Age of Empires III

TelekineticFrog · Oct 2005

I know some of us polycounters worked on Age of Empires III and just wanted to say, awesome job! I picked up my collector's boxed edition today and I am thoroughly impressed with the package. The game is great but getting a nice hard cover book containing the art of this game just was what I hoped for and more. I mean c'mon not only is there the ensemble art in there but paintings by Craig Mullins. Couldn't have asked for a better extra goodie. I really like how the character art is showcased as well (wireframes, flat shades, bump renders and final in game model) It was also nice getting to see texture flats for in game art assets. I know I won't be letting go of it or even letting it out of my bookcase anytime soon. I'm really enjoying the game. When I played the demo I'd get my ass handed to me by the PC opponent. This still happens but I'm starting to get better at not being destroyed so quickly. It is something to see too when all the bells and whistles are turned on for the game. For those that worked on this title you should be proud and thanks for making a great game and an even better collector's edition. (It is on par with World of Warcraft's collector box). Just one question though why no DVD version of the game for collector's box? At least I was told that it only came in the CD flavor.

Paul Jaquays · Oct 2005

Thanks for the high praise. We all had a lot of fun working on it and the art book was all we had hoped it would be and more.

Correct that it only comes in CD flavor and there was a non-arbitrary reason for it.

TelekineticFrog · Oct 2005

Not a problem. You guys deserve it. I have a few questions about the art if you don't mind me asking. The models had normal maps applied to them (both characters for in game cinemas and buildings), where these generated from high poly models or painted? A lot of it from what I could tell seemed to look as if they were painted. Second, the in game models are low poly, about what were the polycounts usually for characters and what size where the textures? They seem to be around 300 triangle range from my best guess and i do notice in some of them the textures appearing to show some details as almost just being single pixels (almost pixel art and not painted), were they 64x64 for characters? Hope you don't mind me asking those questions and any of you who worked on AOE3 and want to add something please do. Thank you.

AstroZombie · Oct 2005

A lot of the awesome icons you see were done by LD

Paul Jaquays · Oct 2005

99% of the normals were painted in Photoshop. DH and The Bird did a few high-poly models for the cinematic characters ... since that is the only place we would have seen any payoff from them.

I think high 200's to low 300's for the triangle count in most game play human units sounds correct. Units typically had compressed 64x textures. Buildings typically had 256x textures. The main cinematic characters were often very high poly (for an RTS). Homecity art was allowed to have higher poly counts and a lot larger texture budget.

_Shimmer · Oct 2005

Is there a possbility to unpack the texture files? If yes, I gonna pick up this game and will do this (I dont play RTS anyway

Frankie · Oct 2005

how do you paint normal maps?

Paul Jaquays · Oct 2005

At this point, I have no clue about whether or not we will be releasing tools to unpack textures and other content. My guess ... probably not. However, others have reverse engineered our previous games, so given time, that may happen.

We painted our normal maps in grayscale (actually RGB, not true grayscale). We used a Photoshop filter from Nvidia to interpret the gray painting as a normal map (that reacts to real time per pixel lighting). The process is good for adding simple elevation changes, textural character, low relief sculpture detail and such to surfaces, but it's very difficult to add the simulation of rounded surfaces or increased polygon complexity that you get from compiled hi-rez to lo-rez modeling.

Frankie · Oct 2005

ah hehe, I thought you meant you had someone trying to work out which shade of pink or light blue they should use to make dent on a wall.

_Shimmer · Oct 2005

actually painting normalmaps works... if you, well, paint on the Red, then Green and then Blue channel. Greets to your brain if trying this

At least you can work out some detail and sharpen edges for example if you have a normalmap baked out the hipoly...

LordScottish · Oct 2005

If you paint each channel seperatly it works pretty well to paint details on normalmaps. It just takes 3 times the amount of work

Can't wait to see the special edition box of AoE3

Ozymandias · Oct 2005

I would also like to add my praise to everyone who worked on AOE3. That game is incredible, and is visually stunning. I am curious what the polycounts were for buidlings? I realize they are probably varied due to the varied building types, but if someone could cite a couple building examples and their polycounts I would appreciate it. Thanks

RazorBladder · Oct 2005

Aye, I'll certainly be picking up AoE3 Collectors Edition, especially with all the hardwork put in by familiar buddin polycounters and all the other guys

It's been a long time comin, but it'll be undoubtably worth it.

