ZBrushCentral

SplinterCell: Conviction crowd

ZBrush Artworks
#1

Since Ubisoft has just released some screenshots of the game SplinterCell: Conviction I can finally show some of the previous work done during the last year as a character artist.

The images are screenshots from Max8 (no rendering, just pure snapshot from the viewport) of in-game characters made using Max, Photoshop and Zbrush 2. I worked on the main character but have decided not to submit anything yet.

These are still work in progress and are subject to change.

[lowres_max_viewport.jpg]highres_zbrush_viewport.jpg

Hope you guys like it!

Attachments

normals_only_max_viewport.jpg

#2

really good work

#3

Awesome work there! Some serious texturing and modeling skills :wink: Hope to see more of this stuff.

#4

You are a Toprow artist!:+1:
Andreseloy

#5

Wow very nice :smiley: I cant wait to use these guys as shields, whens convictions out again? christmas-ish?

#6

thats some sweet work :slight_smile:

#7

These are great! Very nice work.

#8

Love seeing game art right from the source. Great job man, that game looks like a truckload of badass.

#9

Very nice work mate! :+1:

#10

great work…5 stars from me!!!

#11

Thanks guys!

We are given a budget of 10k max per character, We’ve found that 10k with good stripping is better then 7k with triangulated faces during rendering time (Xbox360 is amazing with polygons), additionally we are using a lego system for the crowd so thats why you might see some part swap from other character from other artists on ingame screenshots.

For the textures, the pictures I showed are 512x512 for head, 1024x1024 for torso, 512x512 for leg, 512x512 for hands and I think 256x256 for feet but once in the engine, we reduce them to at least 50% and I think in the demo that was shown publicly is actually at 25%.

I would’ve loved to send more info (wireframe and 360s) but I’m not allowed lol.

#12

I can’t even imagine how important applications like ZB are to a next gen game in production. SC-C is already looking top notch- and deserving the title of next-gen in terms of graphics.

Awesome work- but I wouldn’t expect anything less from somebody working in the Ubi Soft graphics department!

“We’ve found that 10k with good stripping is better then 7k with triangulated faces during rendering time (Xbox360 is amazing with polygons)…”

Does this mean that you can now use 10k of quad polygons and then the xbox360 triangulates at rendertime? Or is this something that helps with texture mapping and distortion? If you’d be so kind as to clarify I and others who are ignorant as to gaming industry practices greatly appreciate it.

And…
Could you please tell me which splinter cells used zb? Were normal maps first introduced in Pandora Tomorrow or Chaos Theory? I’d love to see a comparison between several models from all the games some day just to track the progression!

#13

That’s some great work.

The only thing that always disappoints me is that when I see these renders they look so great like many game characters that have been shown here before. When they actually show up in-game, there’s always such a loss in detail and texture when you’re actually playing the game.

It would be great to see this much clarity, detail, and texture in-game as they are shown here ( and still be playable on my system ).

Farcry may come close to this, but I’m sure I wont be able to play that game when it comes out cause it will be far too demanding on my system.

#14

Amazing work man! :+1: :+1: :+1:

#15

You mean Crysis, right? Yeah, that’s going to be interesting - I imagine it’ll bring my system to it’s knees on the lowest settings… :frowning:

#16

Yeah I mean Crysis. Sheesh, why did I say Farcry? I must be losing my marbles cause my bag has a hole in it.

Farcry really chugged my system when it originally came out too. I wonder what game engine this game uses?

#17

Very cool models.

I have to ask. In the game version of the models, do you have the cloth as separate meshes (as you obviously did in Zbrush) or are they combined into one continuous mesh?

Also, could I ask the polygon count on these models?

#18

yep 10k per character and their on a lego system so they are seperate meshes.

and the question about stripping; someone on another forum pretty much summarized it very well: http://www.cgchat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27008&page=2

mocaw: I didnt work on any other Splintercell so I cant really answer your question

Glad you guys like what I did, I might be able to show more as time goes by.

#19

Beautiful characters. Keep up the good work!
It would be nice to see more if possible.

#20

Well maybe I’m mistaken- but it looks like a quite updated or new version of one of the older SC engines- but who knows.

All that AO bleeding and stuff is very nice in a realtime game- one of the few “next gen” game engines other than Epics that lives up to “next gen” status. This one is probably even more advanced than that- but what do I know!

Ubi could probably make a fair amount of money just licensing out their engine like epic does, but seeing as they are the second largest third party developer they probably don’t need to. Besides EA would probably just use it in all their games…

Thanks for that explanation TigerZ of the stripping and how it speeds things up- made a lot of sense. Do you have to do that manually while modeling or is there some function in a development kit or Ubi software that does it for you? I take it this has to be ironed out BEFORE you texture a model for UVs etc. If it runs on the fly through the 360 that’s amazing! If you have to do it manually well than it makes you models just that much more amazing!

Any chance we can get a view of the low-res wire frames?