《騎馬與砍殺2：霸主》開發者日誌（1）：毛髮美術

Fans of the Mount&Blade series and passing readers,this blog is intended as a source of insight to our world of game development and the TaleWorlds family.Our offices are a series of rooms on a long corridor.Each room physically hosts a different team with a different focus,mirroring our actual team based development structure.This week's blog will discuss the artists'team,known to us as artist takımı(Turkish).

The artists have the most varied professional backgrounds in the office.Some formally studied classical art,art history or graphic design,while others are hobbyists turned professional.Both industry veterans and fresh graduates fill the large,comfortable chairs.You'll find preened moustaches,pretentious glasses,a range of characters and personalities.Every desk has a tablet of some sort,the most impressive of which are the underwhelmingly named“pen displays”;large,high resolution screens which can be drawn on directly using an accompanying pen-shaped input.This simulates drawing or painting on a real canvas,with the comforts of digital painting:saving,zooming and smudge-free hand positioning.

騎馬與砍殺系列的粉絲們和路過的讀者們，這個部落格意在成為一個可以一覽我們的遊戲開發的世界和TaleWorlds大家庭的視窗。我們的辦公場所是由一系列排成一個長廊的房間組成的。每一個房間物理上各自組成一個個有著不一樣的目標的團隊，體現出我們目前團隊所基於的開發結構。這周的部落格將介紹美術組，我們這兒叫artist takımı。

美工們是辦公室裡擁有最深專業背景的人。一些是古典藝術、藝術史或者圖形設計專業科班出身的，而其他的則是半路出家自學成才的。不管是行業老手還是剛畢業的都同坐寬敞舒適的椅子。你會找到洋洋自得的小鬍子、自命不凡的眼鏡男以及一堆個性迥異的人。每張桌子都整齊排列了一堆東西，其中最給力的就是一個叫做“pen displays”這麼個沒特色的名字的東西；可以用一種配套的筆形的輸入裝置直接在上面作畫的巨大、高解析度的螢幕。這裝置用比如儲存、縮放和弄不髒的畫布等數字圖形軟體的方便特性來模擬在真實的畫布上作畫的工作。


Any character,weapon,building in the game is modelled by an artist within virtual space.The artists manipulate the geometry using the tools provided by the software to create the desired 3D shape(a shield for example).To bring colour to this shape,texturing is required.This effectively involves painting a realistic picture of any exposed surface on the object and overlaying it onto the 3D shape or“mesh”.Artwork is also necessary for game menus,icons and interface elements.Animators share the same space as the artists,using motion capture and hand-crafted animations to bring life to the living and moving objects in the game.These disciplines are discrete from writing code and require different individuals with different skill sets.

In the artists'room,the largest room in the TaleWorlds offices and host to the weekly company meetings,there is a white board,typically decorated with an array of sketchings rather than plans or goals.The work itself is pasted on a board with post-it notes and held in shared online documents.Tables are positioned,not for optimal communication but for preferred lighting conditions.The blinds are generally drawn and lamps are used to provide the correct ambience and minimal screen glare.It's quiet with most work done headphones-on.Something like a giant egg incubator.

遊戲中任何角色、武器、建築都是美工在虛擬空間中建模製作的。美工使用軟體操作多邊形來創造想要的3D形體（比如所一張盾）。要給這個形體上色，需要貼圖。這馬上涉及到在任何物件的暴露在外的表面上繪製逼真的的影像並放置到3D形體或是叫“模型”上。遊戲的選單、圖示、介面元素也是需要美術的。動畫師在美工工作中也佔一席之地，使用動作捕捉和手動編輯動畫來給遊戲中的活動的東西賦予生機。這些工作流程與寫程式碼是分開的，而且需要不同技能的不同人士來擔任。

