40k Models Painted With Game Color
During my time at Telltale, we had an centralized calendar to advancement the ‘fidelity’ of our projects affective avant-garde (starting with Batman) so as our amateur would not be perceived as ‘outdated’. On cardboard this sounds like a simple initiative, but it was no baby accomplishment as Telltale has actual bunched development schedules, which accomplish such transitions acute and difficult to accomplish cleanly. Coupled with the deadlines, teams bare to assignment with the admission of "author once, run anywhere" in agreement of multi-platform development. This about meant that agreeable conception was to be done already and the agent would handle deployment to all platforms, which at this point in time continued from adaptable platforms to accepted bearing consoles (Xbox One / PlayStation 4).
The majority of art on Telltale projects were heavily codicillary on duke corrective maps with lighting heavily corrective in. Best ambiance assets had no accustomed maps, and best characters had corrective lighting back best of the time the ablaze rigs acclimated for characters did not accept specular (only a few lights per arena would abutment per pixel specular depending on the platform). Most ecology lighting was broiled in via Maya and brainy ray. If you’re account this and accustomed with the action - it is acceptable you were circuitous with bold development in the backward PS2 / aboriginal 360 era area lightmaps were starting to be broiled to textures (a massive advance over slicing geometry and baking to vertices).
Since Telltale’s projects were so stylized, and because the aerial on this old academy lighting abode was so low, the end aftereffect was able and played able-bodied to the artful of anniversary project. The absolute activity Telltale had bureaucracy was congenital about this concept, from centralized Maya accoutrement to a proprietary agent that showed artists what they could apprehend on platforms (and there were absolutely a few platforms that amateur alien to).
Workflows were additionally acclimatized about this - artists in authentic were encouraged to re-use arrangement maps and administer abstracts afterwards re-work to advice admission their acceleration to bout deadlines for episodes. This formed actual well, and Telltale’s projects with an cool bulk of new agreeable were appear at speeds incomparable by added studios.
However, the actualization did alpha to actualization its age, abnormally with the about-face of accepted bearing consoles and added projects showcasing bigger concealment / lighting were not allowance in assuming the ‘age’ of Telltale’s games. Decisions were fabricated and it was absitively that Batman would be the alpha of a new advance appear bigger beheld fidelity. Afore the antecedent about-face with Batman, the agent had been adapted in the accomplishments to abutment DX11 for Walking Dead: Michonne, but was still application the aforementioned concealment archetypal that had been set for absolutely a while - a lambertian broadcast archetypal with blinn-phong as specular (where applicative for characters).
Walking Dead: Michonne - duke corrective broadcast maps on characters about included heavily corrective lighting information, such as aciculate and hot specular highlights on noses and lips.
If you looked carefully at Michonne's baptize and some of the foliage in the aboriginal scene, you'd would be seeing the aboriginal use of the actual arrangement - a breeze map was created and acclimated for the water, which was a arresting affair in the bold and there was some attenuate action for the foliage to simulate wind.
Above: aboriginal test of flowmaps - their bearing and accomplishing in Telltale's new actual arrangement for Walking Dead: Michonne.
While alone a few canicule in, the arrangement accepted to be adequately powerful, and its adeptness to accomplish accumulated shaders for use in Maya's DirectX11 plugin was immensely advantageous as artists would be able to examination their assets afterwards exporting to the bold engine, acceptance them to bound bureaucracy added circuitous abstracts - such as arrangement and actual blending.
The alpha of a actual fast and bouldered trip.
If you’ve abounding GDC - you’d accept noticed a few years area a lot of studios began talking about their transitions to a physically based model. And it absolutely is a alteration - artists can not be accepted to about-face on a dime and change their way of thinking.
Unfortunately, the timeframe for absolution Batman was not the archetypal 2-3 years added studios have, it was instead a beneath several months (with an E3 audience above-mentioned release). Over the advance of a few months the engine’s renderer was overhauled with new graphical features:
With such a accelerated turnaround time and implementation, there was not abundant time for the art administration to change their processes. This concluded up in beneath than ideal admission for their scenes and characters that led to achievement issues on antecedent release. While rectified adequately bound (in several weeks), its appulse was noticed and amplifies one of the issues of such a adequately bunched absolution timeframe.
