CitizenCon 2947 - Art et technologie de Stanton

Hello. Hello. Vegan. You. Guys again. Welcome, to the art of staunton panel. They're. Going to show off some cool stuff and, talk, through some of the technical things that they've, done to get their. Universe. Obviously, in, star, citizen is absolutely. Huge it's. Got a vast amount of diverse. With. Quotations, over that star systems, each, planet, and system, is, absolutely, crafted. With a purpose, and with, some history and with intent. This presentation, will take you through some of the process, and some of the challenges as well, as a demonstration. Of the tools in them, crafting, part of the stanton system, it's. Pretty cool so please. Let, me welcome Pascale. Muller senior, environment, artist from the German office the. Audio Pascal. We. Have Ian Leyland, our environment. Art director based out of UK. And. We have a shell Cooper lead environment, artist out of the German office. Hello. All, right oh how, we all doing oh okay. Okay. Did. We want to share the right screen. All. Right so. We're going to talk a little bit about odd. Out. Of curiosity who's. Been to like the UK or the the. German studio and done like a back to visit and heard us talk about some art before anyone. All. Right, so. You might, have heard a bit of this before and but, hopefully there'll be some, new stuff in there okay so. Let's talk about art from. The heart. All. Right okay so we've been working on the stanton system for a little bit. And. What. I wanna do is will will actually go through that that's. Me that's Michelle, and, that's Pascal, check. That all out. It's, a sweet owl okay so, I, want. This panel just to focus on the landscapes so, you. Know within a system you're going to have quite. A quite, a variety of, locations. You know space stations satellites, also think but, this panel I just wanted to focus on the landscapes, because. That's more than enough for like 40 minutes. We. Tend. To get quite passionate, about talking about art so we're going to try and keep, some momentum and, then. Secondly we're going to talk about the visual palette so what I mean about that is you. Know within one system we want to create a canvas and within that canvas we want variety. Of contrast, and all sorts of things then. We'll move on to the. Sort of things we've been doing lately so building, out moons from start to finish and maybe. Just try and convince you guys that it's not quite easy just yet. And. Then we'll move on to our pipeline on tools you know how we achieving, these. Moons and then, we'll give you a quick demonstration just, to give you a little insight. Live. I was gonna say some gonna, keep this clean and. Say. Yeah we'll show you the tools because. I think that's quite important because one. Of the things about the engine which is super cold. Get to do it live and you get to do it real time so, we'll show a little bit of that and then if we get time which. Hopefully show your low glimpse about what's coming next. Alright, let's get into this. Here. We go so. System, visual palette so, I'm sure you've seen a lot of these before but I think it's very important to choose a starting point so within an entire system, you're. Gonna have a variety of palette so, what I mean about that is say for example when I'm on Hurston I'm thinking, you. Know remember who's like I'm I'll co-op felt, like that and when I'm on all Corp I'm thinking about Hurston I'm when, I'm on crusader I'm thinking about mic tech so, that's what we want to create like a like. A like. A distance, so when you're on a planet. Or a moon it's, when, you think about another planet that's very far away it, is bringing.

That Space opera to the game it's not like you, can just go from her stem to Crusader to walk up within, a couple of minutes because we want to stretch. These guys out. Okay. Hurston, sure you've heard about this guy before. We. Wanted to create some friend that was. Very. Appropriate for, her stem talent suebian super polluted the. Main London zones Louisville, is pretty much a city covered in ash, there's. Going to be things like these cultivated, gardens so across. The landscape the Hurston executives, can go to. We're. Exploring like the, how. The. Biomes. Around, the planet if it was like heavily polluted if a corporation showed, serious, neglect, how would that influence. The flora and fauna. Because. That's when things start, to get quite exciting. Okay. Crusader big, big gas giant, this. Is personally, going to be my favorite within this stanton system I can't wait to get to this so, it's a big floating lattice, of platforms, you got the shipyards, and you've got like this landing zone but what's going to be really interesting, is the, fact that the Vista is going, to be pretty much 90% of what we're going to do then there's, going to be a huge potential, for things like weather systems. Mappers, Forex and then. Things like dynamic, weather so the way I always describe it is like imagine. I'm Bob Darin in, in the lower part of the frame and he's looking out and that, weather cloud comes in so say for example you visit their beautiful. Sunshine and, maybe the next time you visit you're inside this thick cloud I start. Getting the graphics engineers pretty, freaked out when I talk about being inside clouds it's. Fine, you got a covered okay. A cop. The, usual totally, urbanized, planet. But. One of the things right now is imagine. That day/night cycle on this guy so we've all seen day/night cycles in games and acai or okay that's sweet imagine, down on the planet, I, mean. This were again then. Okay. And lastly. Microtech so we, all know there's terraform, an accident. Unusually. Thick layer, of clouds again, freaking, out the graphics guys, lots. Of possibilities, to do of extreme, weather and, how this will affect the player. All, right so we've. Been slowly working. On this corner, of. The. Stanton system so we started very very small for. Guys that have been following the game for a while you, know like. Slowly we're describing, the, stanton system and as, we push forward we, get the ability to describe a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more and this. Has been really great for both the, team, to see and hopefully you guys as well so i.

