Computer Graphics World

March 2009 12 n n n n Gaming For the humanoid characters, the artists built standard base meshes for men, wom- en, boys, and girls. All of them share the same textures except for the ghouls, which are mapped with a heavily mutated skin texture that resembles a burn victim, and the raiders, a roving gang who wears a very dirty and sweaty custom skin texturing be- fitting their grizzled, battle-scarring lifestyle. Adjusting skin color and tinting, as well as body height, were the primary methods of differentiating among the NPCs. "ere's a lot more variety among the heads because we created unique facial structures for each race," says Pely. "In ad- dition, we made custom textures for older males and females featuring heavily wrin- kled normal maps." On average, the base character meshes comprise 7000 polygons depending on the complexity of the armor and helmet com- binations. All the characters can shed thou- sands of polygons in an instant through brutal dismemberment and decapitation, which has reached surreal proportions in Fallout 3 in the ever-escalating game of one-upmanship among developers. As a result of this violence, the artists had to model and rig the character bodies for vari- ous states of disintegration. is pertained to all the armor and clothing, as well. Be- cause the Fallout series is known for push- ing the depiction of gore and violence over the top, the artists invested an enormous amount of time in creating stylized charac- ter deaths, focusing more on exaggeration than realism. Men of Steel, Mutants e heavy-duty, hermetically sealed hel- met, gas mask, and body armor worn by the player and the Brotherhood of Steel were the first art assets designed at the start of production, and they presented the greatest modeling challenges. Bethes- da used this so-called "Power Armor" as a test case for how the group would update or reinterpret the iconic look of the fran- chise. "As such, the armor was designed as a high-poly mesh with one purpose: to look like a hulking badass in futuristic ar- mor," says Pely. However, the proportions and design details initially were made without regard to how it would be adapted to the in- game skeleton that was used. is became an issue when it came time to bring the meshes in-game. "Modifying the armor to work with a skeleton designed for rather normally proportioned humans was quite challenging," says Pely. "We had to main- tain the bulk and sense of scale of the ar- mor, but still have it work within the limi- tations of the rig that all our NPCs shared." ese issues were addressed through a combination of tweaks to the animations sets, the creation of some unique anima- tions for the Power Armor, and the slow- ing of the animations to create a sense of greater weight." While the Power Armor constituted the greatest modeling challenge, the super- mutant behemoth, a walking mountain of muscle, was an incredibly complicated tex- turing task, requiring a unique skin texture that was made to look almost translucent, with muscle tissue and veins visible be- neath the surface. e texture artists used a multilayered approach. First, they painted the raw muscle tissue as a base, referencing slabs of raw meat from the supermarket for the right quality. en, they painted an- other layer, featuring a network of veins, over the base. Next, they overlaid a green- ish skin, allowing the details of the veins and muscles beneath to show through with varying levels of opacity. A complex relief of cuts, lumps, ridges, snaking venous cords, and other 3D details were added to the skin through a normal map created from a highly detailed Zbrush sculpt. After the artists combined the maps, they capped off the surface with a glossy, specular map to give it an appropriately wet and slimy feel. When it came to modeling and textur- ing the non-bipedal characters—the mu- tants, giant ants, gorilla-like Deathclaws, and rat scorpions—the overriding goal was to make them as scary as possible. is was achieved both through design and animation. In the case of the Deathclaws, the team slightly updated the design from the early games. e creature was all about Decay can be found everywhere outside of the protected vault, with the environments steeped in a pallid, ashen haze (top left). In keeping with the look of the series, the artists retained the dry, arid, dusty look of the landscape, with brownish hues mingled with the dirt and debris (top right). To create the organic objects, such as trees and rocks, the artists used Mudbox.

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