Demigod Character Art

"Pixels, Polygons, and Milk Tea: It's Business Time"

By Timpulse on July 28, 2008 2:32:00 PM from

I represent roughly half of the Demigod character modeling crew. I say “roughly” because, while Matt Dudley and I are currently the only ones tasked with modeling and texturing characters at this stage, Nate has also had his hands in some of the earlier modeling work. (Furthermore, I believe that Matt is an inch or two taller than me, making me just slightly less than half of the character crew, if you go by height.) To the point, the Demigod art team is an extremely small one considering the project scope, and easily the leanest lineup I’ve ever been a part of.

Beyond the obvious financial benefits of a small dev team, our ability to know what’s going on in the areas of design and engineering and our ease and freedom in communicating ideas amongst each other is amazing. As Nate has already stated, the entire team participates in routine play testing of the game and everyone can have a direct and meaningful impact on its evolution.

I am fortunate to be a part of a project that has been so well planned and executed, and to work amidst such skilled and experienced people. As a bonus, the concentration of wit and humor per capita at GPG is extremely high, which makes for lots of good times. Yes, I do love my job and the fine folks I get to work with, and I take note daily that I am a part of something great.

The Demigod project and a surprising amount of the art were already well under way when I joined the Demigod team in early January of 2008. The standard of quality was set pretty high, as the “waterfall” map and many of the characters you see in the trailer and in the earlier screenshots were nearly complete. The art pipeline was well thought out and established, which made it easy for me to get acclimated and start creating.

The character concepts (all done by Nate or Steve) are expertly done and very concisely detailed, leaving very little guesswork when charging forward with the modeling. I have worked with Nate in the past, so a solid rapport and a kindred sense of silliness were already in place. I really liked where he was going with the art style. It felt mythical, unrestrained, innovative and fresh, and there was a nice balance between uniqueness and familiarity, and I was pretty jazzed to start creating a Demigod! Creating a Demigod…I should probably write home about that!

My biggest obstacle initially was some unfamiliarity with ZBrush, which I hadn’t touched in a couple of years. When getting acquainted with ZBrush, the “first date” is often not so great, but with some dedicated courtship, a meaningful relationship will eventually blossom! Thankfully, Matt is very technically knowledgeable, easy-going, and was really helpful in getting me up to speed with the features of version 3, our primary tool for generating the highly detailed normal maps we’re making for our characters. I’ve learned a lot and I am especially glad to be working with him. Matt shares his milk tea with us. It is good.

I’d like to talk more about ZBrush or critical decisions we’ve made regarding our character art pipeline, but for now I’ll wrap this up and invite questions or comments anyone may have about our character art creation process for Demigod.

-Tim Cox

+2 Karma | 72 Replies

At least they are feeding you in there. But I fear milk and tea will not be enough to sustain you in the long run and you will die of malnourishment.

Can you put up some screenshots?

You guys have done an awesome job.

Soley based on design, which character(s) would you say is/are your favorite(s)?

Hard to believe indeed that all the amazing models we've seen so far is the work of a 2(.5!) person team

Awesome job, keep it up

And I agree, awesome job you guys; simply incredible.

Neat!

To be honest, as a tester, I find smaller dev teams much easier and much more fun to work with. There's much less overhead, and frequently you get to talk to the guys actually doing the stuff, rather than PR folks

In previous journals, it has been said that much of the gameplay was created using a white box concept. As you create and add new Demigods, how is the gameplay affected? In other words, say you come up with this great concept for a new DemiGod, for instance, a demonesque demigod, large, winged, black and red.

You've got some great concept art and now, need to model it out, map it and incorporate it into the game. How do you bring together a new demigod concept into the game? Are the skills, animations, and feel for the character tweaked after its modeled and ported in?

Great work so far, looking forward to more.

This explains a lot. One thing that strikes me is how cohesive all the artwork looks. I haven't seen that in many games. Everything looks like it belongs (except maybe the robotic Seraphim looking things, but I'll reserve judgement for the beta).

Could you share what the rough polygon count of a Demigod is? If it's trimmed from a working model, what's the count before and after trimming for the game? How long does it take to build a demigod from concept to final art?

I'm thrilled these journals turn up so often these days and I love everyone of them

You've got some great concept art and now, need to model it out, map it and incorporate it into the game. How do you bring together a new demigod concept into the game? Are the skills, animations, and feel for the character tweaked after its modeled and ported in?