Don't If you remember like the first time we showed, selling. I think it was like about a year or two ago and he was just like a textured. Sphere in the sky down that's. Great so, if we're gonna zoom in on there this, will show you a little bit about what. The guys have been working hard on over, the last couple. Of months so three. Moons a crusader. Maybe. Maybe, we just do something like this and say done yeah, well good, actually. That isn't really what we wanted to do because I think even. Within a small corner of within the system we. Wanted to create variety. And depth. And. Also because, this is going to be our first showing of things, like our procedural, planetary, tech and things like that I wanted. Some print that helped push the tech. Forward right because if we did something like similar to our own moon the. Tech would, be good to deliver something like that whereas, if we started, Florin maybe, we do this or maybe we do that then, hopefully it's kind of preloaded what the tech needs to do a, bit, further down the line. Okay. So, where do we start I can't go to these guys and say I want a blue one I want a red one it's, going to have rainbows so we always talk a lot and so. What. This means is it's always like the best starting point for visual design and. Assures that our ideas, sit. Within like, a system, tapestry, kind of what we said before because if we're working in the corner I'm, like yeah we're gonna have some blues and reds and whatever then, we'll, get to, like. The rest of the system and we'll just have like skittles, you know taste, the rainbow so. Sort. Of balance sure. You want to bounce it out so, you know Stanwood law helps us, with. That initial starting point it. Also means it's a little bit deeper a little bit less superficial, because if I go at a Pascal and I'm like so. We're gonna have like blue mountains, and we're gonna have Red River zip like okay sweet I'm on it. Okay. And. It also it's. An example of the sort of information of, the location, so with law we get okay, this location, it has this it's maybe this type of geology, it's had this sort of history and then, instantly I'm like okay, yep yep, and with it and then, the brain stop racing. Don't. If you remember this gift for Baba I'm sure Dave's talked about this with you times but who've you has actually seen, like, the three orbital, rings of Crusaders, moons and olisar, anyone. Know. Okay. Maybe they're going got missed all right. So. A gift for Babur. Okay. Here we go. Gonna. Move it alone right okay so when, we're thinking about okay we're gonna do the three moons where do we start and then we think about what. We call biomes right and then, when. We start thinking about the biomes it's all about the details so. First. Thing we do we create mood boards this is the, we've. Got the law we've got the location this. Is pretty, much our briefing from there we start doing you, know we caught collecting, images these, are quite small for a, reason but we're just looking around finding, a palette that works so incidentally you can kind of see the three moons here and he's, starting to see the tapestry, sit together this. Is the most. Cost-effective, and, time effective way of exploring. Ideas because, essentially, I'm, not. Going to the guys and saying hey man let's do a nice plan let's do this you know so we can go very very quickly and. Then this is pretty much the pitch we use to what the discipline so if I go to the design director and saying okay. This moons made out of candy floss you. Know it's kind of soft paper like maybe maybe, not just yet okay. Candy.

Floss Me. Stick. It in my it's, just a new phase all, right okay so this so. We've been open to this point without the law we've got the location okay so I've got a brief in so, we've got our corner, then, then we can start being creative right so this, is this is a very very fun part of the process, where. We can just you. Know get alright ideas, going, so. One until this point you know we're kind of defining the box we're going to work in. We. Use a lot of we, can use anything right before the bias we do 3d we sketch you, know some. Of the best ideas. And. It's also kind. Of the part where I mean when, we did the homestead, demo last you you were using the same technical e but, we. Got quite confident, in getting something really nice looking but, then you get your. Your concept art and very, very. Specific, visuals and you try to hit that target and you realize okay actually. We never try this before and it's, not actually working as as we, planned. Also, the Rd comes in again as, a it, delays, the process, a little bit but improves the tech so. Just so we can hit these. Concepts. Or be sure that we can actually go through during development hitting. These targets. And. What we do as well as we're developing these ideas it's, a very. Intense. Period, of time when all, these ideas are coming through I'm getting them on the wall and we put them on our own internal like sharing system so, all developers, can kind of see it so everyone's like checking it going all, right yeah candyfloss moon that's going to be sweet. All. Right okay so once we've gone through the ideas and it's kind of getting some validation, from, the. Different discipline. Directors. And, then we're like my stunts I start honing in so you, know this is this was a shot that really captured, the mood of selling you, know in, atmosphere, we wanted like a very extreme. Contrast, to it like, stock. Again. Law said like it's got over a hundred dormant. Volcanoes. And it's, got all these active, geysers. That. In. Fact. Triggered. A conversation, is it geysers or gazes, look, either see, beautiful, we still haven't figured that so there's all these eases on selling, right. Yeah. All. Right okay, and already you. Know these ideas stop giving like the different disciplines, ideas because you know when we saw these geezers. You. Know people, aren't saying like a will that like, influence, a play if I stand on the gazer I'm. Gonna say it different every time if I stand on one of these guys and it goes off you know what's that gonna do to me right. Okay. And then we go to yellow you know. The, law described, aster it's thermal, frost on it you know it's very very cold, so. I was like all right okay, ice and then, I went to the dart to graphics alley. And. He was like. So. Okay, we look back in we can't do ice yet but we will do I soon, so. Again this part it's about it's. Not like, us, just going away and just we're. Gonna do this it's, a collaboration process, right so instantly that's how it works so, thermal. Thermal, activity, good good. We. Wanted, as a. Backup I wanted a variety of glass so, instead of a moon that's generally, quite matte I wanted, something from space you just see like, where, it's mad and you get these nice beautiful kind, of reflections, from, like a little bit so, you'll see that as well and. Then we're thinking about how maybe if it's, like you know and you see in like the Arctic you see these thermal, winds like whipping across the landscape magic. Guys, are coming across, so. All of these ideas are coming through and it's bouncing, between like art and design and graphics, and back so it's, a very creative, process, and. Again I was like maybe maybe, like Northern, Lights and then just. Got something just got some sad. Faces from from early again, sorry. Alright, and then we got demo so, you, know it was described, as the biggest of the three so, we wanted to do something that's quite thick in terms of atmosphere.

