Star Citizen Live Gamedev 1 on 1: John Griffiths

So we have, or let's say in general, you'll have concept artists. So they're primarily a bit of 3D and 2D, painting pictures, let's say. They're coming up with the ideas, creating kind of inspiration for the team to then kind of run with, to follow suit with what you were saying. Technical artists, they're more focused on how we make stuff with the tools we have. So less about making things pretty, more about how can we make this tool easier for more people to use. So I'm probably really simplifying it. Sorry, any technical artists out there.

Yeah, tech artists are also the ones who take your gorgeous LOD zero work and then smoosh it down often.

Yeah, we environment artists do that a bit as well, but essentially it has to be able to run. So that's why we need the level of detail assets. And I think most times they hold up quite well from quite a far distance, but that also means that we can have more stuff loaded in as well at any one point. Yep, so character artists, well, this is just in the art team in general. Name's on the tin, I suppose, so they make characters. Prop artists, again, props. So I'd say maybe this chair would be a prop, whereas the studio would be an environment.

So with the hard surface, a lot of our, I would say our environment artists are hard surface artists. And they are creating things like this studio, for example. Walls, floors, anything that the player is kind of walking on or at least can see, that's what they're doing. With organics, yes, they're concerned about nature, so trees, plants, mining things, rocks, whatever. But it's also the job of, I suppose, artists on my team in particular to marry the organic and the hard surface together. So just because you're a hard surface artist, you're focusing on hard surface, you've got to think about how all these elements come together, because if it's just natural rock and then metal, that's going to look a bit weird. Whereas if we think about how it blends in, is there a structure in place, is there a bit of a transition for it, then that's going to be better. And that's keeping more in with what I was saying before about keeping people in the world that you're building.

It can be, I'm sure it can be. Okay, so I would say if you're considering being an artist, then you need to at least work out which kind of artist you want to be. Do you want to go into props? Do you want to go into characters? Do you want to go into environment? Do you want to go into technical? Do you want to go into concept? Because if you don't really know what you want to do when you enter, then chances are you're not going to like it, probably. Whereas if you have some kind of inclination of, oh, I want to do environments, I want to go to a company where I can just do environments day in, day out. In a company like ours, because we're so big, you need to have your focus going in. But for a much smaller company, you might wear several hats, so you might be an environment artist, but you also do props and vehicles and a bit of set dressing or something like that. So if you were coming in, what your day would look like as, let's say, an artist one, is you do art. Okay, yeah, so we do have several meetings that you need to attend. Like we have, well, not daily, but every other day, we have a standup or a sync with the whole team. By the whole team, it's kind of the location team. People run through their tasks, we catch up on if anyone wants to show where they're up to or they want any feedback, it's a great time for that. That's not just art as well, that's working with design, both mission and level design. And then you just crack on. You continue doing what you're doing. So in their case, it might be on the UGFs, they're building rooms at the moment. So that's what you would do.

So we use 3ds Max here and it's pretty great, I think, because we use the stack. If anyone's used 3ds Max, you have a stack in it and it basically allows us to make very quick changes without having to really affect the geometry too much. And it means that we can see our results faster in the editor. And so for us, it's literally 3ds Max and the editor and a go-between. With other things, so with the, what do you call it, the organics guys, they will have ZBrush in their pipeline. They'll also have Houdini in their pipeline. So there's probably a bit in and out of different software before it comes into the editor. But yeah, it's actually quite easy to say these are the tools we use. I think we do use Substance Suite as well, and in particular Substance Designer for texture generation. Again, procedural, so it's not as though you're sculpting something and have to re-sculpt it. If the art director says less pipes, you can just go pipe number to one and then you're done. So that's quite great.

