Guild Wars 2 armor sets (large images)
polycounter lvl 8
UPDATED! 9/9/2012
First of all, congratulations to all my friends back at ArenaNet on Guild Wars 2's success! Now that it's finally released here's some more work I did:
The Sylvari were easily the most problematic of all races in Guild Wars 2. Everyone seemed to have their own ideas as to what they should look like. I was part of a team of artists to create this prototype of the Sylvari in a different style. This was one of the projects I was most proud of during my time at ArenaNet even though I knew from the start that it had almost zero chance of going through. It was a lot of hard work for seemingly nothing, but well worth it for me.
I can only take partial credit for this. Although I established the initial take on the model, our concept artist, Hyojin Ahn (http://thefirstcolor.cghub.com/), did most of the hard work finalizing the face and body after we showed him the ropes on how to use the 3d software. I learned a great deal working with him about just how much you can, and SHOULD, push your model to be the best it can be.
I made the armor as well as a variety of poses and additional modeling support. Danny Yeo (http://supyeo.cghub.com/) made the hair, and my brother, Donald Phan (http://dondon.cghub.com/), rigged the model in addition to helping with a lot of the technical issues (we even had this character running around in the game at one point!). Hongman Leung also helped out by animating this pose- it was really cute, but you'll have to use your imaginations for it!
The image seen here was rendered with Marmoset Toolbag (http://www.marmoset.co/).
I modeled the base body and head of the Charr male. I tried to work in elements of the Charr from the original Guild Wars as well as the newer concept art. I think this is the first fully normal mapped character model I ever made! In Mudbox, no less! Back then most of us were using Mudbox because we were scared of Zbrush's interface. I'm STILL scared of Zbrush's interface, but I made the switch soon after this anyway.
As seen in the first few Guild Wars 2 videos, the Sylvari race were once more traditional elf-like in appearance than they ended up being in the final game. These are some cultural armor sets that were made before the design changed to be more literally "of plant." I'm not sure if these armor sets I made ended up being used in the game in any capacity.
ALSO: I added a bunch of new armor concept art to my personal site: http://haikai.net. I don't want to waste anyone's time with it here, but if you're interested in seeing how we did concept art, as well as a bunch of stuff that will probably never be made, then check it out.
That's the last of the GW2 art I'll be posting. There's a bunch of other miscellaneous junk I worked on, but it's not worth the trouble. All of this is YEARS old anyway! Hopefully I'll have some newer work to show soon.
I finally got around to posting some of my work from Guild Wars 2. Almost all of these have been shown in some form or another in the various trailers and publicity images. I'll update with more as information is officially released (stuff that I can say is at least 95% my work since these can go through several hands for various tweaks and fixes). I should also point out that these images were accurate as of March 2011. I'm sure there will be changes by the time the game actually ships.
The armors by themselves run anywhere from ~2000-3000 triangles (at least mine did... there are some other GW2 armor sets that are way more). The texture res ends up being about 512x1024 (it's composited together with other parts of the character on a 1k map). Sorry, I probably can't show the texture sheets, and there's nothing special about the wires. Armor sets generally took me ~10 working days. Female sets, when not straight up conversions of male armor, typically took ~5 days for the unique pieces unless the whole thing was different from the male.
*EDIT: Okay, I lied. I just looked at the Orrian armor again and it's actually way over the poly budget I mentioned! I blame it on these being my final armor sets there.
We were all new to normal maps when Guild Wars 2 started up over 4 years ago, and my process evolved quite a bit since then. I sculpt almost everything in Zbrush, even things like hard edged armor pieces. I tried hard surface modeling (the heavy armor sets on third image, bottom row), but I found it was generally too time consuming, and fantasy armor doesn't really need to be that clean and perfect anyway. I typically retopo in Maya because the resolution of the low res meshes doesn't call for anything fancy, but I also use 3dCoat nowadays on Rift for more complex shapes. I use standard Maya tools for UV layout. I either bake normal maps in Maya or Xnormal, and bake AO in Xnormal. I paint textures in BodyPaint & Photoshop. Pretty standard stuff, really, but feel free to ask any questions.
You can find some concept work on my web site as well: http://haikai.net
Hopefully more coming soon!
These first two images were rendered in Marmoset Toolbag. These were pretty much my final tasks at ArenaNet before I left.