Remember. What I said before about helping. To push that technology forward, so the. Clever guys in the studio developed, this beautiful. Physically based. Tools. That describe an atmosphere, so. Instantly, as an artist I was like yeah run that opium make it foggy that's all good and again. It got a phone call and okay we ring it back in so. We made it quite thick because, I'm sure when you've seen videos of you being upstairs playing it you know the way it happened, the, way it interferes, with the light it's really quite beautiful so, seeing, how that tech works and it's helped was calibrate. It and understand it so, when we get a tool that's physically. Based and we get like me and Riley scans, you, know we're just like. My. Physics isn't so good right now so I'm playing with value so it helps it to calibrate the system, and. Then just on a slightly, subliminal, up until, now on yeah or and sell in all the forms have been coming up so, for this for demo I wanted all the forms to go down so, that's why you've been seeing things like trenches, and ravines. So. On a very subliminal sense. With. Changing forms again we're exaggerating variety. Even, within a corner, of. A system. Okay. So. So. Whenever. We, kick, off this progress process. Where we get the VT s and start, breaking down okay how, do we actually start building this stuff, there's. Four, levels major, levels of detail that we have. To look at so the first thing would be the global look of the planets. So. How does it read from a distance key for, example on gala, we, wanted to have this clear distinction between like frosted, areas. Icy. Areas and it has to be visible from a distance the. Second part would be what. What's the actual shape of the terrain so yela. And Selin have shapes, ago outward, whereas, de mer goes down so. All these these, different, features we try to capture them in the terrain shapes and these translates to our ecosystems. Then. When, we go one step further we have our scattered, objects all the objects and like, the rocks the, the. Trees that you would find on the surface and what. We try to do is to complement the terrain shapes, with. These extra, scattered elements, there's. Only in like, there's only a certain amount of details. That we can get out of the terrain like, the terrain texture and the geometry, that we have for the terrain so, anything, that it's not sharp, enough or not crisp enough we're not adding. Enough detail we add with the scattered, assets and then, finally, in when. You get really close to the surface we, wanted to make sure that this this difference between these locations also translate, in the type of materials that you would see, so. Building. An ecosystem. This. Is something, that there wasn't there on planet, v1 and. Maybe Pascal. Can elaborate. Yeah. From v1 I don't know if we actually saw. A lot of it we, saw it in one demo I think but. Then it. Was very limited in terms of variety you can create a planet, so. Because everything was kind of it, was a very procedural yet, very few artistic. Input from. What was going on on your planet and the ecosystem. Or. The v2 technology, actually allowed us to have multiple, biomes, right next to each other and basically. How, it works is we have our basically, a big ball, in space and there's. A whole, lot of little checker, boards like you see and. On the top right. You. Can see that Oh fuck-you that should I go. To the next there we go that's what I'm talking about, so. This. Is basically what an ecosystem is can composed, of I mean that's that's a fraction of it but you, have a height map that kind of defines the terrain how, it is displaced, you. Have a normal map that, improves the shading from a distance and you. Have this weird, color a map which is what we call a splat map it's, kind of a technical map and we use it for, where. Different, textures are assigned so we don't want to have mountains. With just rocks, on it everywhere, we want to be able to say okay here we have sand here we have rock and here. We have a grass or whatever and. This is what this map allows us to do but, this is kind of how one. Ecosystem is, then set up and the. Cool thing is like these the same, textures. Day they are tiling so we can, seamlessly cover the entire, service but. We have different variations so, the way we break up the service is we have a like. A variety, of these and we just paint, them down and they will blend with each other we, can offset the scale so they don't always look the same and that way we can cover the surface quite fast the.

