What constitutes VFX within Star Citizen? When people log into 3.3.5 on the PTU right now, what are the things they're looking at that are VFX versus the things that belong to other art or gameplay departments?
TL;DRThe VFX team says it covers particle effects like sparks, fire, smoke, explosions and dynamic thruster trails, plus gameplay-readable effects, but not geometry or main level lighting, sitting between art and design.
I guess I can start that one off. To state the obvious ones: when the ship explodes, you've got what we call the death mask. That's all particles, that is VFX. So all of the particle system stuff, that's all VFX. Oh man, there's so many things. VFX isn't just a case of adding sparks to a level, although that's part of it. There's also implementation, gameplay implementation as well, using VFX to give the player readability on gameplay inputs and things like that.
Yeah, but essentially if you're looking at a game and you're thinking whether it's VFX or not, probably if it's not a character and it's kind of like a sprite thingy, it's VFX. So for example, sparks obviously are VFX.
Are you saying basically if it's stuff?
If it's stuff, but not geometry, it's probably VFX. But at the same time, behind all the VFX there is some graphics programming involved. Even putting a spark on screen starts with someone programming all that stuff, and then we have a tool that allows us to control all of it, and we literally have a list of parameters to control the movement of stuff. That's what we do, more or less.
It's also dynamic as well, isn't it? Especially in our game, the VFX are dynamically controlled. The thruster effects, which is something that I've talked about in the past, the engine trails falling off from that, and the Coil presentation that we did, all of that is dynamic VFX. So it's sometimes used in our game to add extra detail to environments as well and give life to environments. It kind of touches a lot of things really, doesn't it?
Yeah, but one thing that it's not is lighting. I see it very often. People think if there is a light, it's VFX, but we have dedicated people putting lights in a level. So if you're thinking, okay, there is too much light, there is strobing, that's not VFX. We do fire, we do smoke, we do sparks. We also do some more systemic effects that show gameplay: what's the boundary of this effect? For example, in real-time strategy games, very often you get very clear visuals, a shockwave that ends at this specific region. That's all coming from VFX, but not the light, not the general mood of the room or a space. That doesn't come from VFX, but VFX do add on top of it.
Although to add a bit of confusion, we do have lights in our effects as well. There's crossover, isn't there?
It's never a key light, because we don't cast shadows. It's not that precise. We never put so many sparks in that they light up a whole room.
Do you think it's fair to say we're somewhere in between the art and design teams?
Yes, we bounce back and forth.
We're serving both, aren't we? We're trying to make the environments look more alive, but equally we're trying to sell gameplay as well. Even for things like a muzzle flash on a gun, we help the feel of it as well.
Yeah, the gun is not ours, but the dynamics are.