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n n n n Gaming tion, sky color, tone mapping, fogging, depth of field, saturation, cloud textures, water simu- lation, and such. “Tis is probably our most useful tool for region morphs because a few adjustments here can quickly change the feel of a level,” says Green. Te team also can add various atmospheric effects, like rain, snow, dust storms, and more, by merely adjusting a few simple sliders. Moreover, because the edi- tor is always synced up to the playable build, any changes and adjustments can be seen instantly in-game, which allows the artists to iterate extremely quickly. For Millfields, they darkened the region significantly during the day, adding smog using fogging and a re-col- ored semi-transparent dust-storm effect. Tey also introduced man-made lighting around the newer mining area; finally, the particle effects team added billowing smoke coming from various vents and chimneys. Modularity and recycling were the keys to streamlining the building of Fable III’s sets, particularly the tombs and caves that lie in an underground cavern at the border between the high-altitude tundra of Mist Peak and the village of Brightwall. “Te tombs were liter- ally snapped together,” says Smart. Built in Softimage, each section would have points that snapped it to another section. Tey were all had a central resource so they could be used in multiple regions.” Casting an Epic Albion not only encompasses a diverse ar- ray of environments, but also characters and animals from almost every walk of life. While Lionhead’s character modeling, texturing, and animation pipeline is Softimage-based, art- ists began with a mass of polygons in Softi- mage, Nevercenter’s Silo, or Autodesk’s 3ds Max. Once a character took shape, artists im- ported the mesh into Photoshop and Andrew Shpagin’s 3D-Coat for texturing, sculpting the finish details in ZBrush. Lionhead also tapped the power of a few other packages during character creation, including Headus’ UVLayout for unwrap- ping, and xNormal freeware for baking out normal maps and ambient occlusion maps, for instance. Because of the inordinately high number of characters on screen at any given time, and the highly stylized character design, the in-game meshes are quite light, often re- lying mostly on intricate normal, diffuse, and other maps to provide subtle, individualizing touches. “During the course of Fable III, our game engine improved, so the normal maps began get the edge looping and poly count we need- ed,” he adds. Te player also undergoes a physical meta- morphosis during the game that tracks his or her spiritual arc. Tere are changes to the skin, makeup, tattoos, hairstyles, scarring to the body, staining of the clothes, and so forth. Te hero’s face responds to the moral impact of his or her actions, growing gaunt and skeletal if the person’s rule lays waste to the people or the land, or more beautiful if they deliver positive change. During moments of intense physical combat, the true quality of the hero’s soul, a product of the totality of the person’s ac- tions, will manifest itself physically in extreme morphs, which result in angel or demon wings sprouting from the back. To create these transformations, artists The player’s look changes throughout the game based on the moral impact of his or her decisions. initially created as a white-box asset in Sketch- Up so the artists could quickly see how they fit together. Once finalized, the artists would add in the geometry. As long as the artists kept within the boundaries of the white box, the subsequent detailed textured pieces would all fit together. “Reducing assets was essential, too,” Smart adds. “For example, artists built doors for two doorway apertures; that way, we could be sure assets weren’t created that didn’t fit. Te same was true for windows. Trees, grass, and plants 28 January/February 2011 to pop and give us a lot more fidelity. Tis meant the high-res ZBrush sculpts became even more important,” says character and creature art manager Ian Faichnie. Te aver- age polygon count varies significantly among characters, with some requiring details that couldn’t be faked with normal maps so the team had to model them polygonally. On av- erage, Faichnie estimates characters comprise approximately 10,000 polys, perhaps a little less. “A number of the characters, particularly later in development, were ‘re-topologised’ to worked with a standard character shader that embodied a variety of channels for diffuse, specular, normal, reflection, and Fresnel maps. “Te first three are pretty standard, with a tex- ture map used for each, and the specular term incorporating color, power, and intensity set- tings,” says technical artist Adonis Stevenson. “Te reflection map was a cubic cross-format image comprising blurry and sharp variants for various materials, such as metal and glass. Te Fresnel term was the final piece in the jigsaw. Te main upgrade from Fable II (the Fresnel map) really helped bring the characters to life by taking all the lights in a level into account.” He provides the following example: If a char- acter stands in front of a torch, the model will gain a light rim and glimmer accordingly as the torch flickers, which really helps ground the character in the environment. To handle the ever-changing countenance of the hero, Lionhead used a facial map for the male and female hero that comprises six dif- fuse maps, one normal map, and one specular map. For each, there are two evil textures, two good, and two neutral. “I began by creating the neutral face for both the male and female, on which the good and evil textures are based,” says lead creature artist Jon Eckersely. “Ten, a handy script generates blends of all these at varying scales of morality. Tese blends are then fed into the game editor.” Te shades of gray between the polar morali- ties was always the hardest to paint effectively, Eckersely says. “We want the hero to look great all the time, no matter how the player chose to play the game. Finding the right look was a process of blending the textures in layers in Photoshop using the opacity slider.” For basic model morphs, which alter the hero’s natural body—changing it from robust to thin, for ex- ample—the artists used a set of bone morphs