What
was LightWave used for making in the game?
Everything, really - LightWave
was the only piece of 3D software we used to create
assets for Burnout 3, we even used it as our game
editor.
For the tracks, the artists
designed, modelled and textured the road surface
and surrounding environments inside Modeler as
separate layers and elements. Once complete these
parts were loaded into Layout and, with the help
of some of our plug-ins, were distributed and
set-up to create the stunning, massive tracks
you play in Burnout 3. The plug-ins were used
to pass information to the game from the data
inside LightWave, if all the trees are using the
same model, then the game can treat them differently
to gain performance. Different surfaces were tagged
so the engineers and audio team could determine
what the car was driving on to play the right
sound or throw up the correct debris.
Once the tracks were modelled
they were passed to the designers who laid out
the traffic and AI systems. Using another set
of Layout plug-ins they could define the drivable
and off-road areas for the player and AI cars.
They could also see the traffic system in action
and tweak the amount, frequency and types of vehicles
filling the roads.
With all this data complete
all the assets were exported from LightWave into
the games build process ready to be played.
The cars in Burnout 3 are
not licensed from manufacturers and were all designed
and constructed by hand. As they had to be destroyable
in game, each of the cars is made up of multiple
body parts and panels, each set-up with bones
to create deformable, removable pieces. Early
R&D looked into the structure of these bones
and possible weight maps, from here the engineers
scripted some tools to help automate the set-up
of the 70+ cars in the game. Once modelled each
car is set-up in Layout to define its parts, lights,
wheels and exhausts as well as the various level
of detail models required by the game engine.
LightWave was also used in
the early pre-production of the game to produce
many rendered pre-visualisation movies. These
ranged from animating a crash to explore camera
systems and particle effects to racing down city
streets testing out various speeds and FX systems
for the cars boost. As mentioned above, we also
produced movies looking at the cars' deformations
and the possible fire and explosion systems. Using
LightWave enabled us to take any existing assets
and quickly mock-up and render videos as needed.
Previs is all about visualising ideas quickly
without the game world's technical constraints.
The more options and ideas we can turn around
for the designers and the team, the better the
final system can be.
Finally we used LightWave
to produce a lot of rendered promotional images
seen on magazine covers and show posters. Again,
using LightWave meant we could take the game worlds
and cars and get them into the renders. With print
deadlines there wasn't always a lot of set-up
time. Having everything around and out of the
box in LightWave 3D meant we could turn around
complex rendered images in a matter of days. Cars
were easily given more polygon resolution in Modeler,
surfaces and lighting defined in Layout before
rendering multiple passes.
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
