Erie has just gone gold and submitted to the IGF student competition. While still fresh in our minds-- now is the perfect time to reflect on what has been accomplished individually and as a team. Over the last four months much has been done and I feel that I personally have grown tremendously as an artist, designer, and person from the experience. The purpose of this postmortem is to step back and view the process as a whole, so next time it will go even better. There are several areas during the production that I want to look at. First what I committed to do on the project. Second, what I did on the project and am most satisfied with. Third, obstacles faced on the project and how they were dealt with. Fourth, what I would have done differently. Lastly, what I learned from the project and where do we go from here.
I think it’s important to look back at what you committed to do and how that changed along the way. At the end of the day your reputation for getting things done and doing what you said you would do will affect your ability of getting future opportunities. Even though this postmortem will only cover this semester of work. I will draw from the letter I wrote before we even started. After the teams were made for Erie and Pinball roles were designated based on ability, leadership, desire, looks, and probably some random roll of the dice. I really don’t know how these roles were chosen, but the reality of the matter was I took on the responsibilities of the art director.
The reason I applied to be an art director was to make sure that the visual bar was set high and met by the team. For the application letter (appendix 1) I committed to; “inspire, direct, and relay a vision to a team which is critical to the game’s cohesive nature visually”. Furthermore, to work with and teach each artist the unreal pipeline and help them reach their goals. During the semester we worked together, grew as an art team… and worked some very long hours. In the end each of us had some exciting things to show and built friendships that will last beyond this project.
The first question that everyone is asked, at the beginning of every stand up meeting is, “So what did you do?” Well let’s first look at Erie in terms of numbers. Erie is made with all original art work which I was responsible for the look and feel of. Erie boasts over 300 unique game assets, over 200 unique materials, 5 particle systems, and over 650 unique texture files. And that is only counting what made it into the final game. I am personally responsible from producing 261 static meshes, 151 material networks, all particle systems, and all lighting this semester except for the cyro-room that was lit by Chris.
What I am most proud of individually from this semester was my super science package which consists of all the computers, the water tank material and the particle systems. The super science package is a set of modulating static meshes that the level designer used to make super computers. The reason that I’m happy about this set of assets is; they were added very late in the project. Near the end of the semester; as our game’s narrative started to gain traction some additional assets needed to be made to help tell that story. The assets are modular so the level designer can snap them into place quickly and rearrange them in any order. This gives the designer the ability to reuse assets without looking like a duplicate all over the level. Below is a set of images from the one of the super science computers.
The water tank material posed some unique challenges; namely making the texture look like bubbling hot water inside the tank. This was accomplished by a lot of trial and error within the material editor. After creating the base network, I continued to tweak it to perfection. The material turned out so good, that we looked for other places where we could use it within the level. The water network would be used on the popular cryo-chambers that Chris modeled a few weeks later among others.
Near the end of the development process I spent most of my time in between lighting and particles. While Chris was sleeping, I would sneak in and help dress parts of the level too. The particle systems were probably the most challenging task for me, because of my limited experience with them. Unreal uses an in engine particle system called cascade. Like most particle systems the controls are numerically based. Meaning the values for your system is controlled by a numeric input or a graph editor. Having a limited understanding of what each value controlled was very time consuming. In the end I was very satisfied with the particle system for the spray paint. I feel that some additional tweaking could be done on the flies to add randomness to their flight patterns. Below is an image of the final spray paint particles along with its material network. The spray paint particle system uses a material sub UV that allows it to fire off 9 different looking textures like a flip book. This adds to the realistic effect while not bogging down the game.
From a team prospective, I was most satisfied with the work ethic, dedication and willingness from the art team as a whole to be able to adapt to changes on the fly. During the production process our game took many turns, and felt much like a moving target! The art team as a whole never complained about the work load— and was always more than willing to step up to the challenge. Jon, Greg, Chris, and I would plan working lab hours almost every evening where we would all be there working together. The more we worked together; the more we would get done. We each had our own areas of expertise to focus on, but having someone else there to bounce off ideas, get feedback, etc. helped keep the art stuff moving forward.
The way that I manage the art team was fairly simple. My philosophy was-- find out what each person wanted to do and encourage them to do that. I am also more of an in the trenches type manager, leading by example. Each of the guys knew that I wouldn’t ask them to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. While others try to instill fear into their team to get them motivated. I thought building friendships would have better and longer lasting results.
In summary, the art team went above and beyond the call. They were all a pleasure to work with. Jon owned the animation for the game and took over the level logic. This led him to getting a job at Turbine as a technical Artist last month! Greg focused on monster creation and also filled in on some prop modeling (bathroom assets and some lab stuff). Greg recently had a second interview with EA Redwood and is waiting to hear back. And our honorary member of the art team… Chris, not only later took over design (more about that later) he dressed the majority of the level and also helped produce some other props (cryo-chamber, small fan and some lab stuff). Chris also had a second interview with EA. So I’m very excited about the work that was done within the art team, while each had individual success, no one lost sight on the ultimate goal; the finished project as a whole.
