Character artists explain how clothing and armor concepts move to 3D sculpting and tech art, and why ships are concepted in 3D but characters aren't. They cover bounty hunter designs versus shipjackers, gender-neutral outfits, and microTech LED clothing from the ELD brand.
Well, a lot of it's kind of to reflect off the sun. Black attracts in a lot of light, right? So it's kind of like if you wear a white shirt or a black shirt out in the open in the sun, you'll get a lot hotter when you're wearing a black shirt, because it just sucks in a lot of that light, a lot of that heat.
TL;DRYes, it has happened, especially with clothing and armor, because wearable designs must fit the human body and movement, so only so many shapes are possible and independent designers end up solving the same problem.
Exactly. And that's actually one of the biggest things that we don't struggle with, but one of the challenges that we have to face is armor, because we come across the same problem where a human actually has to run inside of it. And so there's only so many shapes that we can play with on the macro scale. The micro scale, we can tweak things here and there. But silhouette-wise, a lot of other, even real world and also other IPs, which I have friends in different IPs, and we come across the same problem. It's just the arms move a certain way, the legs move a certain way, and also our torso only twists and turns a certain way as well. And so we come across the same problem, same challenge, quite often. So there are times when I'll get text messages from my friends and be like, "Oh man, you stole my idea." I was like, "I made this six months ago." "Oh, I thought about it last night." I'm like, "Yeah, we're solving the same problem."
Normally at the very end, when we have a concept that we like and we get it approved, we pass that image over to the modelers, the character artists, and then they'll build, they'll realize the concept into the game. So they'll sculpt it out first in ZBrush, do a detailed sculpt as much as they can. But during that time the character artists will talk with our tech artists to make sure that it fits the volumes, fits the zones, that it also will be possible for that thing to function in the game.
TL;DRShip concepts use 3D metrics because players physically interact with spaces in ships, whereas clothing has no such interaction points, so there is little need, though he adds "not yet" and "we'll see".
No. The reason why the ship team... I'm not part of the ship team, so if I get something wrong, please don't scream at me. But our ships have a lot of interactions with the actual player, right? So there are zones where a character animation will trigger. Other IPs or other stuff that I've worked on before, you click a button and either the character snaps to that thing or they'll do a kind of a magical hand wave and the animation will trigger. The thing with Star Citizen, though, is when your character reaches out and grabs something, it's actually grabbing something in the actual space. So there are metrics for these things, right? For characters, not so much. There isn't anything on a jacket where you activate something. Not yet, anyway. Well, we'll see about that. But the metrics that we have, I guess, would be just the zones, which is just for modularity. And there's not that much gameplay in swapping a jacket out compared to a ship, where you click on this button, then a component will open up.
TL;DRClothing concepts turn around much faster than ships because they have far fewer moving parts, and good concept work, even loosely respecting zones, shortens asset production time for character artists and tech artists.
Clothing tends to be very quick compared to a ship, and the reasoning why is just, like I said, there's so many things that go in a ship compared to clothing. There's just so many moving parts when it comes to ships. But for clothing, not so much. And also, for the character artist, it's very helpful to have concept, because you'll have an artist that would design clothing so that we have the design locked in, right? And also, the concept artist will try to be as helpful as they can by respecting a lot of the zones. But there are times when I tell a concept artist, "Hey man, just go nuts. Just give me something really cool and we'll figure it out." And tech artists are super talented. They're a lot smarter than me. Way smarter than me. And they'll try to cater to the art. The concept artist actually does shorten a lot of the production time of an asset, just because if you have a character artist trying to come up with a lot of things while thinking about "this has to go in the engine," it's just a lot of things to process. So the concept kind of cuts that production time.
I mean, I would love a space cowboy. But we have used some for some of the designs, like for the bounty hunter concept that we showed off as well. A lot of that was inspired by some of the western films and also just cowboy style.
TL;DRThe difficulty was making bounty hunter armor look tailored to a professional individual without looking kitbashed like the shipjackers or uniform-like, and customized without becoming chaotic or unserious.
So for shipjackers, the brief that we got was they're very theatrical, but at the same time they put together what they want on their armor and they'll just kitbash stuff together. The thing with bounty hunters is these guys are professionals, but they won't be wearing a uniform, right? And even current-day [bounty hunters], those type of people, they don't wear a cop uniform. They wear what they want to wear, which is efficient for the stuff that they do. So the clothing or the armor is geared towards their profession, right? But regardless, the shipjackers, for a while, they were the only ones that were kind of non-uniform-like style. The slavers, to a certain extent, they were kind of like that, but shipjackers were the extreme version of that. So how do we make armor that looks tailored to an individual that's a professional while not looking kitbashed was kind of the tricky part.
