Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/19812
n n n n Gaming The action unfolds within several levels, from Athens to Siberia. The locales involved two types of gameplay: third-person shooter and driving. says principal animator Kristjan Zadziuk. Te result was a ne w animation tool system that gave animators control and visual feedback of how their animations blended together . Te group also used a layering system to break up the repetitiveness of cycles and give more life to the character . As an example, Bond leans into turns and reacts believably to nearby bul- let impacts and explosions. “A lot of time w ent into cr eating the move- ment system for Bond, making 007 mo ve flu- idly and feel r esponsive to the play er control,” says Zadziuk. Compounding the complexities of animating close-quarter combat, the animators dramatiz ed Bond’s moves by framing with the use of heroic, cinematic camera mo ves developed in Motion- Builder. “Tese camera moves meant more parts of the animation would be under closer scrutiny by the player; we had to take extra care animating hands, making sure we retained strong poses in the fingers because there was very little we could get away with,” says Zadziuk. Te facial rig for Bond, Greco, and the other actors is strictly bone-based and free of blend- shapes. For the cinematics, B izarre did facial motion-capture sessions at A udiomotion; the artists could hav e used blendshapes for the cinematics, but, says H allsworth, “we found that by carefully placing the bones under the surface rather than the traditional method of on the surface, they could be utilized more ef- fectively for suggesting skin sliding and rolling over bone and muscle. I n contrast, blendshapes always work by the most direct line.” In addi- tion, Bizarre had two systems for lip-syncing: one for captur ed animation that applies the correct inflection and nuances, and the sec- ond, the studio’s incidental in-game lip-sync - ing, which uses B izarre’s real-time automatic lip syncing to determine the desir ed mouth shape based on the audio file. The Living Daylights Unifying the game’s five settings is a cold, har d color scheme r eflecting Craig’s har der-edged Bond. “We wanted quite a desaturated palette, and to achieve this, we used [color look-up ta - 24 November 2010 bles] as the final step in the postproduction once the final lighting was in place,” says Tompson. To handle the lighting effects, the studio op- timized its Horizon engine to take advantage of the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 platforms. Horizon is responsible for a v ast array of lighting tech - niques thr oughout the game, including r eal- time reflection mapping, high dynamic range, as well as a gamma-correcting rendering pipeline that allows a variety of post-pr ocessing effects, such as motion blur , dynamic color grading, and screen-space ambient occlusion. “We used a light pre-pass system—similar to the one de - veloped for Blur—that allows us to have a large number of dynamic lights in the scene, ” says senior programmer Mark Craig. Light pre-pass rendering involves rendering everything needed to perform lighting calculations in a first pass, performing the lighting in image space, and then compositing this during the rendering of the main view in a second pass. Te big advantage of light pr e-pass render- ing is that it decouples the shading cost of the lighting fr om the scene complexity , allo wing artists to incr ease the v olume of the dynamic lights. “Te [pre-pass system] has many of the same advantages of a fully deferred renderer, but doesn’t limit you to a small range of materials,” says lead programmer Oscar Cooper. “With the light pre-pass system, w e get the adv antage of having a lot of dynamic lights, but can still have a flexible material system. Tis means we can implement specific shaders and effects when needed. For example, we spent a lot of time on specific materials and lighting effects to improve the look of skin, cloth, eyes, and hair.” All the exterior scenes ar e lit b y a dynamic sun, while some interiors emplo y dynamic lights for atmospheric effect, most notably in Istanbul’s cisterns, wher e lanterns sway gently and thr ow inter esting light patterns against the walls. “ We also used them for dramatic effect. In the dam level, for example, we have an enemy guard assuming a threatening pose, while his looming shadow is thrown large against the wall via a dynamic light,” says Cooper. “While there are also fake v olumetrics in sev eral loca- tions, we’ve tried to go a step fur ther than the traditional alpha-blended cone by adding par- ticle dust motes for more substance.” Since dynamic lighting is memory expensive, Bizarre was cautious in its use, but its full power is on display in a modern B angkok aquarium. “We applied a shader to the water in the fish tank that simulates light scattering and light shafts. Tis not only gives the water a lot of depth, but also the impr ession of a str ong light shining into the water from above the tanks,” describes Craig. “Coupled with this is a r eal-time caustic effect, which is used on the floor and walls of the tanks and projects out of the glass and into the room. When you look thr ough the tanks and up and out of the water , you can see the lights of the room above refracted through the animated water surface.” Blood Stone is Forever Along with its physics and lighting capabilities, the H orizon engine also featur es a po werful weather system for real-time, atmospheric weath- er simulations. Using particle effects, artists could introduce snow flurries, great slanting sheets of rain, r eal-time dynamic lightning flashes, and distance fog to set the mood, all of which unfold dynamically through the game engine. Blood Stone doesn’t mark the first time a stu- dio has turned to a video game to defibrillate a franchise back into the public consciousness. Last year, Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum helped Warner B ros. catapult B atman back into the limelight with the same commer cial and critical acclaim as Te Dark Knight (see “Dark Matter,” October 2009). At this time, MGM’ s lenders hav e giv en the studio a r eprieve, extending its debt r e- payment period. C raig has r eturned to wor k on Bond 23, with Sam Mendes set to shoot in mid- to late-2011. R egardless of the film’s fate, Blood Stone should be destined to become far more than a placeholder in the public con- sciousness; rather, an important, lasting entry in Bond’s storied canon. n Martin McEachern is an award-winning journalist and contributing writer for Computer Graphics World. He can be reached at martinmceachern@hotmail.com.