Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/10832
Gaming n n n n Dante must overcome obstacles—temptation and sin—to achieve the ultimate goal: eternal bliss in heaven, guided there by the “ideal woman” Beatrice. Te interactive title, from Visceral and published by EA, places a contemporary spin on the poem. In the new me- dium, Dante, a mercenary soldier during the Tird Crusade, pursues dark forces that have dragged his beloved Beatrice to the fiery depths. During this journey through the afterlife, the player, as Dante, must battle hideous monsters within the Nine Circles of Hell in an attempt to save Beatrice. Te game—which plays out within the first can- tiche, or part, of the three-part poem—ends as Dante leaves Inferno, or Hell, and makes his way to Purgatory. Hellish Vision While “Te Divine Comedy” offers a haunting description of Hell’s nine circles, Dante’s Inferno goes one step further, giving it a visual in- terpretation under the art direction of Ash Huang. “Te game brings to life the vivid and detailed worlds imagined by Dante Alighieri,” says Knight. “Each of the Nine Circles is its own world, with unique art direction, environments, effects, creatures, and back stories.” Huang worked with lead concept artist Jeff Adams, and together they forged Visceral’s contemporary vision of Hell. Huang and Adams worked on the game’s concept art throughout production, from the initial stages all the way through content lock. “Given the original nature of so many of the creatures and environments, concept art was an integral part of every step in the production,” says Knight. In fact, con- cept art was made for every facet of the game: characters, environments, props, weapons, the UI, and cinematics. Further direction was provided through 2D and 3D storyboards. Hell’s Inhabitants Te characters of Dante’s Inferno range from the realistic knight Dante and the beautiful Beatrice, to the hideous Lucifer, and all man- ner of monster and creature in between. Te character model concepts were driven by the sins by which the characters were condemned in Hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery, the Nine Circles of Hell. Te theme from each sin is incorporated into the character design—Gluttony’s multi-headed, mouth-snapping Cerberus is but one example. Te concept designs for these characters were created in high detail times consisting of visual effects elements. As a result, the charac- ter modelers often worked closely with VFX leads Jeff Kuipers and Sandy Lin, as well as VFX artist Seth Hall, on combining the model and effects assets to complete a character’s look. Holden points to the smoke Lucifer and fire minions as prime examples of this workflow. Some of the so-called “bosses” in the game, such as Cerberus, Phlegyas, King Minos, and Cleopatra, required more attention than others. “In several instances, we had to rework the UV layouts to give more resolution to specific parts of the character that got unex- pectedly close to the camera,” says Holden. “Changes in gameplay cameras gave us fits from time to time.” Without hesitation, Holden names Gluttony’s Cerberus, with its three unique heads, long necks, and large-body appendages, as the most difficult character to create: Each head and several of the satellite heads had functioning mouths, complete with wagging tongues and gnashing teeth. Characters whose surface style varied greatly were particularly hard to texture—some characters had flesh, cloth, metal, and fluid in the same surface area. Using a combination of Adobe’s Photoshop and ZBrush, the crew created the various texture maps: diffuse, color, normal, specular, reflection, ambient occlusion, and chrome. Due to The detail in the game’s imagery is apparent here, in Hell’s City of Dis, as Dante makes his way to the Circle of Anger, to face the molten giant Phlegyas. time and resource constraints, the artists used photographic reference or painted textures for the diffuse maps, and then derived normal and specular maps with Photoshop or Ryan Clark’s CrazyBump for non-specific surfaces. “For some of the more organic surfaces, such as many of the intes- using Pixologic’s ZBrush, and then optimized in Autodesk’s Maya to adhere to in-game polygon budgets—a process Erik Holden, techni- cal art director, says proved particularly challenging throughout the game’s production. Once the concepts were approved, the team—guided by lead char- acter artist Vince Fung and senior character artist Lisette Titre—be- gan building models, starting with a low-resolution in-game version first, before tackling the high-res sculpt in ZBrush. Ten the artists moved to coloring and incorporated fine detail in the models, un- til they reached the desired visual quality. At that point, the ZBrush assets were optimized and re-exported back into Maya, before they were integrated into the Visceral Games proprietary engine. Te characters—from the gigantic Cerberus to the knee-high unbaptized babies—are visually complex, with their costumes some- tinal-shaped floors and walls in Gluttony, we used ZBrush to create all the maps,” says Holden. “Tese worked well and, as intended, were quite grotesque.” For some objects and more specific environmental elements, like the tormented human figure statues, the group did a full ZBrush sculpt, exporting low-res geometry and a full set of textures. Just as there was a range of character models used in the game, there was a similar range of animations required for them. Te ani- mation and rigging primarily was done in Maya, where it was hand keyed. Aside from the usual biped variety, there were characters that required special rigs to account for tentacles, wings, and other ap- pendages (some quite unusual and others quite imaginative). “Let’s just say we weren’t limited as to how far we could push our charac- ters,” says Tristan Sacramento, lead character animator. As Sacramento points out, the in-game animations were the result of a collaborative effort among the animators, designers, and pro- May 2010 25