The "whitebox" process begins with a fairly rough model which establishes the basic form, proportions, and initial scale of the character (no UV-mapping yet) which is rigged up and exported to the game with a complete set of animations (which may also be fairly rough). Seeing the model in motion within the game allows us to spot strengths and weaknesses which are addressed when the model is later finalized, mapped, textured, rigged, and exported again. Iteration still continues if needed to the model, texture, scale, and animations as needed.

Zbrush? FUCK YES.
Now I don't know whether to be jumping up and down at the pure awesomeness that this game will assuredly be, Or if I should be trembling in fear of the poly counts.

Soley based on design, which character(s) would you say is/are your favorite(s)?

My favorite so far is the Unclean Beast. I've always loved spikey monsters, but in this case, I really like the notion of a vile and bestial creature striving for godliness.

Uncleanliness is next to godliness. >3

You said you haven't used Zbrush in a few years, what suite have you been using? 3ds Max? Blender (har har?)? What was the deciding point (if someone can answer) to use Zbrush over any other suites?

Uncleanliness is next to godliness. >3

Nicely done!

You said you haven't used Zbrush in a few years, what suite have you been using? 3ds Max? Blender (har har?)? What was the deciding point (if someone can answer) to use Zbrush over any other suites?

Now that I'm done laughing, I should answer your question. Most of what we do is generated in Max and exported directly into the game. The Zbrush pass is strictly for developing a normalmap which is applied to the low-poly model in-game. We always strive to be as economical as we can possibly be in terms of polycount and texture use.

As you create and add new Demigods, how is the gameplay affected? In other words, say you come up with this great concept for a new DemiGod, for instance, a demonesque demigod, large, winged, black and red. You've got some great concept art and now, need to model it out, map it and incorporate it into the game. How do you bring together a new demigod concept into the game? Are the skills, animations, and feel for the character tweaked after its modeled and ported in?

For the most part, character development has gone like this (in special cases the order can get a little mixed up):

1. Design and art sit together and spitball a character design. Design might come to this meeting with a general need, like "we need a guy who does a lot of melee damage." Similarly, art might come to this meeting with a cool-looking design. Usually, the thing that comes out of this meeting doesn't resemble the idea that went into it. For example, we started one of these meetings thinking there should be an ugly ogre-thing that rides around on a palanquin that is carried by haggard slaves. That one turned into the Queen of Thorns. It was a wild ride.

2. Art goes off and starts iterating through some concepts, periodically touching base with design, who are putting together the attributes and abilities for the character.

3. Once everybody agrees that the character has some potential, a whitebox model goes in (often with either recycled or temp animations), and we start playing with the character in game. This is where the balancing starts.

4. Art then starts a final model, and final animations begin soon after the model has its UV coordinates. Both are often tweaked for months as the need arises.

5. Once the final model is in place, the effects team replaces all the ugly programmer effects with the Hollywood-ready hotness that you saw in the trailer.

6. Tweaking, tweaking, tweaking. We sometimes go back and redo an entire character that isn't working quite right, we play with scale, we add and subtract abilities -- this is simultaneously the most important and least fun stage.

7. Miller time.

7. Miller time.

WTF! It's crunch time. Stop foolin' around.

7. Miller time.

Shouldn't that be #1?

Queen of Thorns

Is that the official name for the lady in the flower?

Neat!To be honest, as a tester, I find smaller dev teams much easier and much more fun to work with. There's much less overhead, and frequently you get to talk to the guys actually doing the stuff, rather than PR folks

Careful, or Yarley might think you don't like him!

Yarley's not a PR guy

Is Queen of Thorns the woman in the moving flower/plant? And can you tell us if she is a General or not? If not, I understand, but it'd be really nice to know that we"ve finally seen a general in, so far, a sea of assassins.

In an E3 interview for Gamespot, it was said that they're actually blending the lines between Generals and Assassins a bit so they're not as drastically different in purpose. Of course since none of us played it we can't see for ourselves, but they did say it's also not anything final and they're just experimenting..

[quote]In an E3 interview for Gamespot, it was said that they're actually blending the lines between Generals and Assassins a bit so they're not as drastically different in purpose.quote]

I know they are thinking of blending the the two player types (I've read the article in it's entirety myself), but there still seems to be a lot of the Rook, Torch Bearer, Regulus, and Unclean Beast are Assassin type and no one for the General type; not to complain, just saying what I see; which I also know is perfectly normal and understandable for a game with at least 7 months left in development.

Queen of ThornsIs that the official name for the lady in the flower?

It has been said that to utter her true name is to invite an untimely and horrific death...

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Demigod Character Art

"Pixels, Polygons, and Milk Tea: It's Business Time"