Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/6179
January 2010 26 n n n n Gaming and removed features, trying to zero-in on the most efficient version to meet as many of the project's special demands as possible. e key to success, says eriault, was close collaboration with the shader programmer, who managed to accommodate all the group's requests with great results. Carpeting the Forest Floor From the lush, densely foliated landscape of Verdant Pinnacle, to the darker, burned-out palette of Stalker Valley, one of the primary challenges of the game was finding a way to completely carpet the forest floor with grass that looked natural and believable from every angle, high and low, and, moreover, hid each level's tiling ground texture. "at was the first big task given to me on the project: Hide the ground!" exclaims eriault. It took a lot of trial and error to find the right approach. e first attempts used dense grass meshes to hide the ground plane. "Un- fortunately, it looked great horizontally, but wasn't believable when looking down from above, eriault recalls. After other passes, he ended up taking inspiration from the moss and fur technique used in [Team Ico's] Shadow of the Colossus, thereby creating mossy patches in 3ds Max that could be used in Ubisoft's procedural population tool. is quickly car- peted most of the ground with uneven, lumpy moss that effectively obscured the level's tiling ground texture. e earlier grass meshes were salvaged and put into the mix as well, along with filler plants and rock debris. "In the end, a little of everything ended up in the final ground cover, giving a very natu- ral mishmash effect that was interesting when looking down or forward upon it," eriault says. "It's easy to overlook this effort with all the impressive sights of Pandora, but until we got this part right, the environments looked extremely sparse and sterile." Creating assets for the numerous Na'vi camps nestled throughout the forest was an- other challenge. Many types of props and structures were needed for gameplay that naturally did not exist in the movie's reference materials or story line, according to eriault. After taking time to study all the references the team had available, the common traits in the Na'vi style of construction became clearer. With that style in mind, eriault was able to design several original Na'vi structures consis- tent with what would be seen in the movie. "Cameron and his team were very cool in encouraging and welcoming the creation of original assets on our end, which added more richness to the Avatar universe," he says. Retrofitted Armory Cameron purposely made Pandora hot and humid, while engulfing it in such a powerful magnetic field so that the RDA couldn't use sophisticated energy weapons. is was an ar- tistic conceit that enabled him to make all the vehicles and weaponry look retrofitted, like they came right out of the late 20 th century. Of course, this conceit also guided Ubisoft's weapon and vehicle creation process, from the military helicopters, to the Samson armored recovery vehicle the player pilots, to the AMP (Armored Military Platform), which resembles Ripley's loader from the movie Aliens. "All of the six-wheeled vehicles are controlled by in-game physics, but the AMP Suit was really challeng- ing. It's far more agile than people would expect," says Blanche. Rigged in 3ds Max like a regular humanoid character, it's meant to replicate the movement of its pilot through ges- ture recognition, so it has an endless combination of articulations and extensions that are especially hard to keep track of. When the AMP Suit is jumping, running, or attacking, it was difficult to show that it was a heavy piece of machinery, yet still had the requisite agility, he points out. To this end, the team adjusted the weighting on the bones to give the suit's mech- anized movements a palpable sense of inertia. The Game is Convergence Avatar: e Game represents certainly the most intensive collaboration between a game developer and a film director, and, moreover, a trifecta in heavyweight film collaborations for Ubisoft, after working first with Peter Jackson on King Kong and then with both Jackson and Steven Spielberg on a game adaptation of the upcoming Tintin. Now with 56 games under its belt, including system-sellers Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, and Splinter Cell, Ubisoft has become an industry behemoth that's managed to harness Quebec's massive pool of creative talent, the province's incredibly generous tax credit system, and its software development infrastructure—which includes Autodesk's Softimage—to rack up annual worldwide sales totaling more than $1.7 billion. In addition, Ubisoft has drawn a consider- able amount of talent from Quebec's thriv- ing animation schools, hiring 20 percent of the 1500 students who have graduated from Montreal's National Animation and Design Centre. e goal now for Ubisoft, and in particular, its four Canadian studios (two in Quebec, one in Vancouver, and the recently announced Toronto studio) is convergence. "e game is all about convergence now," says Yannis Mallat, CEO of the Montreal and To- ronto studios, "and allowing directors to ex- plore the universe they create in their movies in a whole new way through interactivity." Mallat's vision is of a future where film and game developers can merge their pipelines and share tools, while people with different skill sets can work on the same products across a broad spectrum of entertainment media, from movies and video games to online experiences. "We need people with the technical know- how to make that happen," he adds. Cameron also agrees that the number one challenge facing the industry today is conver- gence. "I believe that when entertainment suc- ceeds in today's market, it does so by converg- ing movies, video games, books, toys, graphic novels, and online experiences, to create this kind of greater universe in which you can visit and enjoy the characters and settings in mul- tiple ways," he says. "e story of the movie doesn't have to be retold in those other outlets, but there should be this sense of enlarging the world and enhancing the viewers' knowledge of the history, culture, and all these things within the fantasy world." Indeed, so committed was Cameron to convergence that not only did he borrow many of Ubisoft's designs—for the Pandora's bioluminescence, for example—but he also had his own design teams develop vehicles for the game that aren't in the movie. Avatar: e Game is a seminal moment in the history of film-game convergence, one that Ubisoft is determined to nurture and grow, as it sets its sights now on Spielberg's Tintin. n Martin McEachern is an award-winning writer and contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. He can be reached at martinmceachern@hotmail.com. No amount of detail was spared in the game, including that used for the operations center.