Forza Motorsport Environment Art - Big Images
polycounter lvl 18
Hello all. It's been a long time since I last pimped anything, because I've been so busy at work.
But anyway, we just shipped Forza Motorsport, and I thought I'd post some stuff that went into the game. My company (Valkyrie Entertainment) did a bunch of 3rd party work for Microsoft, doing a bunch of the race tracks, as well as other content. These pieces are from the Tokyo and Vancouver/Pacific Port tracks. I'll try to add more stuff when I have time to do some more renders.
I did all of the models and textures. Poly counts are rather low, in the 250-1000 range. Textures are a combination of hand-painted and photosource, and resolutions are 256s and 512s, depending on object.
But anyway, we just shipped Forza Motorsport, and I thought I'd post some stuff that went into the game. My company (Valkyrie Entertainment) did a bunch of 3rd party work for Microsoft, doing a bunch of the race tracks, as well as other content. These pieces are from the Tokyo and Vancouver/Pacific Port tracks. I'll try to add more stuff when I have time to do some more renders.
I did all of the models and textures. Poly counts are rather low, in the 250-1000 range. Textures are a combination of hand-painted and photosource, and resolutions are 256s and 512s, depending on object.
Replies
Consistency is great, all too often I see stuff that doesn't quite "match up" in the overall scheme of things, but these look like all a part of a similar environment even when rendered separately.
On the first image there, I'd maybe have flipped the UV's on every other brick post between the gates/railings, just to make the identical texture a little less obvious. Still, I guess you'd be driving past those at high speed in the game anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
Nicely slipped in the company reference on the gas station sign... heh.
Good stuff, I'll have to go and give this game a try, I think - I'm only playing Trackmania Sunrise at the moment...
MoP
I'll certainely have a look at it
Daz, yes the models are pretty high poly counts for a racing game. Just think, if each model is 250 to 1000 polys, and there are hundreds or even thousands of models on each track (seriously), the sheer amount of detail in the world gets quite impressive. As Okkun pointed out, our tracks got rather huge. We used Max to lay out all of our tracks, which was good and bad. Max just tends to choke once you get this many models on screen at the same time, with all models having unique textures and lightmaps. This made the artists' workflow something of a bitch to work with, as you'd have to work in layers, or hide/isolate a lot. But the artists didn't need to learn any special level design tool, which was good. Apparently this project was what actually encouraged Discreet to add Smart Object Culling to Max. They did this because they were unable to open one of the team's tracks on their own computers. Lol.
In any case, the programmers got it all running in the game using some kind of streaming technology, with only a few compromises from the art department. So it looks pretty, and the environments are very well populated with lots of unique props, instead of the normal repurposeable cookie-cutter filler that a lot of games have to resort to.
Of course, this meant a lot more work for us artists, and we had to keep up a pretty frantic pace of something like 3+ completed buildings a day. But you get pretty darn quick doing this stuff, when you've got 50 or so buildings and props on your plate.
I'll try to get some more stuff up, and will encourage Okkun to do the same, as he had some really killer stuff that would be great to show.
[edit] Oh, I got it now! "WARNING: Management has stated that if you are able to read this, you are wasting time and should be racing".
Fun stuff like that is always nice to see in games. I guess there's a part on some track where you can stop and read that sign, yeah?
I have no crits, especially when considering I'd be speeding by all this stuff somewhere between 100-200mph.
I am really enjoying your game.
Just love the little easter eggs that you can slip in everywhere. I really had fun on the Vancouver style track doing stuff like that.
Ikraan, I'm glad you're having fun with the game!