Congrats, Matt!
Now I have a new game to play this summer!
ATR
On Wed, 4 Jun 2014 02:00:34 +0000, Matt Lind wrote:
> I don’t get to say this often, but I’ve finished a project using
> Softimage which all can see. Well, it’s not actually ‘finished’
> as it’s an online game which is continuously maintained, updated,
> and ongoing, but it’s now live and I can talk about it beyond
> generalizations. Yay! My last completed project was my previous
> production –Barnyard the animated feature back in 2006. It’s been
> a long time coming, a relief, and refreshing to be able to refer to
> something I did in the current decade.
>
> Wildstar officially launched last Friday night at midnight for early
> access, but opened up the flood gates today for everybody else. The
> game is now running smoothly in North America and Europe for all to
> see and experience. If you were part of the beta, let it be known
> significant improvements have been made since on all fronts. If you
> haven’t tried the game yet, point your browser to
> www.wildstar-online.com and click on the shiny buttons. The first 30
> days are free with initial purchase.
>
> Production started in 2005 using Softimage XSI v3.5 and launched with
> Softimage 2013 SP1 – all of it in 32 bit land. Majority of the
> content created in Softimage 7.5 which we used for roughly 5 years.
> Softimage was used for a heavy majority of the 3D artwork including
> characters, props, environments (other than the ground), buildings,
> dungeons, and everything inside of them. We didn’t use ICE at all
> (but not for lack of trying, and we tested heavily), so this is a
> good example of what the fundamental toolset can do. Heavy use of
> custom properties, vertex colors, user normals, clusters, envelopes,
> UV spaces, and hardware (real time) shaders to customize and iterate
> on our content. What made these simple components really nice is
> they were general and could be re-targeted for many uses outside of
> their original intended purpose. Our particles were created and
> applied in Softimage, but simulated only in engine. The SDK was used
> to write 500+ tools to assist artists to create their content include
> tools like ‘mimick’ which is a command similar to GATOR which can
> transfer attributes, but do so on select subcomponents instead of the
> entire object, along with other bells and whistles. Often overlooked
> and understated, but Softimage scaling was incredibly powerful for
> controlling the squash and stretch scaling of deformers used in our
> envelopes to animate characters with cartoon whimsy and without ugly
> shearing often associated with other software. It is used on every
> asset that moves. Relational views were used to create tools such as
> a face editor to view and animate faces for our player characters,
> and adjust face customizations to see how they’d appear in the game
> as each of our characters have multiple faces and other components
> which can plug in like a Mr. Potato head doll. It was important to
> see the various components in context side-by-side for comparison
> while creating the content so consistency could be maintained. This
> was achieved using many ‘object view’ embedded into the relational
> view. Under the hood the face editor drove the animation mixer to
> perform face pose blending so artists could see the animation in real
> time on their characters. Also, NURBS, that’s right, NURBS surfaces
> were used to transfer face poses and clothing between characters.
> The details must remain a trade secret, but I just had to mention we
> used NURBS in all their unfinished glory to get meaningful work done
> with significant contributions to the end product. Render passes
> were used to re-dress environments to allow artists to create
> geometry once, then swap textures, shader settings, and other details
> many times for each variant of the environment. Not only does it
> simplify the artist workflow by centralizing all their interaction to
> a few clicks, but it also allows assets to be packed into compact
> files for use in our engine. Render passes are used in housing and
> dungeons. If we had to do this in Maya, we’d probably have to break
> up each variant into its own scene and have to figure out a way to
> merge all the scenes together that shared the same geometry. These
> polished touches matter. Softimage for the win.
>
> So that said, while many 3D software could create the assets in their
> own time and space vacuum, Softimage (in my opinion) was the only
> software that could’ve tackled this project given our specific time,
> resources, and budget as there were many close calls along the way.
> I say Softimage because many of the aforementioned features came out
> of the box with us ready to roll and not have to spend oodles of time
> reinventing the wheel. Not having to write an animation mixer to do
> face pose blending, or render pass systems to do texture/shader swaps
> were incredible time savers and something we could lean on.
> Spreadsheet queries and custom selection filters allowed us to
> quickly and easily find our custom data in any scene with just a
> click, view the data in a clean environment, and change it in bulk,
> if necessary without worry of missing a spot – highly important for
> finding and fixing bugs. The elegant user experience was paramount
> to getting work done on tight schedules at high quality with minimal
> development resources available. Everybody says that, but in our
> case it couldn’t be more true. That user experience extends to the
> SDK as well. Not having to relearn or rewrite code over many
> versions and upgrades over the span of nearly a decade was quite
> important in maintaining continuity and stability. The scripting
> object model was more than a blessing to get under the hood and
> target only what we needed rather than having to rely on combinations
> of commands which do more work than necessary or don’t do exactly
> what we need as is available in most other 3D software. Backward
> compatibility with the API for C++ development was very important
> too. While today’s OpenGL/DirectX viewport may seem antiquated, at
> the time this project started it was ahead of and more capable than
> any other in the industry, and fully compatible with all the other
> tools such as render passes. That cannot be overlooked.
>
> Finally, I should thank all the hard work and contributions from the
> Softimage developers and support, past and present, who put such an
> application together to make it possible. Not just the foresight to
> see and understand the artist’s point of view, but also in the
> continued listening and support when we needed help along the way
> whether it be to fix bugs, augment existing features, or implement
> new features to accommodate our needs. Building such an application
> is more than just writing and compiling code – it’s about
> understanding people. You cannot understand people without forming
> relationships and maintaining those relationships over the long
> haul. Softimage made the effort to establish and maintain those
> relationships contributing help and advice along the way, and that is
> why so many successful projects have resulted. As much as I’ve
> ragged on many points, the bigger picture is not lost on the fact
> Softimage is a very capable and strong swiss army knife of 3D
> software to tackle many projects fearlessly. It’s just a shame that
> in all my years of working with Softimage|XSI, this is only the 2nd
> long form project I’ve been able to call complete (due to project
> durations) and will be a shame that there will likely not be a 3rd.
> One point of satisfaction is of having worked on one of the first XSI
> projects in ‘Panic Room’, and now finishing one of the last in ‘
> Wildstar’. Both poetically apropos as Panic Room was a project
> fighting with a then beta-quality release rushed to market full of
> many bugs while Wildstar is a game about exploring and settling the
> planet Nexus much like the old west of America’s pioneer days of the
> 1800’s with wagons, staking claims to territory, gold rushes, and
> shootouts. Only fitting as I must now look forward to a new destiny
> in uncharted territory as Softimage has literally been part of half
> my life in the 21 years I’ve used both Softimage|3D and Softimage|XSI
> ….(and Eddie too!).
>
> Thank you, Softimage.
>
>
> Matt
Anthony Rossano
ant...@mesmer.com