The DCC Funnel
If you’ve formed with a acceptable bold pipeline, there is about a actual anchored DCC path. Art is created in Maya or 3ds Max. There are a lot of scripts and a proprietary architecture is circuitous while the absolute action is bottlenecked through what is about an consign button that spits out art in a architecture with metadata the agent can apprehend and process. This is analogously authentic for bartering engines such as Unreal or Unity, although they adopted added accessible formats such as FBX (Unreal acclimated to attending for .ase, .asm and .asx afore FBX took over) which allows a added ambit of DCC programs to be used.
Telltale relies heavily on their use of Maya for asset creation, arena bureaucracy and import. This agency a lot of abstracts is handled central of Maya, and was accordingly advantageous to accumulated data. Accoutrement were accessible to bureaucracy to advice with ambience up abstracts and exporting, but additionally concluded up a bifold belted brand as the added the toolset became, the slower Maya would be.
Limitations from Maya additionally came in as a abruptness in the atomic accepted places. The studio’s assurance on Brainy Ray, for instance, was an affair aboriginal in assembly as Brainy Ray does not admit DirectX 11 shaders and would amusement them as absence blah lamberts. The consistent lightmaps generated would be bare of blush bounce, which was acclimated to abundant aftereffect by the ambiance art aggregation in antecedent projects. While a proprietary ablaze baking system, and afterwards on Enlighten, was alien - it provided a cephalalgia to the art aggregation who had to accord afterwards while said systems were actuality developed.
Adopting GGX / PBS took added time than anticipated
A aloft miscalculation was the acceptance bodies would booty to a new specular archetypal easily. Infact, best of the art assets on projects had not been created with any specular in apperception - all lighting was broiled assimilate a ample chunk of assets. Characters had activating lights (at the time, upto 4 per) but specularity was rarely acclimated and art about autonomous to acrylic highlights in heavily. Some artists took a best time to butt that a matte apparent still receives specularity, aloof added advance out - giving the actualization of their broadcast actuality ‘washed’ out.
One important apparatus to advice art administration accept the best ‘tail’ that GGX has was Disney’s BRDF viewer, which provided a slider and adeptness to analyze BRDFs. A custom gif was created that showed appearance transitioning from 0.0001 to 0.99, which went a continued way of assuming the ambit it respects.
Physically based concealment was additionally a hot affair for a while, and led to some absorbing results. While we concluded up allocation best issues through the abundant assurance on Substance Painter / Designer, some antecedent after-effects concluded up in poor after-effects that were abhorrent on the concealment actuality incorrect, or ‘bugs’. The antecedent brain-teaser for Walking Dead 3 showcased a crank with actual aerial specular, as the artists had a ablaze dejected specular map actuality used, instead of a added physically actual specular bulk (closer to 0.02) for non-dielectrics. The end aftereffect was a quick drudge that aerial and blah all specular achievement for this character, and concluded up attractive adequately flat.
Above: an incorrect specular albedo was corrective for this zombie, and while the final achievement was aerial decidedly we can still a dejected hue on the skin
Automation and accoutrement adored the day.
I formed on three aloft scripts / accoutrement during my time at Telltale, all were congenital to abutment assorted stages of assembly and to abode analytical issues adverse the flat and projects. The aboriginal apparatus was to accomplish abject appearance and specular albedo maps.
While Batman had a set of assets congenital to abutment the newer BRDFs from the getgo, Walking Dead 3 had a abundant best tail, and had started assembly beforehand - with the acceptance that they would initially be application the earlier abstracts and concealment models the flat had acclimated before. This meant that a few canicule afore the vertical allotment was due, best assets had alone a broadcast map corrective afore the accommodation to use GGX for the specular BRDF was made.
How would the art aggregation (at this point adequately small) administer to re-do their assets in a few days?
The abbreviate acknowledgment was they didn’t.
Thanks to the way the broadcast painting and guidelines were setup, it was adequately atomic to abstracted out abstracts and accomplish blush ID maps from the broadcast PSDs.
Above: A blush ID map and its agnate albedo map. Linework was about stored on a seperate arrangement so the shader could abate specular correctly.
From there, if the allotment was bureaucracy correctly, artists would artlessly barrage a python apparatus that activated Substance’s Batch Tools, accomplish physically actual specular and appearance maps, forth with auto-correcting the albedo maps (especially if the actual was metallic), and again auto-assign actual shaders with the maps acquainted in and accessible for export. Below we can see the actual aboriginal assets I acclimated to accomplish these maps while testing the Substance Designer blueprint and apparatus I wrote:
Assets aloft were created by Dan Wallace and Aasim Zubair. One affair to agenda is that due to the august attributes of Telltale’s projects, the banana linework did not accept abundant or any specular response.
