| |
About Author
|
|
requiem2d
Administrator
Articles: 11
Votes: 3, Points: 12
Rating: 4.00/5
|
|
|
|
|
|
Latest Review
|
|
|
Member's Menu
|
|
|
|
|
Weapons Modeler - Mike Climer
|
|
|
|
|
Full Article
|
|
We thought it'd be about time to interview a professional weapons modeler on our site, what better way to settle some of the arguments? On our quest, we found Mike Climer (Portfolio: http://www.cg-eye.com/ ) who works for Red Storm Entertainment as a High Poly Modeler. He's contributed to both Ghost Recon 1 & 2. Enough from me, let's get it on !
First off Mike, congratulations on having worked as weapons modeler for an accomplished studio like Red Storm Entertainment. Can you tell us a little about how you landed this position? Was previous mod experience or other extra curricular activities of benefit?
Thank you very much. I actually landed the job here at Red Storm by accident. The entire time I was going to school for computer art and animation, I thought I would end up in a film career. I had always worked with high poly models prior to getting this job, so I just assumed that I would end up working on those same kinds of models in the film industry. Turns out that with the launch of the new Next Gen systems, normal maps became much more common, so I thought “Why not send some demo reels out and see what happens?” About a week later I got a call from Red Storm and started the interview process for the new job. To be quite honest, before I started here, I knew nothing about how games were made, and I knew even less about the mod community. Since working here, I’ve slowly started exploring different areas of game creation and expanded the skills into the game models, and also into the UV mapping as well.
 
Many younger and upcoming artists wonder what the industry is like, how does your normal day in the office from morning to evening go down?
Well, a normal day here is anything but normal, at least in terms of what you would think of as far as an office job would go. We work on what they call core hours here. That means you are required to be here between the hours of 10:00am and 4:00pm. You have to get your work done on time and to some pretty high standards, so we are here more than those 6 hours, but you have the freedom to stay later or come in earlier should you choose to. Most of our meetings take place between those core hours though, since that’s when most people are here. There are only a few scheduled meetings I have to go to, but most of those are to decide on how things should be prototyped, or to come up with ideas for a new project. To be quite honest, most of the day is pretty relaxed. I work at my desk most of the day, take a lunch break sometime around 12:30, and talk with my team members through the day to bounce ideas back and forth.
Talking workflow here, can you confirm if the concepts for creating the following elements at Red Storm are True or False?:
- 1P Low Poly Mesh, created from the form/shape of the high poly?
- 1P Texture, unwrapped and textured after non-visible faces (backfaces) deleted?
I work with a pretty straight forward workflow. I typically start with some good reference pictures and make a folder with all those in there so I can move back and forth through them easily. I set up Max with a good side view image and start there. I almost always start with a high poly model, even if there isn’t going to be a normal map needed. That way I have a good library of assets to work with later down the road. After the high poly model is made (typically between 1 and 15 million triangles) I start to make the game model over top of that. I almost use the high poly gun as a template for the basic shapes and build around that. Once the game model is made, I’ll go back through it and clean out any unnecessary faces (backfaces) and make sure all the verts are welded and clean. From there comes the UV map. This part is pretty much standard. I try to make things as flat as possible and keep as many of the parts horizontal and vertical as I can. Photoshop paints a straight line a lot cleaner than an angled one as you know. The cleaner the UV map, the happier the Texture artists will be. The UV map stage is a good place to double check for extra verts, hidden faces, double edges, etc. From there it’s time to generate a normal map from the high poly gun with the Max “Render to Texture” tool. I typically render the normal maps double the expected resolution then we down size them after the textures are painted. From there, our Texture artists will do their black magic on things, set up the guns and test them in the game.
When you joined Red Storm Entertainment, what were the three time-saving tricks which you learned for Max or Maya that were the most beneficial to you?
Poly Boost will set you free. If there’s one tool I can’t live without, that has to be it. Guns have lots of holes, slots, etc, and Poly Boost has some great tools to make that easier. From there, I use Nurms toggle, chamfer, and connect edges/verts more than most any other standard tool in Max.
We can't help but ask ourselves, how do you get so much detail on these weapons? They're not exactly carried by the local arms dealer so where are the references coming from?
I use a lot of different sources for reference. We have a really nice library here that I can look through for images. Google is also one of my best friends when it comes to doing research. I use Google to search for some of the accessories like scopes, grenade launchers, etc, but most of the detail comes from our Design Library. We have full size replicas of a lot of different weapons here on site that I can bring back to my desk and use as reference as well. Very helpful since you can’t always get good detail from a photo or video.
Which Game Artists or Industry Professionals have inspired your work to be what it is today?
I’ve never really had any industry professionals I looked up to. I looked more into the studios than anything else. I’ve always had an affinity toward realism, so I looked a lot into studios like Red Storm, Zipper, Midway, Activision, etc. The whole time I was at school, it was a competition between a handful of us there. I always had to be better than the guy next to me, so I guess I was more competitive than inspired.
On a lighter note, favorite modeling munchy and late-night power drink?
Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, hot chocolate, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee.
Last but not least, in which aspect of game art do you see yourself developing in the years to come?
Hmmm… I guess I would like to see myself in more of a leadership role. I wouldn’t mind being an art lead someday, but only if I’m able to still model. I wake up every morning excited to go to work and create stuff, and it would be a sad day for me if I had to pass the torch to someone else and sit in meetings and file paperwork all day.
We'd like to thank Mike for his time and wish him the best in his career !
|
|
|
|