Cool Thing is these maps also feed into our scattering system, which we will talk about in a little bit. We're, like, the splat cap splat, map colors will determine, okay we've put the rocks here we're going to put sand here or we're gonna have grass. But. The height and, the. Direction of the normals also helps us give. An extra layer of control. Over where we place our assets, so. To, give an example, of the, three. Common. Looks. Of the the town, is like, translated, into ecosystems. Selin. Which is build up of these these dried up volcanic. Activity, has all these these, these mount mounts, that look like they and like. I wrote like came, up in and just like seeped. Out and they dried up it was definitely a case, where we wanted we can't have the weed simulations, yet so, when, we was talking about it was a case of like, rob. Dyrdek melted, and then they've kind of settled and yeah. It. Was kind of cool to get that look especially. Once we did our first test we were like oh my god it's like a geiger, planet, so we toned it down a little bit but I think we we struck a nice balance. Then. Like. We just said damar, has everything downward, so it's it's it's all about canyons, and dips in the terrain when. You're on the horizon line you don't see anything peeking, out we, really wanted to have this heavy feeling where, you, go into the planet. Yeah. You guys might might might remember seeing the the trench run fly through decades of it gave us a bit. Of a nightmare that I wish didn't, expect that to happen but. It's. There and you can actually do it yourself so. Then. Last, one would be yella, and we. Already, described, like this this ice sheet that's there you. Can see from a distance and. Everything. Like that the mountain range is going up in in contrast, to like the flat areas that are very shiny and icy, so. This is what it looks now but, I'm. Going to hand it over to the skull because we, brought some old stuff to, sort of explain. How how we got to that point we kind of figure to to, make the stuff we're doing look you, know good, sometimes. We got to show you like where we was and, I'll give you a little bit of a barometer. Reading of. Just. The challenges you, know the mountain, that we've had to climb because, if he spin forward to the next slide it's. Like this, is what we started with and it's like. Okay. We've got some we got some work to do right we started much worse what. We didn't bring those pictures it's not very nice. Basically. What you're looking at is it's. Just a bare terrain it's just a height map instead. Of it being completely, flat you. Have already a bit of definition of the terrain so. This is basically the first thing that comes in because defines, the major shapes of, your planet you get a kind of an idea of how it's gonna feel, future and.

This. Is very early, shot. My. Things were still in progress in terms of tech and you can see I think, you can see it's very blurry there. Was a lot of detail missing like, one one. Thing that we always or this, kind of a difficult thing to to, hit is having. It look from all kinds, of distances so, you wanna have a look good from space you wanna have a look good when you enter orbit you, want to have a good look looking. Good when you're on the surface itself. All. Games make flat terrain and, the. Fact that we were able to make terrain. That's completely, sphere a spherical, and just. Holds up and worked that's, that's been a challenge in itself so even, when we got to that previous slide where I was like this is terrain and it's like on a sphere and it's it's it's connected, and that. Was something. New completely, but. It brought its own set, of challenges obviously, just, the idea that you can walk on forever, and you end up at the same place at some point yeah a couple days a very long walk I, don't. Know I never tried and. Then there's a bit of improvement, some. More detail we. Have to add another layer of detail on top and. Yeah. This is what you see here then in. The front you still see it's a little bit of blurriness like how the textures, go. Into each other you have like snow going, soft into rock that, was the next thing that we had to work on so, you see some early. Shots of how the terrain was blending. So. Here you see this gallery, map the splat map doing, its work saying, here's what here we have some, soil rocks snow whatever and, then. We just iterated, on how we blend the textures together to get more variety, and more. Variety until. You have something something. More nice-looking and. In. The end you, end up with something like this and you can have some two completely different ecosystems. Right next to each other. It. Was always a constant, almost, like a daily, conversation where. We'd be just how, do we get more because. If you look at nature right if I had. Like a 2x2 meter square. And I threw it down somewhere just within that section I'd have so much complexity, and, then when we're talking about things on a planetary. Scale we, can't be like okay we're gonna go from. Last, and then soil and then grass and then this and buttercups, like. We can't be here we can't go to that detail yet so we've got to think about like this global and then, when you saw like those last few slides which, Pascal. Two showed you, can see like how we've progressed in the grass and the grass and we've just seen more and more and more. Depth. In that scene and then, eventually you, just, get like these breakthrough, moments, where you see some like this and, you're like alright, alright, okay this is done to feel quite good no yeah, I think this was last. Year and it started last year's homestead, right. Okay. I think we have to pick, up the pace a little bit yep. Yeah. We. Haven't seen much variety. We have quite a variety of rocks on our Moon's but then we just wanted to put this in to show you there's also other stuff happening, we have a lot of vegetation coming in now a lot.

