Learning from Games

by Halli Bjornsson AA Dipl. MD of Cadai Ltd, www.cadai.com



Through my work in game development I find that the connection between architectural CG and game CG is strengthening and I thought therefore it might be a good idea to give you a little insight into the world of game CG.

In essence then I would say that you probably don’t have that much to learn from games if you’re already working in architectural CG on a modelling and texturing level. This means that you could potentially consider selling your skills into that area which I’ll look into briefly.

Differences

First of all then there isn’t that much difference between game and architectural CG in practice. The core of the work is the same and many techniques and mindsets are increasingly being borrowed from the world of advanced rendering. On a practical level then the output or output formats are a bit tangled or quirky but nothing major to worry about. There used to be a major difference in poly counts etc but this is quickly diminishing.

The biggest differences are to do with the type of clients you are working for, the length and size of the projects and the group of people you would be working with.

Scale of projects

Game projects are probably on average longer and bigger than most architectural CG projects. A game takes around 18 months to make and requires today probably around 15-100 artists for that period of time to complete. The work is mainly split between:

• User Interface design or “Front End” as it is commonly referred to. This includes selection screens, introductions to the game and general settings to name a few as well as the in-game menus. The format is generally 2D although some games have started more and more to incorporate 3D more either by showing in-game assets for various selections and previews to the whole layout.

• Character, Vehicle and Environment design and modelling. Character Animation. These tasks have become more and more specialised with increased demand for quality and quantity of content. There is now a genuine market for specialists in each area as well as middleware and libraries. This is where the bulk of the man-months on a project reside.

• Concept Design. Game developers and publishers have always been thirsty for existing IP’s which have the obvious benefits of having sophisticated and highly developed art styles and concepts. The film industry has a bit of a head-start here but publishers and developers are using more and more talent from films here.

The fact that projects are getting bigger is changing the way developers look at the whole development cycle. There are organisational implications since you have more assets and people to manage and secondly there is a monetary and time consideration. The requirement for more complicated and layered products also calls for more specialized disciplines within each product for periods within the development which don’t span the whole period of development. The combined effect is to fragment and vary the whole process in terms of number of people at different times on the project and where they are based. Projects that are carried out by one studio only are now fewer and fewer and the need for specialist companies and individuals that can work remotely is increasing. The fragmentation of work or outsourcing means that the industry is looking more and more at specialist outsourcing and contracting which is where you would potentially come in.

The benefits of this fragmentation are lower costs since you can shop around for talent. Lower costs because you are only hiring the relevant talents when needed. Higher quality of the product since by lowering the time based costs and removing the location based restrictions you can look further for more expensive talent for specific tasks.

This is harder to implement on short projects where the design has to be worked out on the fly which makes this type of project management harder in architectural CG but the benefits can be considerable as I’ve seen in practice.

Time

Games take a long time compared to most architectural CG projects as I understand it. 18 month long architectural CG projects are probably few and far between and there have been games that as legend has it have taken up to 5 years to complete. Thankfully then I haven’t worked on any of those.

The time element is something that I like since it means that your contract is going to last for a while before you have to look for a new one. The downside is that it’s possible that the pressure period before the deadline can last for months rather than a few weeks or days.

Hardware and technology

The format which the work is output into, i.e. realtime is slightly different to what you would be used to if you’re profession is architectural CG. It can be quite a labour intesive process and in some cases tedious since the technical requirements can be quite specific and often easy to break the pipeline. Compared to rendering then realtime is at the best of time primitive when it comes to surface quality which is due to memory restrictions most realtime apps have to deal with. The art of realtime is therefore to a great extent about finding ways to make something that is essentially quite primitive look half decent. This task is thankfully getting easier and easier in some respect.

Software

There is no mentionable difference between the core products in respect of this article. Most game developers use Max, Maya, Lightwave and XSI etc. Most packages that allow you to render assets have developed to a level far beyond what is required for real-time and they inherently contain the same basic principles. The rest is a question of finding your way around the interface.

There is however an interesting stage which comes after you have built your assets. This is where you are building up your environments or applying interactive features etc. Most game developers have a considerable part of the coding team dedicated to helping out with making the content creation go faster and better by developing tools and plugins. These are usually designed with the artists wishes in mind and they generally result in higher quality at faster rates. It’s a bit like if you had a coder sitting next to you which you could ask to enhance features within your favourite package once in a while to make your life easier. The interactive, instant feedback and speed aspect of these tools and design environments is something that will ultimately be irresistable to any CG artists pipeline.

Crossing over

Realtime hardware is as we know increasing in power every year and the difference in mesh and texture sizes between games and rendered content is getting smaller and smaller. This means essentially that your skills as an architectural CG artist are now a highly relevant commodity in game development and therefore potentially worth considering as a venue for selling your assets and skills into. There is also increased demand for higher quality envionments and architecture within games and sensitivity to how buildings come together and what belongs with what is more and more valued.

If you were interested in selling your work in this area then there are a few areas you can look into.

Firstly then I recommend for you to look at www.turbosquid.com. I assume you’re already familiar with it. Game developers are increasingly buying assets from this area and would do more of it if the assets were prepared correctly to fit into a realtime format.

There is an increase in the number of games which have an asset sharing community or an asset marketplace (usually then both) or an add-on market. There are several of them but I’ll mention few of the ones that I suspect are most relevant to you.

I recommend it as a strategy to focus on products or avenues that are based on modern realism based themes since this will ensure that your assets and libraries have the greatest potential for re-use across different products. This is where the biggest demand is and will be across both game genres and platforms.

Simulation games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Train-Simulator and Auran Trainz to name a few have a thriving add-on community with several companies spawned up from creating only content or artwork for the relevant products. These products have add-ons that range from individual assets to whole routes and are perhaps the most advanced commercial areas when it comes to selling 3d assets by themselves. I must admit that these areas are ones that I initially found rather lacking in excitement but in terms of commercial potential for your assets then they are not to be ignored.

Future developments

I think the future is quite bright for content creation in general given how hungry the consumer and platforms are for the stuff. The consumers are increasingly more demanding and require more and more higher quality content which calls for more specialization which in turns calls for the sort of work I see on CGArchitect.

One very exciting area is the world of the MMO’s or Massively Multiplayer Online games. These are the most content hungry products by far and a couple of developers have responded to this by creating a game which is essentially a marketplace for content. These type of products allow you to sell assets to their inhabitants and although these products are still in their infancy then they are already turning heads because of this. A gamer recently bought land in a persistent world for a whopping $26.500 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4104731.stm)

For further info take a look at http://www.project-entropia.com/Index.ajp and http://secondlife.com/.

Halli Bjornsson

Halli is educated as an architect but has worked in game development as artist, and art-director on titles published by Sony, Sega, Microsoft and others. Halli is now focusing on bringing affordable and easy to use real-time technology to architects with Cadai; Hali can be reached via email at halli@cadai.com