in Maya and a simple organic creature or character in
ZBrush.
For the inorganic object I noticed
that many environmental aspects were lower poly resolution in even modern video
games, as an environmental object isn’t seen as often, so I chose a chair to
model in Maya. For the organic creature, I took a turnaround that I had created
some time ago of a character of mine, since the design itself wasn’t as
important as the actual modelling.
Creating the chair model was very
straight forward, as it was quite simple, but I had to revise my knowledge of
texturing and lighting in Maya to finish up the model. Sculpting the character
bust in ZBrush initially didn’t feel difficult, as I knew some bare basics of
the program, however I had to learn quite a bit more, like adding more objects
and increasing the polycount.
I was actually really glad I decided
to create a model in ZBrush as it motivated me to learn and practice using it
more than I do in my spare time. Maya, on the other hand, I was already having
to use for the 503 film project, so I am much more familiar with it and did not
need to learn anything new.
In regards to the practical work
itself, I liked the base model of the chair, but to improve it I would re-do
the texture. I would make the texture more part of the model, such as
indentations in wood being visibly in the model itself rather than just a colour
painted on to look like brightly coloured plastic. I also liked the character
bust, although I’d have like to have thinned the head very slightly on the X
axis and added the hair. I’d also have liked to texture the model properly to
create a full model, but I found it hard to understand, so it would have taken
too long to understand it properly enough to apply it to the character bust.
If I was to do it again, I’d
detail both models more and texture them properly.
Soon after reporting on the issue in the Peace-Keeper model, Tom fixed it and I was able to get to work with it.
I timed out the keys for the first set of shots by the end of the street, starting now with the Peace-Keeper's entrance. I keyed out the positions first, intending to go back and re-time everything to make it look better, which I did once I was happy with the look of the keys.
I continued along keying out the shots, trying to keep the time along the smooth, linear animation of the Lizzie stand-in model. A few times I had to re-time the stand-in, but it was very simple and proved no challenge.
I keyed out the frames until all three models were near the pit of broken pipes, ready to begin the fight sequence.
How have video games evolved, particularly in the realm of 3D modelling, animation, and graphics?
Intro:
Video games are a very new medium, the first video game was created back in 1962. That’s only fifty years ago! And yet there is quite the history within that fifty years, from oversaturation, market crashing, and misogynistic market segregation, but the most obvious development in video game history is its visuals.
The real beginning of video games began in universities, created by students using then-cutting edge technology. Spacewar! was created by Steve Russell in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first real video game [show clips of Spacewar].
Sec1:
Early games were simple 8-bit graphics, and any character animation was essentially just key frames [show clips of Super Mario Bros/Donkey Kong/Space Invaders]. There really wasn’t much room to work with at the time, pretty much conserving every bit. Game developers of this time had to get creative to get their designs across.
It was simply technological limits. This, of course, improved with home console innovations.
Sec2:
The prelude to polygonal 3D was 2.5D games, creating the illusion of 3D with 2D objects [show clips of Wolfenstein 3D]. 2.5D games have been around for a while, the earliest recorded 2.5D game was Interceptor (1975) where the player controls the background with the joystick to give the illusion of being in 3D space [show clips of Interceptor]. This type of pseudo-3D game ran into the 80’s, overlapping with the beginning of polygons as consoles and computers became more powerful. One of the most popular games of its time was Doom [show clips of Doom], which sold out very quickly and ended up breaking servers with the mass amount of people trying to log on at the same time. This was after advertising multiplayer capabilities
Sec3:
Early polygonal 3D was very simplistic. It was mainly found on consoles, since they were becoming more powerful. The earliest recorded commercial polygon game was I, Robot (1983) on the Atari [show clips of I, Robot] … yeah, we’ve come a long way. A notable achievement was 1996’s Quake, which could render up to 200 polygons at once. From around that time, consoles began to rapidly improve. For example, Quake 4 released in 2006 and could render 2,600 polygons at once. [show comparison footage]
Sec4:
Sony’s Playstation 2 (released in 2000) was the first console to use DVD’s (although some previous consoles used CD’s instead of cartridges, but DVD’s have much more storage capacity), and included backwards compatibility. The increase in space and the power of the console allowed for a higher number of polygons to be rendered at once.
The 00’s also saw customisation in 3D, games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion (and later, Skyrim) [show clips of character building in Oblivion] allowing players to customise their character’s appearance, Sims with more options for character customisation as well as house building [show clips of character building in Sims 1/4], and Spore, with creature building that allows the player to play as a fully customised animal [show clips of creature building in Spore]. This is a great intersection between physics engines, AI, and 3D graphics.
Sec5:
In modern games, polycount isn’t even considered anymore. A single character can take 150,000+ without affecting the hardware. So these days, it’s all about shaders, textures, and physics.
Game engines have also become so widespread among the public, like the Unreal engine, which is free to use, allows even individual people to make very nice looking games, obviously depending on how much time and skill the individual puts in.
The quick improvement of 3D graphics in games is most evident when comparing games in the same franchise. The Last of Us came out in 2013 [show clips of Last of Us] with graphics considered among the best games could offer, but The Last of Us Part II, which came out in 2020 has graphics which are noticeably improved [show clips of Last of Us 2 (preferably something to show lighting/water/clothing]. Clothing, water effects, and combat sequences are all visually better, as is the way the player is able to interact with the environment.
Far Cry is another franchise this can clearly be seen in, I mean, just look at the original Far Cry from 2004 [show clips of Far Cry] versus the most recent Far Cry: New Dawn from 2019 [show clips of New Dawn (preferably showing environment]. This is only a 15 year difference! Not to mention map size increase that made Far Cry 5 and New Dawn so big, fast travel stations were changed from just outposts to any landmark.
Speaking of map size, I can’t go on without mentioning Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017) along with it’s expansion Frozen Wilds [show clips of Horizon (preferably showing lighting changes or environment]have a huge map with various biomes, rainforests, coniferous forests, swamps, deserts, mesa canyons, and deep snowy mountains, all with changing daylight and weather systems that the character will react to.
Sec6:
With the very recent release of the Playstation 5 and the Xbox X, even the near future of games is exciting. Horizon: Forbidden West [show clips from trailer (preferably underwater segment] promises underwater gameplay, and with the new console, possibly larger maps again, Cyberpunk 2077 [show clips of gameplay trailer (preferably character builder] has advanced character customisation that allows complete control over the player character (even down to genitalia).
The game industry itself has been well sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic, as developers can work at home and numbers of gamers have reached record highs (lockdown, ammirite?), of course, trade events like E3 being cancelled has hurt indie developers, and production of consoles, which are made in China, have slowed, but overall it’s doing fairly well.
Personally, I am very excited to see where we go next.
Bibliography:
teachinghistory.org (unknown) Ask a Historian: The Gaming Revolution. Available at: https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25764 (Accessed 02/11/2020).
PopCultHQ (2018) The Evolution Of Polygons in 3D Video Game Graphics. Available at: https://popculthq.com/2018/02/26/evolution-polygons-3d-video-game-graphics/ (Accessed 02/11/2020).
History.com (2019) Video Game History. Available at: https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games (Accessed 02/11/2020)