Oh yeah, you can't do that. Well, I'm going to counter it, because in a company like ours or large companies, you have to be kind of more strict on what people are working on, because otherwise nothing will get done. And you'd have a lot of people working on the same thing, which doesn't really work that well. Whereas I would say in smaller companies, and I mean indie startup type things, less than 20 people, you're going to be more useful to them if you can do more things. Because this is how I started when I was working in film. I think I joined as a character artist. I hated doing character art. It's just not for me. And I kind of moulded it, went from that. Well, actually I was probably a little clever: I knew a character artist at the time, so I got her employed so she could do characters and then I could do the thing that I wanted to do. So that's why I started doing environments, but because we were a small studio, I think I was number seven to join, you couldn't just sit there and be like, oh, I've done the props now, that's me done for this film. It was, okay, we need these environments doing, we need these vehicles doing, we need the set dressing doing. I also did baking of animation, so the animators would do their thing and then we'd bake it all into, I can't even remember what file format now, so long ago. And then we'd get that into, we were rendering in Lightwave at the time. So this was 2010 we're talking. But that's why I wanted to caveat and say, massively depending on the studio, the size of the studio is how many hats you'll be wearing.

But then it's one of those things where when you grow, when you scale up, it becomes important to have people specialized in certain areas, because people that tend to bounce from one discipline to another discipline end up not doing either one particularly effectively. At lower levels, the indie studio, like you said, it's necessary because we only have six people and these things need to get done. But when you scale to the size of the company that we're at, it becomes important to let the platform people do platform, to let the character people do character, to let the environment people do environment.

I'd also say that just because you're, say, an environment artist and you're working in a bigger company, you're not just, hey, make this room, next thing, make this room, next thing. You've also got to think about, and especially the higher you go up the tiers, you're more responsible, not only for your work, but also other people's work. And so wearing several hats becomes very kind of central to that role itself. So it's kind of, how is the team setting things up? How are we naming things?

Everyone gets an input on what you're doing. Not as in everyone's looking at your work going, do this, do this, do this. But you as an artist, you're free to change things. We have to stick to what the white box was. Metrics and stuff like that. It has to play, and there's a reason why we do that stage. Little things around that. So maybe when we come to putting the art in, you think, oh, this space would benefit if this wall was four meters over, just gives us a bit more room to set dress or do something, fine. But actually changing a puzzle, that's not really okay. But it's kind of like, for us, we're only able to create these worlds because it's not just one person making them and dictating what it is. It's the individual artists actually kind of putting their own spin on things or going, okay, these are the assets that I've got available to me. How can I use these things in different ways to create more variation of one space? And so it's great to work with people who just kind of, you give them the stuff and they just run with it.

So there we split. So as you're going up the ranks, you're like, I'm an artist, I want to be an artist. And then you could be like, okay, well, what does my career path look like? And you could say, well, I just want to do art my whole career.

Not everybody's interested in management. And filling out reviews and HR paperwork.

God, you made my job sound so glamorous. So you could go into principal. So with your principal, you're basically, here is a blank scene and we want it to look like this. And it's your job to kind of just make that. You're highly proficient in the software, you're highly proficient in what looks cool, what doesn't look good, and you really just go and make. So if you want an art role where you're just making stuff day in, day out that looks cool every time, that's what the principal looks like. On the other side of the bridge, it's more management based, and that's where this comes in. I couldn't think of the words so I went with the hands.

No, I do do a little bit. So as you're aware, or if you've seen the ISCs, I was heavily involved in the white boxing of the location, because to me, being able to play the location so early in development is really crucial. So I'm a big part of that. But actually, when you came to collect me earlier, I've started on a little room, because for me, I can't work on anything big. I can't be a blocker to other artists. So I've got a tiny little side room somewhere, and I'll just have time after the feedback, after the managing, after the scheduling, whatever, I can noodle away and get something done for the location.

So as lead, you're still doing art from time to time. And as a lead, it is important that you are an artist, that you maintain your art skills, because it's difficult enough to manage people when you do know what their job is, than when you don't know the tools that they're using.

Yeah, I think the further up the chain you go, I think the bigger the picture is that you're looking to create. So when you're first starting out, you're deep in the tools, you're making the assets, you're thinking about where the trim lines are going, you're thinking about where the POM detail is going to go, you're thinking about the assets as individual things or working in a kit of parts. As you continue to work on these locations and these environments, and the further you go up, you kind of move away from... You'll still have to do the little things, but you're also picking up speed as you're doing it, so it's less impactful. And then you've got almost a bit more time to think about the bigger picture. So how are these things coming together? What does the composition look like? How is the lighting going to work in this space? So being very much aware of keeping tabs on that. What are the fundamentals, and less about the granularity of things and more about the big picture.

