WAR State of the "Art"

WAR State of the "Art"
Topic Started: Apr 11 2008, 01:03 AM (158 Views)
Wintermute	Apr 11 2008, 01:03 AM Post #1
Admin Posts: 1,324 Group: Senior President Field Ops Member #1 Joined: November 3, 2007 Name/Class of main: Wintermute/Chosen	http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/sh...7706#post777706 All, I have read many posts here concerning the visuals of WAR. There have been many praises. Thank you! There have been some criticisms. Thank you also. Everything we read here, at least in broad strokes, is digested and considered against our design and visual goals. The subject of this thread caught my attention in particular because it speaks to the status of where we are with WAR’s development. So first I will discuss a general point that has been echoed here before. The visuals in WAR are a work in progress. I liken it to rendering CG movies, like the Incredibles or some of the great stuff Blur has done for us. When you watch a pre-lighting render, things just look flat. There are no shadows. There is no ambient occlusion. There is no atmospheric lighting. There is no real surface lighting. How does that relate to WAR? Well, many of the videos and screenshots we have released have been without even a first lighting bake, let along our final lighting pass, which we have never shown. You also have not seen specular maps on our terrains. We don't even have final skies, light balancing, or final light settings for our terrain shaders. This means that you have seen visuals in varying degrees of finish depending upon how recently we worked on a zone. None of the environments we have shown you are in their full glory. The hard work of the team shows through despite being shy of complete. And that is where we are now. We are polishing, tweaking, and lightmapping like crazy and we will up until the very last stamp for gold. Until then, yes. Some stuff may look flat, or some animations may look jerky. Heck our lead animator and I finally had a moment of joy as one of the last animation system "quirks" that was making the motions look staccato and choppy was finally fixed. Huray! In terms of visual variety, I believe we have a diverse palette of environments from ancient forests and eldritch swamps to a huge, gothic city floating over a swirling, Chaotic Abyss. With that said, even now we are working on more cool, signiture landmarks for the zones. I believe anyone browsing our material in depth will agree there is a lot there to enjoy. So by all means continue dialoguing about what you see, let us know what you like and what you don't, and stay tuned for some more finalized shots. Thanks! Greg Grimsby Art Director Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning



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