A concept artist builds a hover tank in Blender, using greeble detailing, and talks about his Tumbril Storm and Lynx rover concepts. The devs cover Blender add-ons, 3ds Max in ship production, the Mighty Bridge tools, a possible mocap episode, and why new hires aren't filmed in their first six months.
That I can speak about is just the Storm. And the Lynx.
So the Tumbril Storm, the Lynx rover, and then of course you've got about two or three more under your belt that folks will find out later about.
Well, the brief in my mind was something that my dog can drive. That's the whole point. Yeah, I wanted something that, tanks are always the same since a bunch of decades. So let's do something that flies and it's a bit more extreme, maybe. And what is a tank without a cannon?
I use MESHmachine and DECALmachine, mostly. But I like a vanilla version because then I can work with other people's computers. That's quite handy to be able to swap. And I have a couple of different versions, one that I use with mouse, the other one that I use with a Wacom tablet.
I noticed that you have a Wacom tablet at your desk normally, but you're not using it for this.
No, I removed my setup here, so there was no need. And there are things that are easier to do with the tablet and things that are more complicated to do. So it just depends what kind of task I have.
TL;DRShip modeling is mostly done in 3ds Max, while props and character teams sometimes use Blender and other tools, linked by in-house converter tools so people can use whatever suits them.
No, in production, they use 3ds Max.
For ships, but there are other things in the pipeline. Sometimes the props team will use Blender. Sometimes the character teams will use Blender. Basically, we've got a tools team who have made a bunch of different converters and connectors and stuff, and you might have heard us talk about Mighty Bridge in the past. Basically, the idea is that you should be able to work in whatever medium you're most comfortable in, you're most effective in, so we have tools that basically connect everything. But yes, the majority of the ship team, I've noticed, work in 3ds Max once it comes to the modeling phase. The character team tends to go back and forth between Marvelous Designer, Blender, ZBrush. Some things that are made are actually combined from multiple softwares. This aspect is easier to do in ZBrush and this aspect is easier to do in 3ds Max. Why spend hours you don't need struggling with a thing when you can just pop it open in another piece of software and do it easier? And that's one of those things that Mighty Bridge and many of the things that the tools teams both here in Manchester and over in Montreal have done to make development much more effective as the years have gone by.
Yeah, most of this stuff is so complex that doing just one software becomes really a challenge.
Probably. I mean, realistically, we were just looking at this. I just passed over 1,500 videos and about 3,200 interviews for those 1,500 videos that I've made just for Star Citizen here in the last eight plus years. And we still haven't covered every single aspect of game development. But before my time here is done, I think it's a pretty safe bet that we'll cover everything at some point or other. Mocap is right next door and everything. So I think maybe when I can get in there and suit up myself and maybe follow me through the entire process, I think that would be a pretty interesting show to do.
TL;DRProbably not: an unwritten rule keeps new hires off camera for their first six months, and sitting in on interviews would break it, though the idea goes in the hopper.
We have kind of an unwritten rule that we don't put people on camera in the first six months of their time. When you come to most video game studios, you're not required to do interviews. You're not required to be on camera. And if you are, it's not until the very end of everything and you've got a bunch of finished work to show for it. CIG is very different from every other studio in that we make people show very unfinished, in-progress work, and it's always a very nerve-wracking experience for our developers. So we do have kind of an under-the-table, unwritten rule that in the first six months of your employment, I don't come around and ask you to be on video. So I think interviewing people while they were interviewing would most certainly break that rule. But we'll put it in the hopper, see what happens.
We're doing what we call greeble, to fill up spaces so it looks like there's some technical stuff, but it's generic enough to look like anything, so people can fill it up with their imagination. It's kind of a win-win situation where you just put details where you want it to be, but you don't take care about what exactly is going on around there.