Paul Jaquays · Oct 2005

Ozymandias: I worked on home city buildings ... typical polycount for building would be in the 1700 to 2100 poly range. Cathedrals were usually higher poly than that. In game stuff ... they shot for 500 polies or less for typical buildings. The only in game world stuff I did was the second stage of construction for the Russians and Germans. You see it on screen for all of 3-5 seconds ... if you even bother to look.

BoBo_the_seal · Oct 2005

not sure if they upressed the in-game characters or not after I left but this is an example of what an in-game character looked like:

I just picked up the collectors addition tonight. The art book kicks ass! The production quality is top notch.

- BoBo

_Shimmer · Oct 2005

hmm so basicly the NDA is off? Show us some more art!

ThE_BirD · Oct 2005

Thanks for the kind words guys:) We never up-resed the characters but we did add bump and spec maps to them... tricky painting when you think you've only got a pixel or 2 to bump out a nose:p Glad people are diggin the art book, I'll post up some of the IGC characters I did in about a week with a revamp of the SFN site:)

Ozymandias · Oct 2005

Thanks for the info Paul, I have been wanting to do some rts environments and those poly counts will definitely help.

_Shimmer · Oct 2005

found some artwork here:

http://age.of.empires.iii.free.fr/artwork.html

Allready started guessing, who did what

I found some definite work from the_bird (age-an) and from DH (indian chief) telling by the texturing

Beat me if am wrong

Also can it be that Craig mullins made some artworks? The paintings really rock!

rawkstar · Oct 2005

its weird how there are alot of different styles going on there, going from very realistic almost traditional looking to extremely cartoony and exaggerated, i thought that was kinda weird... like aoe always seemed like a realistic type of game, like colorfull but still realistic, doesn't seem like cartoony things would fit in that well, but I guess when ur working on these things for years u do need a breath of fresh air every once in awhile. cool stuff guys i'll be checking out the game sometime this week... when i get to it... so many releases lately...

Bronco · Oct 2005

Yeah congrats Bird,DH,BoBo,Paul and everyone else,amazing work from what I have seen.

Going to pick it up when I get back from Cyprus next week.
I think my LAN network might come back to some form of use again me thinks

Rockin!!

john

monster · Oct 2005

Too bad none of my animations could be in the book.

I did have a page of facial expressions.

Wells · Oct 2005

Great work, will probably pick this one up.

"Clic on pictures to visualize them on fullscreen size." just doesn't sound right.

TelekineticFrog · Oct 2005

Don't worry Monster my man, I was actually really impressed with the mad man's expressions. Very very cool stuff. Plus don't they show animations on the making of DVD? It would've been cool to see some rig stuff even if only other developers or hobbyists would pay attention or care.

TelekineticFrog · Nov 2005

Question, Paul and Jason you probably can answer this one, on the low poly buildings that were in game, did you float windows and doors on them? I noticed in some of the wire and flat shade shots i've seen that polys for those objects were floating. What were the reasons and benifits of that? Only thing I could think of was to generate a variety of buildings that had similar structures yet different detail placement.

Paul Jaquays · Nov 2005

We made extensive use of decals throughout the buildings in both the game world and the home city. That allowed us to create more surface variety with a limited texture set. We had to juggle a balance between vert count and texture size.

KDR_11k · Nov 2005

What's with the game box being the size of a boardgame box?

Paul Jaquays · Nov 2005

The Special Edition box is packed with stuff. It has to be that big to hold the art book, and the music CD, and the making of DVD, and the several assorted other books and posters. Regular edition of the game is the standard (for these days) small cardboard box.

KDR_11k · Nov 2005

Ah, that explains it. At first I thought one of those oversized advertising boxes had dropped on the store shelf.

Age of Empires III

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