Yeah, I find that in previous roles I've been in, I have been the same. And you have to learn, you have to go through and almost do it wrong to learn that, oh, I know I have to delegate this. And delegation is fine. My artists are trustworthy, they deserve it. And ultimately, we can't make this project as individuals. I can't make the entire UGFs on my own. And I wouldn't actually want to do that either. That sounds like it would never end. But so you have to kind of say, okay, well, we've got this many artists and these are the rooms we've got. And what we do say is, has anyone got any preference to what they want to work on? And if they do, then there you go. If not, then it really is just who did the white box for it, but also who's available. Because the more we can keep people together, if they worked on something from white box all the way through to release, then that's like an amazing portfolio piece for them. They did it all the way through. So we try and do that as much as we can. But otherwise, it's sort of a lottery. Obviously, it also depends on experience. So if we have new starters, then they work on smaller things or more contained things, whereas more seasoned artists will work on kind of bigger things.

It's all of those things. Way back then, when I was first looking for a job, all the junior positions were, you must have one year's experience. But the problem is, how do you get a year's experience without getting hired? Anyway, I did unpaid work experience in this animated film studio, and it was two weeks. And they were like, there's no job. I was like, fine. All I need is your name on my CV so I could say I've been here, so I now have some experience. Anyway, at the end of the two weeks, they created a job for me, which was then my first job. So that was great. But when I was on work experience, I was baking animation, and then I did a bit of prop modeling and texturing. And they really needed a character artist for their next film. So they were like, right, John, here you go. And I tried it. But I just felt like, well, characters never interested me. So I thought, well, I've got to keep this job now, so I'll just do what you say. But I've always been an environment person, through my childhood and stuff, it was always about the world I was in rather than being a player or changing what my player looks like. So when I actually started this character, yeah, I modeled it. But you could tell that I just didn't have an understanding of how to make a character look good. So yes, it had eyes and a mouth and a nose and arms and stuff, but that was it. There was no life in it. So in a way, it was kind of a blessing in disguise that I tried it. And in that, what, month, two months, I was kind of like, yeah, this isn't for me. And we weren't using ZBrush at the time for it. So it was very much modeling it in Lightwave.

Character modeling in Lightwave?

I know, I know. So really pushing those verts around. Yeah, it just wasn't for me.

Yeah, I would say that there is an element of, we need to get this done now, so you've just got to do it. That's generally when the deadline's getting nearer. Up until that point, it is thinking about where people excel, like you say, where they can be most effective, but also most successful. But having said that, it's up to the artists themselves as well to kind of say, oh, I kind of want to push myself on this next one. Can I do this? And then we'll just bear that in mind when we are doing the scheduling or the assignment of tasks, because ultimately, if you just keep doing the same thing, yes, you're going to get really good at it and really fast at it, but you're also going to pigeonhole yourself as well. Ultimately, our teams might move around and we'll have different people, and they'll all have different things they're good at or bad at. And it's just, we want to have artists, maybe they've got one strong suit, but then the rest of what they work on is still good. And there's no real kind of dropouts from that.

You don't want to run a daycare where you only work on the things that you want to work on, or you only work on the things that you're good at. But at the same time, you want to pair people up with where they're going to be the most effective when possible. It's like if I put Tom on this task, it would take him six weeks because this isn't where he's particularly strong. But if I put him over on this other task, he could get that done in three weeks because that happens to play to all of his strengths, and maybe we save that first task for somebody else. But the flip side of that is, well, Tom's never going to get any better at that other thing unless we put him on those things that he's less strong at. But then you have to accept that it's going to take longer to have that thing developed. This is an eternal struggle within all game development.