More Color and. One. Thing that we do is we reuse, a lot of assets because. Like. Having assets, on the whole planets. You. Cannot make, every rock. Unique where, you cannot do everything. From start again yeah we should try to figure out ways of. Getting. Quickly, more variation by just we're using assets for making assigning, different materials, getting different look. So. Basically. Like. Pascal said we cannot build infinite, amount, of assets and, we. Tried to keep maintainable, stuff so we can actually increase the quality of the individuals, assets, that we have in the set instead, of just trying to push out as many as possible so. What we tried to do is like set, it up so we can swap out materials, and get, a lot of variation and reuse out of that so, this video shows a quick swapping, of. Of. The materials, plus an overview, of like the asset sets that we have created 43.0 there's, like different different. Rock shapes. Cagers. Plateaus, and like this is all a first pass and one, of the things that we're looking forward to is like getting new, shader tech to help increase the quality of these. Rocks. As well because, yeah. Yeah usually. What happens is, you you. Have like these and these intense, bursts. Where you try. To figure some for now you're hitting these brick walls you hidden these brick walls and then you get these like I said these Eureka, moments and then. Then. That kind of pushes you into the next set and then, usually what helps break me through to those next level is is finding out you. Know how. Do we all kind of collaborate together to achieve this, and then with, everyone's combined. Hard work then you, go through to the next stage so, another. Example of the some, of the flow assets that are ready. To be used they're. Not on the planet yet but they, might be soon soon. Look. At those baobabs, those, guys are great. You're. Going to see a little bit of a breakdown later how we go about visually. Designing our botanicals, we. Put a lot of work into them so when I see like these type of assets ooze I get, really excited and if you look at that guy, there's. Like it's like if you just go back one. Video. But see I'm there on the right of the it's like this orange, thing and I think on games comes on on stream as what, is that guy where that came from and Chris. Came to me was like okay these moons are good can we add a little bit of flavor so we did a sprinkling, of like unique, elements, and that's one of the things we found them really. Cool guy smells. Like hot. Death apparently, but, when you see these things it just gives a little bit of a little bit of life to it and. The. Next step was scattering. All these assets on the planet which, was I mean, we figured, out the terrain we figured out how to apply the textures, and everything get a good variety but. Still there's no assets, so in theory it's still an empty level usually your level is full of assets so. We had to we moved on to scattering, assets. And. There's also very early with, work-in-progress, from. From a long. Time ago. And. There it was very basically just try to get assets on there we try, to figure, out a system that works. View. Distance was always a big problem like getting things to show up really on very, long distance, because you have to scatter so many assets because the new distance in this game is ridiculous. Do. You remember when we did this and it was like we. Put it on and then we. All cheered because you like man, we've got a lot of assets on the surface and then when you look at it you like there's. No logic involved yeah, and, then you start thinking about other problems so you've you've you've kind of push re1 you've like okay we can now scatter lots. Of assets that doesn't freak the programmers, out so it's like yeah win and then you look at it and you're like. Right. Because, nature, does things in a particular way and as. All. Rise, when you look at things if some print doesn't look natural it. Looks wrong because, you used to same things in a very particular way but. Trying to explain because you like okay, this is wrong and then. Just. Some people it's like no. We've achieved it we've scattered assets but then when you start thinking about how nature works you start understanding, alright, we need to have complexity. To the way we scatter all we need tech to maybe integrate. These assets a little bit better so it's, always this constant. Push. You. Get a breakthrough and then you like you got to get hit by this whole, other wave of problems that you never really saw, before almost constantly. Hitting the uncanny valley of environment, or I think. I say to, everyone that we've hired they're saying. No. Day is easy you, know if you want to come and work at the foundry or crg. You know every. Day is gonna be hard because, nothing.

That We do is, easy. So you've got to be like prepared, for that challenge you've got a hey, man this is a challenge all right okay I'm going to I'm going to break through that, because. That's you, know you don't come to work for an easy day right now. So. This is damar 3.0, current current, scatterings basically. What it looks like now. So. After. We ever terrain shapes we have our scattered assets the. Last part would be the close-up details. Since. Our materials, cover a lot of like. Meters. And kilometers sometimes. It's. There's, a few things that we cannot do we, cannot make really fancy, individual, textures, because they will be spread. Over, a large surface so any specific. Detail like a very, specific tweak, that's there they, all always show up so it, was always a bit of a struggle, to balance that stuff out, tiling, right you know as soon as you put in any type of specific detail then. That specific, detail just is. Gone so. One. Of the things we tried was using, just, scans data because you don't have to build, it you can just grab from libraries, and what. What, it turned out to be is like it wasn't very very usable for us because we needed a lot of control to. Simplify it and have, a clean material read but. We do what we do now is actually we use chunks, of scanned data for, height. Maps and sample. Color, values, and all, the PBR values from, scanned resources, and, then we compile that into our own materials, this is a quick setup of how we how. We do our typical materials, we have scanned. Height, information, that feeds, into our, textures. Basically. The shape of the rock then, we have a couple of notes with different sand, types that, are based on PBR, values and we, can just basically toggle, between them if you want to make a red sand or a brown sand same, for the for. The rock types and the way this graph is set up is it allows us to quickly like. The, term logo we're going to use a very, very rocky. Ground or almost. No rocks we want to scale them up when I've bumpy ground and, the. Sliders and all these controls, are basically in this graph but we don't tweak any of the physical. Values of these materials. So. With this system we managed to kick. Off like a set. Of materials for each location that. It's, physically, correct it. Looks cool and it was like. Easy to control how. Much information was in each texture, so, the. Dusty more moon-like textures.

