Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/26447
Gaming n n n n Cloth simulation was achieved with modeling in Softimage and then animated dynamically using code. on the rig that reflect the hero’s strength, weight, and other attributes. Te extreme morphs in- volved triggering alternate geometry, rigging, and textures during gameplay, and attaching wings, horns, and other supernatural parts on the body during combat. From doublets to the dresses of scullery maids and the long, flowing gowns of nobles, clothing and cloth simulation for the period costumes was a pivotal challenge during the character-creation process, complicated by frequent wardrobe changes to the hero’s ever- changing body. Modeled in Softimage, the cloth deformed properly; this was done by distributing the polygons as evenly as pos- sible over the surface. “Te cloth in Fable III is animated dynamically in code, so we have to be clever with how many vertices we’re throw- ing at the simulation,” says Eckersely. “Cloth power is painted via a weight map in Softim- age. Using a grayscale map, artists paint [the surface] fully white for total cloth simulation, or shades of gray to blend between cloth simu- lation and the animation played underneath. Tis allowed us to come up with not only cloth materials, but springy materials, too, like the chicken-suit tail, which has a really nice wobble to it.” Alas, long dresses are always the hardest to simulate. “Tey can be a complete nightmare to get working correctly,” says Eckersely. “On the IK rig for both our hero and villager, we have cloth colliders set up on most of the main bones; these bounding volumes can play hav- oc with longer garments, especially when they fully encircle the legs almost to the floor.” Hand-Keyed Animation Albion is teeming with scores of villagers that share one skeletal rig bound to a mesh and composed of three body parts: the body, head, and hair or hat. “All these are interchangeable, so any body can fit with any head, and any head with any hat or hair,” says Faichnie. “We also have different texture sets for ethnic variations, allowing us to get a large variety of different-looking villagers represent- ing all parts of the world.” Specific non-player characters (NPCs), such as the bartenders or prostitutes, have their own unique main bodies, but may use standard heads. While the artists tried getting more detail with sets of noses, ears, and so on, they found that keeping things simpler seemed to work best. To maintain all the charm and nu- ance of Fable’s colorful, heightened sense of reality, animators avoided motion capture, opting to keyframe all the animations for both the hero and the NPCs in Softimage, including all the facial expressions and the dynamic touch actions. “Te touch feature was absolutely one of the design pillars for the development,” says Jacques. “We knew a complete solution for every circumstance would not be possible, but we wanted the player to feel as embedded in the world and as emotionally invested as possible.” To do this, the player has to execute every action—how- ever mundane—rather than surrendering that control to a triggered, pre-programmed event. “Tere were two areas of the touch feature that received the most amount of work: hand holding and the one-to-one interactive expres- sions between hero and villager,” says Jacques. Indeed, for every form of touch—from kiss- ing, hugging, hand shaking, dancing, drag- Cinematics Fable III features two types of cinematics: real-time and pre-rendered. Because of the constantly evolving appearance of the hero and the environments, both were a nightmare to create in light of the need to anticipate almost every change that could transpire before a cut-scene played. The in-engine cut-scenes use all the functionality of the Fable engine, includ- ing the in-game character models, lighting, procedural lip-syncing, textures, and so forth. “Apart from the fact that the hero constantly changes, morphs, and is of- ten dressed in random outfits, the in-game cut-scenes cannot be pre-rendered, so the sheer number of scenes that had to be done in-engine almost doubled from initial estimates,” says lead animator Si Jacques. To shoulder the burden, Lionhead brought in director Jay Alan, and used an outsource company, Original Fource in China, to make them. Standing supreme among the pre-rendered cinematics is the opening cut- scene involving a hapless chicken making a harrowing flight from certain death in a factory, through the boot-battered streets and under the carriage wheels of the Stygian nightmare of Bowerstone, only to land in a cooking pot in a kitchen. It is a tour de force of art design, character animation, state-of-the-art effects animation, subsurface scattering, and global illumination, done by Blur Studios, a Lionhead collaborator since Fable II. “They were happy to be mak- ing a bird-based movie because they had just developed a new feather plug-in,” says Jacques. –Martin McEachern January/February 2011 29 ging—there had to be a reciprocal action from the receiver. “We looked at other games that used hand holding—notably, Sony’s Ico by Fu- mito Ueda—and knew we wanted our feature to surpass that.” Tis required an intense col- laboration among animation, design, and code. Te animation department provided a number of partial body poses for the hand “holder” and the second character, or “holdee.” Te artists then blended these poses on top of run, walk, and general movement cycles. Te poses, them- selves, were blended and adjusted depending on the positioning of the two characters relative to each other. Te team wrote code to provide IK support, tweaks to slightly stretch the bones to complete the connection between hands, and make other fine-tuning adjustments. Using the same principles, Lionhead devel- oped the dragging feature, through which the king can drag insubordinates to the dungeon or a child to safety. “We initially limited the hero’s speed, creating unique full-body drag animations for both the hero and the NPCs,” says Jacques. “During the development of a game, sometimes a solution works better than you ever thought it would, and this was a case in point. Te dragging action not only came together quickly and looked exactly as we wanted it, but felt really good while us- ing it. So, for example, if you want to be evil, you can drag unwilling people to slave away in factories, and it will really feel like they’re resisting.”