*EDIT: This sounds like an excuse, but the armors below were colored using the game's dye system. It's great for players, but rather frustrating for artists because inevitably there are colors that will look better than others or, in the worst case, might not look good in ANY color. You end up having to minimize hue variation and high contrast which can make the textures rather bland.
First of all, congratulations to all my friends back at ArenaNet on Guild Wars 2's success! Now that it's finally released here's some more work I did:
The Sylvari were easily the most problematic of all races in Guild Wars 2. Everyone seemed to have their own ideas as to what they should look like. I was part of a team of artists to create this prototype of the Sylvari in a different style. This was one of the projects I was most proud of during my time at ArenaNet even though I knew from the start that it had almost zero chance of going through. It was a lot of hard work for seemingly nothing, but well worth it for me.
I can only take partial credit for this. Although I established the initial take on the model, our concept artist, Hyojin Ahn (http://thefirstcolor.cghub.com/), did most of the hard work finalizing the face and body after we showed him the ropes on how to use the 3d software. I learned a great deal working with him about just how much you can, and SHOULD, push your model to be the best it can be.
I made the armor as well as a variety of poses and additional modeling support. Danny Yeo (http://supyeo.cghub.com/) made the hair, and my brother, Donald Phan (http://dondon.cghub.com/), rigged the model in addition to helping with a lot of the technical issues (we even had this character running around in the game at one point!). Hongman Leung also helped out by animating this pose- it was really cute, but you'll have to use your imaginations for it!
The image seen here was rendered with Marmoset Toolbag (http://www.marmoset.co/).
I modeled the base body and head of the Charr male. I tried to work in elements of the Charr from the original Guild Wars as well as the newer concept art. I think this is the first fully normal mapped character model I ever made! In Mudbox, no less! Back then most of us were using Mudbox because we were scared of Zbrush's interface. I'm STILL scared of Zbrush's interface, but I made the switch soon after this anyway.
As seen in the first few Guild Wars 2 videos, the Sylvari race were once more traditional elf-like in appearance than they ended up being in the final game. These are some cultural armor sets that were made before the design changed to be more literally "of plant." I'm not sure if these armor sets I made ended up being used in the game in any capacity.
ALSO: I added a bunch of new armor concept art to my personal site: http://haikai.net. I don't want to waste anyone's time with it here, but if you're interested in seeing how we did concept art, as well as a bunch of stuff that will probably never be made, then check it out.
That's the last of the GW2 art I'll be posting. There's a bunch of other miscellaneous junk I worked on, but it's not worth the trouble. All of this is YEARS old anyway! Hopefully I'll have some newer work to show soon.
I finally got around to posting some of my work from Guild Wars 2. Almost all of these have been shown in some form or another in the various trailers and publicity images. I'll update with more as information is officially released (stuff that I can say is at least 95% my work since these can go through several hands for various tweaks and fixes). I should also point out that these images were accurate as of March 2011. I'm sure there will be changes by the time the game actually ships.
The armors by themselves run anywhere from ~2000-3000 triangles (at least mine did... there are some other GW2 armor sets that are way more). The texture res ends up being about 512x1024 (it's composited together with other parts of the character on a 1k map). Sorry, I probably can't show the texture sheets, and there's nothing special about the wires. Armor sets generally took me ~10 working days. Female sets, when not straight up conversions of male armor, typically took ~5 days for the unique pieces unless the whole thing was different from the male.
*EDIT: Okay, I lied. I just looked at the Orrian armor again and it's actually way over the poly budget I mentioned! I blame it on these being my final armor sets there.
We were all new to normal maps when Guild Wars 2 started up over 4 years ago, and my process evolved quite a bit since then. I sculpt almost everything in Zbrush, even things like hard edged armor pieces. I tried hard surface modeling (the heavy armor sets on third image, bottom row), but I found it was generally too time consuming, and fantasy armor doesn't really need to be that clean and perfect anyway. I typically retopo in Maya because the resolution of the low res meshes doesn't call for anything fancy, but I also use 3dCoat nowadays on Rift for more complex shapes. I use standard Maya tools for UV layout. I either bake normal maps in Maya or Xnormal, and bake AO in Xnormal. I paint textures in BodyPaint & Photoshop. Pretty standard stuff, really, but feel free to ask any questions.
You can find some concept work on my web site as well: http://haikai.net
Hopefully more coming soon!
These first two images were rendered in Marmoset Toolbag. These were pretty much my final tasks at ArenaNet before I left.