For Selling with. Some dried lava flow. The. Damar pellet which is bit more based on the. Earth Sahara and. The. Yale appellate with had which one. Of the cool things about yella I think is because it's completely it has this frosty, look there's, no loose soil flowing. Around everything is sort of stuck in place something. That we wanted, to represent in the materials as well and. I think these, materials. When you get really up close it's like the last step on top of all this variation, and we tried to create between these different. Locations. But. When we kicked off with, the materials we only had like one material over, a very large area and you. Can sort of see like if you would land here it would feel very barren, it's like okay, well this is it people. Bragging about planets. Then you get there and then it's like this is what you see, it's. Not making us happy it's not making you guys happy so, with these new pallets, and the way we blend all, this stuff together is closer, to what we have now this, is actually what we have now so, the, pallet of Selin coming together you see the breakup between the. More dense. Rock. Ground, the. More dusty sands. The. One for damar and, the. One for gala. And there was a happy accident with our blending on yellow because there, was no ice shader but, sometimes you hit these these happy accidents. Because. We had soft blending between the materials, and if, you look closely you can sort of see underneath, the ice layer you can sort of still see the soil, underneath and it, gave this nice, frosted. Overlook and almost, make this ice look transparent, so that was a happy. Accident but we'll take it until we have a proper, ice shader, and. That. Will be coming at at some point. Yeah. Bob Ross came in that day we had a happy yes all. Right okay so once, we've been doing all of this process the. Techs been advanced in the assets have been advanced in, it. Gains us momentum, and. Before we can actually release, some validate, the final frame it's. A perfect, opportunity to just do some quick paint overs because. What happens is as everyone's developing everyone's kind. Of gets. Focused, on one thing because, as, Michelle saying it's like I'm making my shader, and this is looking good and pascal's like doing, my distribution system, this is good, but. It's my job I've got to make sure that we all put our art glasses, on and, we kind of violate the frame it looks good and what we do is we. Paint over and we make sure that we, highlight stuff that's missing and we, kind of just say again, you know here's, the things that we're still missing you know and it might be something that we introduce for. That release or it goes on the tech backlog of this is what we only do in the future so, we do paint overs and we kind of really. Get the look and feel right and you know the lighting team looks at this the VFX team looks at this and the art team design team and, again we just kind of aligned everyone back into that palette so, this is the things, like sell in and then we sketch over okay we break down okay these are things were missing so if, you think back about scattering.