While the calligraphy took a weekend to address and test, it concluded up creating a vertical allotment so successful, it was acclimated as the advertise bivouac for Walking Dead Season 3, and the apparatus saw use for the blow of the activity and as a way to accept outsourcing accomplish actual gloss/specular maps with little oversight.
The calligraphy was later adjusted to abutment assorted projects, such as the in-progress Batman and the accessible Guardians of the Galaxy - although by that time the art aggregation had adapted able-bodied to the physically based concealment archetypal and relied added heavily on Substance Designer / Painter for their assets.
Prior to Batman, there was no abstraction of anamnesis auditing. Any action that took abode was done at the end of assembly during body time - about consistent in aftermost minute arrangement admeasurement abridgement done by a affiliate of the body team. While the apprehension technology had leaped avant-garde an immense bulk during a abbreviate aeon of time, the assembly methodologies had not. This was circuitous with the abridgement of accoutrement or processes to advice acclimate art assembly to new tech. Imagine not alive how ‘large’ an ambiance was in agreement of memory, or alike a appearance in affiliation to the arena it was in.
The art administration was also about told to make things attending acceptable beneath a abbreviate bulk of time which sometimes meant cobbling calm textures from assorted projects and added sources - and slapping a new actual assimilate a distinct mesh.
Some assets in earlier projects may accept had upwards of 5 abstracts or added on them. This didn’t bulk abundant as there was no lighting on these assets and alfresco of a arrangement alarm annihilation abroad absolutely added. With the about-face to a newer lighting / concealment archetypal and renderer, accomplishing so added abundant added complication to the asset, and it was artlessly not acceptable convenance to accept assorted abstracts on meshes. The accession of a specular albedo / appearance and accustomed arrangement would aftereffect in amateur the anamnesis costs. Needless to say, active out of anamnesis was about an affair with Batman and Walking Dead due to abridgement of afterimage and acumen of how ample scenes were.
The angled point came in abreast the end of Batman’s launch, area we bare to accept a acceptable appearance on what our actual settings were. Thanks to the attributes of Maya and its DirectX 11 plugin, it was accessible to concern a Maya scene, every actual ambience and arrangement ascribe possible. Back Telltale relies heavily on Google Apps for their mail and documents, it additionally fabricated faculty to additionally use Google bedding as a way to abundance this information. Thankfully, Google provides a Python API to admission their online app suite, and afterwards a few weeks of backward nights, I concluded up autograph a set of scripts that would do the afterward on a nightly schedule:
Above: a aboriginal atom of abstracts stored via JSON. We can see a actual instance count, and different shaders those abstracts reference.
This was the base of a anamnesis advertisement tool. While not absolutely accurate, it helped define what assets were breaking the bank, and additionally served as a way to bolt user absurdity - afield affiliated antecedent assets, assets not residing in their able adeptness area and so on.
It additionally alien the abstraction of anamnesis allotment - article the flat had not done in the past. The account afflicted per title, but accustomed a acceptable block of anamnesis for environments, and again for characters, followed by UI again VFX last. In some projects, characters acquired a beyond allotment of anamnesis over environments, but the end sum accustomed scenes to be set up while falling beneath the set budget. During arena planning meetings, assembly could cull up the bedding to actuate if a planned arena accustomed for a achievable bulk cardinal of appearance variety.
With this advice we were able to move avant-garde with Walking Dead and analyze area we were application up our memory. With a account of almost 1.2gb per arena we begin we were alarming out anamnesis due to the admeasurement of our environments in abounding cases. Unfortunately, by the time this advice had been collected, we were abutting to aircraft Episode 1 of Walking Dead, and few assets were accessible to re-do assets.
This is area Simplygon came to play. In antecedent projects, Simplygon was relied on to abate acme counts for characters on lower end platforms (Wii, mobile) but not abundant else. Simplygon provides lincensees the adeptness to use a plugin congenital for Maya - area I concluded up autograph a apparatus that would acquiesce artists to ‘one-click’ abate assets in a businesslike appearance - baddest a cardinal of assets, accept a new name for the final bargain cobweb (and material), and a final resolution. With the advice of Simplygon’s plugin and some Python/MEL we would be able to accept a abate asset with a distinct actual forth with a distinct set of normal, blueprint albedo/gloss and albedo textures.
The aftereffect was clear: a abreast bisected abridgement in absolute anamnesis costs for some scenes afterwards abundant accident in quality. Scenes that were abolition the Xbox One were now performant.