*EDIT: This sounds like an excuse, but the armors below were colored using the game's dye system. It's great for players, but rather frustrating for artists because inevitably there are colors that will look better than others or, in the worst case, might not look good in ANY color. You end up having to minimize hue variation and high contrast which can make the textures rather bland.
Replies
...If only they'd announce a release date
when i saw it the first thing i had in mind was "hmm now all we need is to put snefer's helmet on that"
O_O
thats pretty cool stuff dude
well done!
I am already a big fan of GW2 and seeing work like yours is adding to my impression the game will be amazing to play and watch!
are you teaching at futurepoly? I am sure many artists can learn from your experience. Say Hi to the concept team for me : ),
Cheers!
I know you said the wires weren't anything special, but for myself I'm still trying to wrap my head around what is actually modeled and what is left to the normal map and how they can compliment each other. If you can show them, I'd absolutely love to see the wires.
Did you have to account for different body sizes as well as male/female versions? I don't know enough about GW to know what options are available to the player as far as len guy, big guy, REALLY big guy etc, or if it's all class/race specific but I'm curious ho you'd handle the variations (if you had to).
Vorge: Yea, unfortunately most players love dye, and they probably wouldn't notice the quality difference.
Wizo: I've never taught at FuturePoly (I'm not even in the Seattle area anymore). Those guys do good stuff though!
LRoy: Hmm, I don't think there's anything about my texturing process that makes things look softer although I do cheat the textures by painting in more diffuse if I can't get things to look the way I want through the shaders and lighting. The light armor sets use a shader that kind of helps things look more cloth-y with some fresnel/rim treatment. I think sculpting cloth with gentle creases and wrinkles can help sell the look too.
Tigerfeet: I'll see if I can dig up some examples later.
ScudzAlmighty: Typically I'll author the armor for male first. I'll then take the pieces that the female can use and resize the low poly for her, and then build any unique pieces she needs. These then get "refitted" to the other races by some folks on the team who specialized in that. It's a tedious process and although there were some means of automating it somewhat, it still took a lot of individual attention to get right. With the frequent updates to the armor sets, this sometimes had a horrific cascading effect on the work load. They eventually went with different body sizes via joint scaling which helped a great deal, but the different races still needed to have their armors ported over manually.
Bigjohn: Well, it's an MMO.
Honestly, this should have been optimized quite a bit more on the low poly mesh. It's not the best example, but I hope it gives you an idea. It's kind of funny looking back on how we built stuff on GW2 and comparing it to how I build stuff on Rift now. It will be fun to make a Rift thread some day.
man I love that orrian set
sounds like you guys had the same skull-smashing challenges other customization-heavy mmo studios have been battling. Does the dye system mean your diffuse maps ended up being primarily greyscale with the occasional small hints of color? did you usually start out that way, or would you start with a specific colorscheme sorta in mind and desaturate it in the end?
I hear you on the frustration with the coloring system. I've had my share of painful experiences too
You mentioned the armor sets alone being a minimum of ~2000-3000 tris. Out of curiosity: typically how many tris are on the GW2 base character meshes (ie main player characters without any armor on)? Thanks!
definitely made my day!
Sometimes we'd author the textures the way we wanted it to look like initially, but it just became demoralizing when you basically had to wipe it all away and neutralize things so I eventually painted monochromatically and then added my adjustment layers.
Tigerfeet: Yea, it's kind of funny because when we first started on GW2, the polycounts were actually pretty conservative. As time went on though, there was more pressure for us to model out more parts of the armor in order to look competitive with other MMO offerings.
Treb: The base models' polycounts changed quite a bit over time. The only player base model I made was the Charr male (unless it gets redone before ship) and that was about 3500 triangles, but I believe some of the other races are even higher than that. Ironically, the most dense armor sets are the ones that show the most skin because of the bodies.
Arkadius: Thanks. The problem with putting those into Marmoset is that the way we made textures for GW2 is completely different from what Toolbag and other shaders/engines expect so it takes some reverse engineering and tweaking of the textures. Not only that, but a lot of the armors were authored for the dye system which basically means it looks like total garbage by default!
I thought it would be some system where you create a black&white texture, then in-game it receives some saturation and hue in code.
If that's the case (that you guys created the textures), then how come it wasn't done individually? Meaning, have an artist actually paint each color variation.