You, Look back it okay what does nature do and then, when you understand what nature, does then, indirectly. That informs, how we're, gonna need to do it I mean, irrelevant, whether it's on a small scale or a large scale I always have to go back to nature because as a, player you guys be playing there and you're like wait a minute this conference not right because any, type of distribution system, if it's, based on the algorithm or if it's based on logic, you're, gonna see the repetition like there's no system that's that's, perfect right it's. Quite easy to get lost in the tools yes, you're just building stuff and you produce more stuff on the planet and you, cool. Yeah and you, have to look back every once in a while to - how nature does it this sometimes, arguments, yeah, but, sometimes, you got to really, evaluate what we're doing because you, know you might say hey we've ticked these boxes we're doing it but, then we always need to push forward and this is something that we're going to keep doing and doing and doing and doing until. You, know, we're. All finished and happy so, again Yallah. Different, things happen in there so we're describing what. Materials, do you know what, happiness fair conditions, can kind of happen I think. In with damar. Tends. To come back to very specific, things you, know how do how. Does shaders, react under these, kind. Of like physical conditions, how, do objects, get distributed how, do. If, a piece of rock was in a desert for 20 years what would it look like you, know how do we make our shaders, react. To that and usually, what happens when we start breaking it down will i okay it, doesn't do this don't do this doesn't do this so it starts driving that tech forward right. Okay. Finally, if I learn implementation. So, this, is just like snapshots of where we're at so this is what the the, current 3-0. Build is like now, it's. Been a very. Engaging. Process between multiple disciplines, and kind of going back to what I was saying to start it's, it's, hard right you know this is this is crazy this sort of the things we're doing it's never been done before but, everyone, has to come to work, charged. They'll get knocked down don't, hit me problems they go home and just think man. But they could always come in the next day and we always try and figure it out so some like telling you know that, high. Contrast vibe. So. We're like yella. Dem, are all good so I think. Everyone. That's. On the team is super happy with what we've managed to achieve even. Though we're just described, in that, small corner, of. The. System so Sanson. System right so corporate, business part based on law actually. I. Like. To think about it it's the building, ground for. A pipeline and tools so, what I mean by that is you, know this, is the challenge of the face in on working in this corner, but, we can't go through all of these systems figuring. Out for an outfit now so, we, see, the sentence system that's where we build our tools we build our our pipeline, and then, once we get that solid foundation that's. Going to empower, the, art team and the, various or the disciplines, to, just create. Right, so, without that solid foundation you, can't relieve go, off right. You. Need to recharge. Okay. How does the sausage get made. Look. It's got a little switch out. So. That says one minute 33 seconds, left, yeah that's not a lot of time. So. Maybe. Some of you guys recognize this is day more we're here in the sandbox. This. Is basically when we work with. A. Little, bit of the tools. Just. Do that one more time in and out one more time you. Know in, real time I can't I can't describe to you how how, cool that is, right. And. Working. Working on this stuff and seeing, it happen for. The first time it will take a good couple of weeks if not months to get your head around like. The amount of space if you actually have to work on and we. Have really good tools but at the same time it's just, going. In Outland that's what we need to show we should have started with it that's all we need to show right that's, a nifty go inside that outpost it's, not just the organics, but the way we place our point. Of interest it's all there you know you, could fly in there if you want by anyway Pascal's gonna do, this thing right just, do a quick eco. Swap I don't know what's gonna go on in 27. Ok we're on this planet for, you guys so. Basically, what. A plan looks like in the beginning is like this there's really nothing going on there's, just a whole, lot of emptiness. With. Just one big texture on it and then. We start to bringing these ecosystems, this is kind of what, you should saw earlier on the on, the shots. Draw. In your heightened ups. Now. You can see a whole lot of repetition, so.

This Is basically one ecosystem repeating. Itself without any procedural. Randomization. And it's. Also pretty, flat. Magic. Number Z stepping in right now you wanna bring that over to the main screen just. Bring that to low do. You oh yeah. This, is basically the tool that we work with. This. Is called the planet editor there's, a whole lot of numbers, and stuff, not, very interesting to look at but that's basically what we work in all the time but. Yeah we, get the visuals over here so that's quite. Gratifying and, then. Basically. From this height enough. Information we. Go over to a textured. Version. We. Get something like this. We. Have all our textures, on there all the materials, but. Still is very empty you have to still have the particles, in the preset and, then, basically. The last iteration that we do is, getting. All the. Assets. Back in there. And. You end up with something like this. Now. This is just a couple of seconds it actually takes quite some time do, all this. And. There you have. Easy. Mode. We're. Already in overtime all right so we've got done. A switch out we've got 1 minute. 37. Seconds. The. Way that's going on. So, we've got execute still nineties, okay. Let's, blast back to the PowerPoint, and we'll go from there okay. Sausage. Got made. So. I'm gonna blast through there so we can get to some questions right so what else has come in so, well, Sharon how we work in building our tools, what. We're all excited to move on to so things. I they, are in Halo so this is this impassable. Hard. To navigate section. I thought. It'd be really cool if we had these very formal, gateway sections so you kind of knew that you're going to get into some print and, you think really am I gonna, get into this. Districts. Of Louisville we've all seen Louisville but how do we describe this polluted, cityscape. Particularly. Between like weather is this the. Big building, of the the family how, does that sit around. All. Of this all. Of the cityscape around, him suffering that we've been working hard to get that scale rewrite because that guy. The, building's pretty big. And. Then things like you know what type of ecosystems. Are going to be on that planet it's. A corporation run amok so they'd have these huge dumping, grounds and then there, starts in phloem in in forming like the assets we're going to need but also tap. Animals check that armed lol he's sweet moving on and. Then things, like when we go to. Mike. Tech you know the domes of new Babbage that's gonna be cool, but, then also like, the headquarters, you know they're, very high-tech, company you know what would their headquarters. Be like and then. We, wanted a very good contrast between this. Slick. High-tech. Kind. Of dome but. With some botanicals, in there so we started getting some ideas so you've got this very monotone, landscape, outside so. How do we we've, got like white mountains. Outside and, we've got like white walls inside you, know was the color comin from right the Todd's, always gone was the core in the game so I'm like here's the color so. What would happen is you'd. Have this high tech company they make these beautiful products, what, type of, what. Type of botanicals. Would they have in their soma like all right okay they won't have like dried, like. A dried fern in there, so they'll be like okay we you know a bit about technology so maybe almost should, help help. The plants a little bit so that was like maybe, this like a type of bio even there so anyway get into this crazy details, so every. Botanical. That you see in our game go through this very. Rigid. Visual. Development process, will wonder what that what that guy is and I, think about on the outside of that dome if. You've been inside, this calm. Interior. Of new. Babbage then. On the outside you're just gonna get blasted right because this was a terraforming, accident, so, this this this landscape, is wild and. Then again the botanical, what. Would the botanicals, have been like if they would have been blasted, since you know every, day they were grown so everything will be leaning so, it'd be kind of cool as if you're going across the landscape everything's, just kind.