Yes. So we had to find a balance of that. And also, making something look customized is quite difficult if it's tame, because we can just go the crazy route, just add spikes to it, right? And just say it looks customized. But if it's for someone that's very methodical, someone that's very logical, very strategic, it's a little difficult to come up with personalized things. The moment you put a sticker on them, they don't look orderly, they look like they'll just fool around. But we want them to look like they mean business, or they'll be pounding on your door and be like, "I'm here to collect." That kind. And so that was actually the trickiest part for the bounty hunters.
TL;DRJeremiah Lee keeps most clothing concepts gender neutral and follows each brief's intent, whether utilitarian or otherwise, changing cuts only when design specifically calls for a gender-tailored look.
I do understand where that question is coming from. So the thing is, I try to keep the clothing gender neutral, right? There are some cases when we make them specifically cater to a specific gender sometimes, but I would say about 80 to 90% of the time I try to keep them gender neutral. So I'm not accentuating this character's figure too much. It's kind of very broad. I wouldn't put cuts right here, and then I wouldn't put an ab thing right here. I wouldn't do that because obviously this wouldn't look good on a female, right? And so I keep that in mind, and I've done it for so long at this company and for Star Citizen, so it's kind of a natural habit for me. But I try to keep them as gender neutral as possible. Sometimes design will call out that it has to be specifically tailored towards women. Then that's when I might change the cuts of things, but the overall look, the overall feel of the character, I will do that based off of what that character is. So if that character is a very attractive individual at a bar, maybe it's like a James Bond type of villain that's trying to seduce a player or something, then there's a look that I would research, right? And so seduction would be one. So I would drive that drawing or that concept in that certain direction. But regardless of gender, if the direction of that concept is supposed to be utilitarian, I'll make it look utilitarian, right? Gender doesn't really play a factor in concept unless it's been specifically called out. For instance, Twitch Pacheco looks very utilitarian, combat-focused. She wasn't sexualized in any sort of way. She's not wearing a bar dress type of thing. That character happens to be female and she's wearing tactical gear. It really depends on the brief, and then the concept artist will follow that brief.
TL;DRYes, LEDs and animated effects have been considered and some LED effects shown, but ideas like scrolling stock tickers or ads are only concept spitballing, not guaranteed, and animated textures are possible but expensive and probably unwise.
And we talked about it on ISC last quarter, when we showed off the first ELD. ELD is the manufacturer we're working with for this, so you already introduced a number of LED effects.
This was a very risky move that I made on this one, but I wanted to push what our clothing is. This is actually our first Terra brand that our community has seen. And so for microTech, I pitched the idea of maybe I can actually see the individual's stock portfolio. It's updating and it's scrolling.
I think it will. People would flex, or people would just be super depressed looking at their own. But also, this is the craze. I was also here too, stock numbers just on their little bands here. But this was the biggest one: having ship commercials being played on their clothing. So also keep in mind, all of this is concept. None of this is guaranteed to go in the game. So this is all just me spitballing ideas to the directors and also tech and also Chris and also the art directors as well. But also LEDs are here. We were actually talking about animating textures. So if we were to put a video or some sort of scrolling texture, we do have the tech to do that. However, it is very expensive. So there are methods of doing that. Is it wise to do it? Probably not.
Exactly. But I did talk to Dave Haddock about, just spitballing ideas. I think we were just drinking coffee, sitting down, chatting, and I brought this up to him, and he was like, it'd be really cool if you were broke and you just needed money and you're stuck and your ship's all somewhere else. You got dropped off somewhere and you have no money. And so, the beautiful people who stand outside with the signs and they wear the Statue of Liberty clothing. So imagine that, but it'll be like an Aegis shirt that just plays Aegis commercials 24/7, and you just go around...
You get a direct deposit in your wallet. So we did talk about that. We thought that was super funny. And I totally could see that 900 years in the future as well. I think having ads play as well. There was one for this one I spoke with Gaige about: what if the colors of the shirt would just change, and we just have to do an animating video and just kind of UV it on here. These black areas, what if after every 10 seconds it'll just kind of flip over to the other side and it'll reveal a different color. So for concept also, I'm very like, what if we did all this crazy stuff? That's what concepts are for. And then Gaige and Corey will instantly shut me down.