Developer Interview

Tell me about the process involved in animating infantry and vehicles: How did you make the vehicle animations so immersive when paired with different vehicle states and atmospheric effects?

We gathered a ton of reference. We video capture ourselves running with our weapon props … we rip videos down off of movie footage or YouTube clips … and anywhere we can get good realistic source material. In some cases our tech artist Alun, or our Design Director Quinn would offer input on the reference so we got it right. We also had one of our animators build a pre-visualization of how we wanted our vehicles to behave. From that we targeted weight as our key feature with the vehicles. You’ll notice they lurch when they start and stop, or change gears. They have a ton of weight when firing. And it’s super satisfying to blow one up with the death animations. Also, several vehicles have soldiers climbing out to save themselves when the vehicle is near death. They are immersive because of the designers setting all of the behaviors they required. We just worked with them to ensure we supported the behaviors with an animation that matched our goals for the look.

What is your favorite infantry animation? What is your favorite vehicle animation?

My favorite animation is actually the vaulting animations. I think it’s so nice to see a sense of strategy in the units moving over obstacles. It was something that frustrated me in the old CoH—that if I want to shortcut, I can’t. Having the option to direct squads over low walls and fences offers a ton of new strategy to employ in battle. As for vehicles, I love the abandon animations. Some of the tanks (Su-76 comes to mind) have exposed crews, and those animations are great as well, but when the tank is on fire and near death, watching the soldiers attempt to flee is incredible. It’s equally interesting and horrifying at the same time.

Describe the most impressive visual effects in CoH2 from your perspective – how long did they take to create and what’s special about them?

I don’t know how long each effect took to create, but I love the burning buildings. Watching the Flamethrower paint fire on a building until you see it catch and start to burn—it’s horribly beautiful. Fire is hard to make look good, but our FX team knocked it down.

What’s the most challenging aspect of making units and abilities feel real?

It’s the same challenge with all game animation—making the weight and movements seem realistic actually means you have to push it PAST realistic. Looking at an animation in the art package (3ds Max) and in the game with everything together is two completely different things. So animators actually need to make it look more surreal than you think in order to get a realistic perception from a player.

Tell me an entertaining story about the development of CoH2’s graphics.

Our cinematics pipeline was incredible. We had a great compositor/lighter/artist called Bartek on the cinematics team, and we started trying to hit a high visual target, but resources and schedule had us reining it in to look almost exactly like what you would see real-time in game, but with a little depth of field, and maybe some basic color correction. Still a great look, but we ultimately wanted more. At about mid-project we got a headcount for an intern compositor/artist. He ended up being an artist called Ben, and originally we though he would come in and just help us keep the schedule on track. Little did we know what would happen when you mixed Ben with Bartek. These guys brought so much to the table. Of course, it was always our goal to create great cinematics, but now with these two guys pouring their passion in, suddenly we’re looking at masks, 2-D and 3-D FX, better lighting, better models, better atmosphere. Of course we raised the eyebrows of our Production department, but we kept them in the loop and in turn they supported us immeasurably. Luckily we moved Ben into a full-time position (well earned I might add). It was just one of those lightning in a bottle type of things: You have x time and x money, but suddenly you find an extra value somewhere. And everyone is so passionate about doing great work at Relic, even though on paper it doesn’t look possible. Somehow you pull it off.