Computer Graphics World

Visual Restraint As awe-inspiring as the graphics may be, the visual presentation increased the chal- lenge of maintaining visual clarity. In early stages of the game, disorientation would set in quickly, especially with the sweep- ing camera movements, which often led players grasping at thin air rather than the golf club or signpost in their midst. "In these early builds," says Inaba, "the black- and-white graphics led to considerable eyestrain. e key to solving the problem was to control the on-screen movement and fine-tune the texture maps into subtle gradations of black and white. is eventu- ally alleviated the eyestrain. ankfully, we never had to alter the gameplay or shorten the time limit on the levels to combat the problem." Despite the monochromatic color scheme, which could potentially flatten out the images, the industrial and urban envi- ronments are sculpted three-dimension- ally with complex lighting effects. From the building-lined streets to the industrial interiors paneled with computers and walls of spikes, the environments are bathed in real-time lighting. Because of the hardware limitations of the Wii, however, it was too expensive to employ light maps or extreme- ly complex layered texture schemes for the environments. Instead, the team used nor- mal maps as often as possible to paint de- tails into the monochromatic sets, because, according to lead character designer Masaki Yamanaka, "if the geometry gets extremely complex, with too many vertices, it can take forever to load in the Wii." Using normal maps instead of complex geometry also gave the artists much finer control over the visibility of the environ- ment and the balance of black and white. ey also tried very hard to implement real-time reflection mapping, but in the end, couldn't find any way to stylize it to fit with their comic-book sensibility. "So, we ditched it," says Yamanaka. When Jack walks into a well-lit area, his face blanches with sudden illumination; entering the darkness, his face blackens as stark-white highlighting lines accentuate his chiselled features. "To apply the black- and-white art style to Jack Caymen, we cre- ated two types of black-and-white textures: one for well-lit areas, and another for dark ones," says Yamanaka. Both were created in Autodesk's Softimage. In fact, the entire project, from model- ing to effects animation, was helmed in Softimage, and driven by a custom game engine rather than the popular Unreal En- gine 3 from Epic. All the environments and characters are rendered with simple black- and-white shaders. However, one of the biggest challenges involved maintaining the graphic-novel look in the effects animation, especially in the smoke and explosions, since particle animation tools are typically tailored for lifelike realism. "We studied the look of explosions and smoke in graphic novels intensely," says Yamanaka. "To prevent the smoke from looking like a group of particles, we used a post filter in Softimage and did exten- sive edge extraction to each smoke-effect group, eventually creating the comic-book style smoke shader." All about Character e game's relentless carnage was an ever- present challenge to the character model- ers. According to Yamanaka, the violence was the foundation of the game's macabre humor, so the modelers and programmers worked tirelessly to make the flesh as de- structible as possible. Programmers han- dled the severing of limbs, while modelers created the remaining stumps and guts in Softimage. Creating bold, striking, unique designs for each of the main characters was crucial for differentiating them after they'd be ren- dered monochromatically. "We were afraid they would blend into the background," says Yamanaka, "so we really had to focus on creating clear designs, especially for the ene- mies." Using the texture maps to individual- ize the main characters—Jack, Lord Gesser, Noa, and Leo—was a constant struggle that resulted in almost obsessive-compulsive finessing right up to the release date. "We would twist the black-and-white balance, shadows, and shadow textures endlessly until we ran out of time," Ya- manaka adds. "If we had any more time, I'd still be adjusting them!" Using Softimage, modelers created the main characters and the end-of-level bosses using approximately 2000 to 5000 poly- gons, limiting characters of lesser importance to around 1500. For much of the writhing, wriggling, and detaching of body parts, the team used Havok IK, which was also em- ployed for the hard-body destruction. To handle more extreme effects, such as bodies Even though the game has a comic-book style, the imagery is three-dimensional and contains complex lighting effects. Normal maps gave the artists more control over the visibility of the back- grounds and helped them balance the use of black and white. June 2009 29 Gaming n n n n

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