CCP Whisper
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Posted - 2009.04.30 17:39:00 -
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Hi. So I just had Abathur and Greyscale and a bunch of other people come into my office asking me how many polygons the Naglfar has and how long it takes us to create a new model. I'm not in the art department but I have to deal with obtaining art resources with every project I take on. The short answer to the first question first: 10098 polygons.
How long does it take to make a ship model or modify an existing one? Anywhere from six months to a year, depending on the size and complexity. First we have to concept the ship or modification. This has to pass review by the lead artists (Asgeir being the main one of those) and believe me, the standards for art quality and concepting are extremely high. Then the accepted concepting proposal goes into extended concepting, detailing all angles of the proposed object. Not just how it is meant to look, but how light should fall on it, how it reflects, what sort of textures are where. How do the thrusters fire? Where are the turrets located? Do we want moving parts? Do we need faction variants? This is an incredibly detailed and complicated process because it has to be. Otherwise we deliver a concept for a battleship to the outsourcers and get a flashlight back. Yes, similar things to that have happened.
There then follows a lengthy process of back and forth between CCP and its outsourcers where models are tweaked, adjusted and finished. Then it comes back to us for more adjustment by the in-house art team. Shaders and such need to be generated and applied. If we want faction variants, that needs to be done several times. Then the whole model is baked and integrated into the client. Where it is tested for appearance. And changed based on testing. Which requires repetition of some of the steps above. All throughout this there are numerous reviews of the work by the lead artists. The whole process is a little bit more complex than firing up google sketch and hitting the magic "Put Into Game" button after half an hour of putzing around.
And all that I have described above takes place for every single thing we make and none of it is optional. At any given time we have several dozen objects at various stages of the process, requiring review, supervision and control. The entire process is in and of itself almost worthy of an hour-long documentary film. So things like "JUST ADD ANOTHER TURRET SLOT" are quite a bit more complex than copy pasting some textures.
OH! I almost forgot: Dreadnoughts are special because they have animations and this adds yet another chunk of work to be completed. That work needs to be done by the team up in the graphics cell, who would much rather work on optimising and improving the graphics engine to play better, stronger, faster, etc. So getting time from them is like pulling teeth. So for adding another turret slot to a dreadnought, add about another six to eight weeks for core graphics deliverables and associated QA.
And just for comedy value: When we asked the art department whether they couldn't just cut the Naglfar in half and use copy/paste to add a third turret bit, they threatened us with large rulers, scalpels and various other dangerous implements that artists like to surround themselves with in case someone from game design comes in and asks them a stupid question. I love my job. Really I do.
Perhaps now we can get some more constructive feedback and suggestions that build up on the several good comments that have already been made? Preferably ones that do not require us to rebuild the ship model in order to balance it.
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