Login
X
Forgot your password?
Register
X
  • Gearbox Art Director talks to CGSociety about the
    characters and animation style of Borderlands.

    CGSociety :: Game Production Focus
    30 July 2009, by Peter Rizkalla

    One of the most outstanding looking and promising titles shown at E3 was Borderlands: released by 2K Games; developed by Gearbox. Gamers will remember Gearbox as the same guys who put together 'Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway'. Borderlands is a role-playing game slash first-person shooter and, since its conception, Borderlands has constantly been a work in progress with a dramatic change in visuals late last year.

    The extensive QA process is due to its computer generated weapons drop system. Not many game houses ever choose to release a game of this genre because the sheer amount of work Borderlands required was a gigantic exploit. Personally, I’m excited. After seeing Borderlands in action at E3 I instantly set my sights on it to see how the game would come together in the end.

    It's great to see guys like Gearbox pushing the envelope of game development because it only spells good things for the game industry as a whole. The Gearbox Art Director of Borderlands, Brian Martel, took time out to give us a deep look into the development of this enormous endeavor. Like I said, the visuals of Borderlands went through a massive overhaul last year with the introduction of a new, cell-shaded scheme. The Gearbox team did not want the game to look like every other shooter out there but rather have it look like animated pre-renders.

     

    “From the artistic side we wanted it to truly feel like a piece of concept art that has come to life," says Martel. “We talked about how when we all look at a piece of concept art. Take a concept car for example, the end product rarely looks like the artwork. Especially in Detroit where you wish they would make some of your favorite designs but they rarely do.” Borderlands is set in a ruined world that is filled with bandits and where giant, mutated monsters are a constant threat. “From a high level world standpoint we wanted the world to feel like the fringes of space the distant frontier of space if you will," says Martel. “We were trying to have you experience a world that was overrun by nature and bandits but had a long lost treasure to be found.”

    Borderlands looks like it plays very similarly to the classic RPG, Diablo. If you remember, Diablo had players choose a character class and play through a massive, ever changing environment where the development of character strengths was the player’s choice and where weapons fell randomly and could contain a multitude of different attributes. Another title that Borderlands reminds me of is XIII which was a story driven, first-person shooter whose graphics were completely cell-shaded. Borderlands looks like a mixture of both Diablo and XIII but, rather, is set in an open world. Martel tells us “We wanted to create a game that married the addictive RPG desire to find the next cool weapon or item with a great FPS game that had all of the super action the genre is known for and in the end the end become a new amalgamation the RPS or Role Playing Shooter.”

     

    “Something more akin to a sketch or a type of rendering technique used on the page of concept art. We are using normal maps to give us form, depth, and specular information to accentuate what is happening inside of the lines of the ink like outline. In additionally we have taken great pains to get ink lines in the defuse map. The textures are more akin to a gauche under-painting with ink on top of it. The interior lines in the diffuse art coupled with the line drawn outside of the model give it a completely hand drawn concept art look that is jaw dropping, especially when you see it move!”

    With any cell-shaded form of mapping there is a constant problem with adding a sense of depth. This is where lighting comes in. Lighting a cell mapped world requires a very delicate touch or the whole game will look totally off. Martel explains “We added some really amazing lighting techniques that give our scene a lot of contrast while grounding all of our objects and characters in the world. That coupled with the realtime ambient occlusion really sets everything in the world and puts that last touch to make it truly concept art like. We also used a ton of emissive textures, color shading masks to colorize, and a ridiculously robust extensible system that gives our designers incredible freedoms in modifying the look and feel of our assets.”

      Go to page 2

  • Although this form of texture mapping has been used before in other game titles the art style of Borderlands is very distinct with very well designed enemies and environments. “I am the most proud of the look and feel of the concept art style,” says Martel.

    “I think it is new and pretty original and I think it helped spur on the team with a massive amount of passion and drive to give the customer an especially original experience throughout. The DNA of the game can be found in innumerable games, pop culture, and art but in the end it coalesces into an amazingly rich world/universe and filled with a desire to see something new and get the next big weapon or item just around the corner to blow away some cool and strange creatures and enemies.”

    Other game studios have attempted to release games where the final art style very closely resembles the concept art. Ubisoft Montreal is the first to come to mind with their most recent Prince of Persia title. Borderlands attempts the same endeavor but in a totally different genre. Martel tells us “The concept art style and the over the top nature of it’s gameplay is one of the most freeing and incredible games I have ever worked on. It’s originality, look and feel have driven our team to make this game excellent.”

     

    There is a give and take with the weapons drop system in Borderlands. Very few guns will be effective against everything and if so then it will most likely be a very rare gun. Weapons will drop with attributes that will make them great at one thing but poor at another. How the weapons will drop will also be an experience because no two guns will ever be the same.

    For example, when the AI in Borderlands drops an item it first randomly selects an item from a huge list of possibilities such as pistols, machine guns, armor, etc. It then chooses how strong the gun or armor will be. Then it applies powers from a list of possible attributes such as electrical ammo, armor piercing ammo, and so on and so forth. If the gun is a rare drop then it might add even more attributes to that same gun. This whole process happens at the very instant that the item is dropped.

    Surprisingly, developing the weapons drop system was not the hardest challenge to overcome in the development of Borderlands. The decision to go from the traditional style of texture mapping to it’s now much drastically different process was the biggest hurdle. “Convincing everyone that the art style would be as cool as it is before it was in the engine,” says Martel, commenting on the persuasive challenge. “Once everyone saw it and played around in the world looking like it does then it was easy but it felt like a dangerous but ballsy move that just might work… and I think it does. I love it!”

    Martel also let us know that aside from the visual development that Gearbox is putting into Borderlands, three other studios have helped in the graphical development process. Those studios are Shadows in Darkness, Liquid Development and GameGrafx who are also known as Halfbrick.

    Borderlands also offers a skill tree which will not only allow the player to level-up his character’s certain traits but will also allow him access to class specific abilities. Because Borderlands will be set in a huge, open world environment this leads to the question about additional downloadable content in the future after the game is released. “That's the thing about game development, and any creative endeavor for that matter, the vision is always greater than what you can deliver. In our case we have a lot more to deliver if the public embraces the game in the way that we hope,” Martel answers. Borderlands is built on the Unreal Engine 3 and will be available on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC this fall.

     
    Related links:
    Borderlands
    Gearbox Software
    2K Games

    Discuss this article on CGTalk

    Previous pageMore Articles
blog comments powered by Disqus

The Society

The CGSociety is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists. The CGS supports artists at every level by offering a range of services to connect, inform, educate and promote digital artists worldwide

Contact | Privacy | Advertising | About CGS

© 2002-2013 | The CGSociety - All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced unless for personal use without prior written permission from The CGSociety.