在美工的工作房間裡，TaleWorlds工作區的最大的房間而且是每週公司用來開例會的房間裡，有一個白板，有代表性地用一組導圖而不是計劃或目標裝點著。要做的工作寫在速貼紙並貼在班上，同時也放在網路共享檔案裡。下面放著一張桌子，不是為了最理想的交流而是為了更輕鬆的條件。通常在上面瞎畫，檯燈用來提供正確的氣氛並降低螢幕的耀眼程度。大家都帶上耳機，很安靜。好像一個巨大的孵蛋箱。


In addition to directly working with modelling and texturing programs,artists take on the roles of in-game sceners and are familiar with the documents required to add items into the game.Applying these additional skillsets improves the efficiency of an artist's work;they are able to go away and create a new prop or building,while modelling a scene,if they feel the need for it.Being able to place items into the game also allows them to directly view their models as they will appear in the product,enabling them to adjust materials and textures for the best visual result.This is a niche aspect of working within the games industry,and something that needs to be learnt upon joining the company,for those only versed in the more general aspects of 3D art or design.

此外，為了直接用建模和貼圖程式工作，美工們將自己代入遊戲裡的角色，使製作與文件裡要求向遊戲中加入的東西更接近。通過這些額外的技能，美工工作的效率大大提高了；他們在搭建一個場景的時候能在場景中走動並創造一個新的場景物體或建築，如果他們感覺自己需要這麼做的話。能夠在遊戲裡放置物品同樣也使他們可以在成果中直接預覽到他們想要放置的模型，使他們能為了達到最好的視覺效果調整材質和貼圖。這在遊戲製造業的工作中是一個好的方面，也是一進入公司就需要學習的東西，對於那些只精通於一般的3D藝術或設計的人來說。



One of the current focuses of the artists is on character hair.Hair is a great challenge for all games;simulating realistic movement and texture when you have so many individual strands moving separately is incredibly resource intensive,when done in real time.Some games use certain techniques to improve the simulation,while saving resources but in a game like Mount&Blade,where you may have 100s of characters on screen,the balancing act becomes significantly more difficult.Our current working method is:a textured base(something like a hair coloured swimming cap)with groups of hair strands(rendered onto polygons with alpha channels)moving in various directions to give a natural look.This adds more depth than the method used in warband,which relied on the texture to give depth to the hair.You can see the difference below(Left:Warband,Right:Mount&Blade II:Bannerlord):

角色的頭髮上是當前美工工作的重點之一。頭髮對於所有的遊戲來說都是一個巨大的挑戰；實時模擬真實的運動和貼圖，讓那麼多獨立的髮絲分別運動，真的是一個巨量的資源消耗。一些遊戲用某種技術來提高模擬的效果，但在像騎砍這樣的遊戲裡要節約資源，百人同屏，這種平衡的把控變得實在是更加困難。我們現在的工作方式是：一個貼圖基底（像頭髮一樣顏色的浮動遮罩）配上許多組髮絲（用alpha通道渲染到多邊形上）在各個方向上移動來使頭髮看上去自然些。這比戰團裡用到的方法增加了更多了深度，戰團靠貼圖來給頭髮賦予深度。你可以在下面看到差別（左戰團右砍2）：


It goes without saying but what you're seeing is the game in its current state and the hair will likely see further changes and improvements.That means,if there's something you don't like about it,feel free to let us know via an ALL CAPS tweet with several exclamation marks but there's a good chance we're not completely happy with it either...just yet.The most important thing is that it's something which can be used en masse without heavily impacting on performance,a possiblilty achieved by the strength of our new game engine.

不言而喻，但你現在看到的是遊戲在這個階段的樣子，頭髮以後會有長足的改變與提高。也就是說，如果這裡有些你不喜歡的地方，怎麼噴都可以，儘管提，但我們也不會那麼高興的，趁現在。最重要的就是，這是一起不用極大的畫質衝擊就能夠做到的，一種我們的新遊戲引擎能實現的可能。

下一篇：《騎馬與砍殺2：霸主》開發者日誌（2）：植被上色
作者：qt911025編譯
原地址：http://www.mountblade.com.cn/news/Bannerlord/2016-03-30/67.html
原譯文：https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/2