Of One side. And. Then go into my personal favorite, like arson and the floating landscapes with the frozen lattice we've seen this but. Then how, do we push that further forward, so within the standard, system okay. You've got her, stand dynamics I've, been there and polluted, all that sort of thing I've gone to our corp it's perpetual city I'm going to I'm. Gone to my check I'm gonna get blasted right I want. It somewhere where. There's, a little, bit of a. Little. Bit of a nice landscape, to kind of relax in so from, the oil you know it's, more about the recreation, sauce thing can be beautiful to have like these gardens, overlook in these vistas and, then. Flax because I love flags but also because, I wanted, to build it, like. A subliminal palette, so say for example you're in pyro. System, on a base and. You're on a good time and then, occasionally you'll see like this logo of this top corner and if you see it's, like a triangle, with these three. Triangles within it and that, reflects, to how, the gardens, are you know how the architecture how these seats are arranged and you look at that and you go and I want to go to crusader again but, it's not going to be that quick journey so, again, we're extending, the palette so it feels a bit more like a space opera so if you wanted to go from system system that's gonna take a long time right. Again. Trees. You know we got a trees on, crusader, what, would it be like if they grew up like, high up above a Gaston you know I wanted, something that didn't feel like a bonsai but almost felt, just as beautiful, just from a pure silhouette, and, again the cloud layer if you look at the canopy on this it almost reflects, the the, the kind of shape language that you get in a particular type of clouds. All. Right. We're. Six minutes over no, Dino Dino them before, questions, we're. Running a little short in time so I'm not sure how much Q&A, we'll have. Before. We got into questions though, I wanted. To introduce. Andy. Green to the stage if, you can con man up he. Is the CEO, of Acme. At Renault Matic the, makers of the my radar, app. Andy. And Andy. And his company, are in the process of using our planets in a way that we didn't really intend. So, he's. Going to talk for a bit on what they're doing thank. You, so. As Brian said my name is Andy Greene I am a huge fan of star citizen, I've, been a back her since the beginning in 2012. And. I'm. A firm believer in Chris's, vision of the game but. During, my day job on the CEO of a company called Acme, at Renault Matic and among. Other things we. Make a cool mobile weather app called my radar, so. It's, fairly popular in the States we've, got about 10 million active users and the, app has been around since 2008. Over. The years we've gotten very, good at visualizing. All, sorts of weather and weather-related data, and in, displaying, that data on maps and we've. Even spread out a bit and that we're now able to, show. NASA, satellite, imagery for other planetary, bodies like Mars giving. Users a new way to view, the Red Planet, so. One, day in this Epiphany, of nerd-dom I thought to myself how. Cool would be if we could use this technology to render virtual, worlds so. Earlier. In the year being, such a big star citizen, fan I reached out to CID to see if they were interested in experimenting and, they. Thought the idea sounded cool so with, a little bit of help from them we, took the high-resolution, data for their procedurally, generated moons we. Massaged then. Molded. The data a little bit and put it into a format we could use and. We. Now, have the ability to display the moons of star, citizen alpha 3.0, within the my radar app. So. Users, can paint around the globe and zoom in to see specific, landscape and, geographical. Features the moon and you. Can get in close enough to see the ice sheets of yella and the, deep canyons, of damar, the, detail is even good enough that if you find, an ideal crater you can park, and hide you reclaimer in it. There's. Also a detailed. Section you can pull down that reveals additional information, on each moon including, its atmospheric. Composition atmospheric. Pressure the. Details of its orbit the. Actual size of the moon itself as well, as some other interesting, facts. So. With, this collaboration my, radar gives players the chance to get an early exploratory. Look at the three moons of Crusader and if.

You Make, sure you've got the latest version of my radar the. Star citizen features, can be accessed today with a free download and it's available now on both Google Play and the, Apple, App Store thanks. Awesome. Thanks Andy, yeah. Like I said we we didn't originally, have. This, intent in mind but it's awesome you're able to grab that and work, with us and do that so, unfortunately. With, us running. A little bit late we don't have time for Q&A. But, I'll make sure that I kick these guys out from backstage out. To the floor so feel free to find them and ask more questions. We'll. Be back in five ten, minutes with the consolidated. Out land pioneer. Presentation. And that's, going to be pretty cool so, see you in a bit.

2018-10-22 00:11

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