I think for me, I've worked in a lot of places where there's been limited career development. You'd have one review a year and you may as well roll the dice on how it's going to turn out. Even when you're doing great work, there's no guidance to it. Whereas now, what I want to do or try to do is take into consideration people's careers and where they want to go with it. So yes, it might take this person six weeks, but they're never going to grow as an artist unless they do do that. And we just balance it around. So if this takes longer here, then maybe their next thing is a lot shorter. So there's a bit of contrast to it, so they don't feel like they're bogged down in this one massive thing which has taken ages, which they're not very good at.

So like probably everybody who works in the games industry, they enjoyed playing video games when they grew up. And I really enjoyed playing video games. And my parents didn't think there was a career in video games. They probably still don't. But what kept me was that, even in film, when I was working in animated film, you can create anything you want within the remit of the project, but then you've got your spare time, you can then create whatever you want if you're not doing that at work. But it doesn't feel like I'm working, because I love what I do. And to be able to create whatever I want, and even just move verts around and stuff like that, it is kind of therapeutic in a way. Now, don't get me wrong. There are days... in games, we're an industry like any other. You have good days and you have bad days. And sometimes you're beating your head against a rock for eight hours and it's horrible. But then, for the most part, I would say for 90% of the time, we're doing things that we all enjoy. And then we can go and play this game after and be like, hey, look, that's the thing I did. Hey, look, mom, get the camera. So that's why I love it. I actually, when I was first looking for a job, I wanted to go into the games industry. But as I said, I couldn't get a job in the games industry off the bat. So I worked in animated film and then came to a point where it was good to just move over into games. And when I got there, it was great. But I think when I got here, CIG was just starting up. So joining at that time, for me, I wouldn't have been able to do that.

How you got to the game industry, you mean?

Yeah, yeah, games industry. Because there's a lot of transferable skills and tools between both things, especially now. So I feel like you can change more frequently.

I did actually have a stint in VR as well. So I took this position because they were offering me a senior role. So I was like, yes, please. I'm not going to get one here. Or rather, it was more, they were rolling the dice at that company on who got senior. And it was just like, I'm being offered it, I'm going. So that was great. So what I was doing was a virtual reality training simulator for emergency services, and it was great managing. So I went on as senior but became lead, and I was managing a small team there. But the reason why I came back to games was because that was very much real world. It had to be realistic, yes, but realistic to the world we live in rather than this universe we're creating. And I just found it a bit boring. And so with the games industry, it's super creative. You're working with, yes, artists, but also designers. And, how about we do it this way, or can we try it like this? And, oh, what if the gravity's turned off, type of thing? You're like, that's really great. And that would not even be an option in that job. So I took a little stint out and I was like, yeah, this isn't for me. Came back.

Probably. You could feed back on anything if you wanted, but the decision lies with us at the end of the day, whether we go for it or not. Don't get me wrong, it's great to hear when people record videos and they talk about the architecture of the game and how it would actually work in our world. That's super positive for us, because it's kind of like, oh yeah, we thought this looked right ourselves and felt right. But to see that the community also agrees with us kind of helps that feeling that, oh, we are doing this thing right. Let's just keep going with it. Obviously, if there's something, well, hopefully nothing will get into the game that is really wrong. I'm pretty sure there was a 10-foot scale ref guy outside of Lorville recently. So yeah, that's obviously not great.

Scale ref is the thing that you put in while you're working. And somebody left it in.

Someone left it in and scaled up for some reason. So the scale reference wasn't even the right scale. But the community highlighted that to us, and that's great. So we are able to then go in and remove that thing.

So I have been working on Excel. Now, we've been doing some scheduling and just checking that what we want to release with is still possible, and it is. And then factoring in, well, from a time point of view, can we delve a bit deeper and actually just check the numbers will work? From a team position, we've moved into first pass, so the art is now going in. And it's really, really great and inspiring to see what the artists are actually creating, what they're coming up with. We had a sprint with you yesterday and I was playing around the space. And even now, when some rooms are kind of in a halfway house where there's still white box but there's some art in there, and other rooms are more complete and more first-pass art. And even having those rooms that are further along and playing around it, I'm just thinking, yeah, this is working. This is going in the direction we want it to go in.