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I'm not sure if this is a relevant question or not, or if the questions have to relate to the game, but I'm going to ask anyway

This is directed to any of the Graphics/modelling/animators team.

What kind of courses did you do in College/Uni? (If you attended). I'm going to be studying Graphic Design & Illustration at uni this coming September, and a job like this afterwards would be very interesting to me, so I'm interested in how you came about these jobs. Thanks!

A.) I did a BA in Art, Design and Animation and then a MA in Computer Animation. Really hard work but worth every penny! :0)

04-Jul-2013 17:44:37

04-Jul-2013 17:51:40 - Last edited on 04-Jul-2013 17:55:15 by Mod Paul B

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I've been studying 3d modelling and animation at college now for a while and i plan to do do a foundation degree in games design to hopefully work for jagex in the future! so i have a few questions:

Q: How much more challenging is it to create the low poly models that is required for games like runescape? is it more fun than regular modelling due to the challenges and limitations?

Q: Do character models have much higher poly counts than the enviroments? and how challenging is it to rig the character models?

Q: Whats the work enviroment like at jagex?

Excellent! I love the preparation!

I think low poly modelling is a preference thing. Some people need tons of polys to create their assets, I personally enjoy the challenge of making a character out of minimal resources. The more efficient, the more satisfying! Not to mention efficiency is a good thing in the gaming industry.

Because environments are so big, they tend to have more polys on the whole, however characters have more polys concentrated in an area. A typical character budget is about 2,500 polys.

The work environment is crazy. Everyone seems to have a nerf gun on their desk Also, everyone gets to contribute ideas, which is cool!

04-Jul-2013 17:55:15

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What are the current plans for graphical reworks? Is Falador high on that list? You can tell us!

- No actually I can't

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Ok, I'll ask something more realistic. How long does an average size update take for the graphics team? How many things (on average) do you create or change? Does it take up a lot of data space? Do you ever have to downgrade your work to make things smoother?

- speaking from a character point of view the size of a project can vary a lot. On average a medium sized quest that may require say four new npcs, a new player armour set and some inventory models would take one artist around 16 days to model. Then you take into consideration that we need to concept, animate, build environment and test it all and what seems like a relatively small amount of content actually becomes quite a lot of work.

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As far as working with other 'departments' (for lack of a better term) for an update, where do you fit in on the timeline? Is it a continuous back-and-forth process, or usually good unless graphic bugs are found near the end?

-There isn't much that gets by without some back and forth from different departments. Sometimes something that works in concept may not work as well in the model, so we work together to work around the issue.
From there once the model is done it goes to animation which again may have another round of feedback where we will tweak the model for animation to create the animation needed.
During any of those processes we may get feedback from outside the graphics team, maybe because the content has changed slightly and so we need to make appropriate changes to the model or animation. Communication is everything and its always a team effort to stay on top of the work being produced.

04-Jul-2013 17:59:13

04-Jul-2013 18:01:17

04-Jul-2013 18:06:58

04-Jul-2013 18:15:59

04-Jul-2013 18:24:30

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A few things I would be interested in:

~ Probably been asked already, but what software do you use for modelling and texturing? Are you limited in what software and formats you can use or are things quite open?

~ Would the model, rigging and textures for an ingame item - say a new boss character, for instance - all be done by one person, or would you have different people or teams specialising in different parts of the process?

~Do you have a lot of input in designing items, or is that mostly set out at the concept art stage?

~ A lot of great additions, like the particle engine and what I guess is a glow map functionality on items like Robes of Subjugation - have been added to the game quite recently. What's been your favourite to work with?

~What's the funniest graphic glitch you have seen/caused?

We use a mixture of in-house tools and industry standard stuff to make assets, like 3dsmax, Maya and Photoshop. It's quite open early on in the project, but the engine we use only works on a particular java based format, so everything gets converted.

When it comes to NPCs, a character artists will do the modelling and texturing from a concept design. We sometimes try and fit things into an existing rig, but when a new rig is required, things are handed over to an animator.

Concept artists handle the initial ideas most of the time, but if someone has a good idea, they're always open to them!

My favorite GFX update of recent times has to be the killer swoosh effects that came out with EoC. New teleport emotes always look cool too!

The funniest graphical glitch I ever saw had to do with trolls not wearing specific undergarments. Hilarity ensued..

04-Jul-2013 18:27:04

04-Jul-2013 18:28:54