via gaf - pcostabel post
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=94
Interview with Hideki Sasaki
A Lead Character Artist at Konami, Hideki Sasaki talks about the Metal Gear Solid series, the production pipeline, and XSI.
December, 16th, 2005, by Raffael Dickreuter, Yoichiro Kadoguchi, Bernard Lebel, Will Mendez
...
3D models of the design drawings from the Metal Gear Solid 3, seems to have very high repeatability. How is this being done?
Nothing special is done. We only have to repeat the retake in order to raise the quality, so we take it as an important element to create an easily retake-able environment. By improving the schedule and workflow, designers will have more time to be insistent, for example, being proficient with tools such as XSI.
Each cinematic sequence is presented as if it’s were a film. Are these the direction from Kojima Director?
From script to storyboard, instruction of motion capture, camera work, acoustic effects and all other operations were done under the editorship of Director Kojima. In the field of motion capture, he directs the action of the actor. The storyboard does exist, but it’s very likely that director changes the instruction during field work. In the exchange between actors and the staffs, we always look for new interpretations and sometimes we face the audacity of change, such as adding more characters to the scene. Also, one of the elements that define the Metal Gear Solid series are the jokes found throughout the game. These are fully done by Director Kojima with his good sense of humor. The actual process of using CG tools are transferred to each member of the demo-scene staff, however ultimately all the elements, including all scenes, cuts, camera works and timing of the acting are checked by Director Kojima himself.
How was XSI used in the MGS3 project?
It was the main tool for modeling, character setup, and animation. XSI became the main pipeline of MGS3.
Which XSI features did you find very useful?
We cannot say specify because XSI has many powerful features. If we were forced to say, then it is probably the XSI construction history since v.4.0. It is the ideal function to edit character modeling because we can see animation results and modeling results at the same time. It is easy to freeze operators because XSI has four construction stack groups. We can move specific operators to another operator stack group. XSI v.4.0 was released during the final stages of MGS3 development, but we still changed to XSI version v.4.0. This is a very rare case to change XSI versions in mid-production. However we decided to change to it because v.4.0 construction history and other new features were very exciting.
It seems Fx-tree is not a game development feature, but we used this feature very often. Fx-Tree can generate texture animations in XSI. For example we made texture animations like “Snake Tear” and the final part of The Boss’s “Snake Animation.” We think Fx-Tree will be very useful to next-generation real-time shader image processing tools.
Did you use Render map and polygon reduction?
We think rendermap is a necessary function to generate high quality texture mapping. This function is not only used for prelighting but also to make seamless texture generations, texture map for LOD object. Rendermap is not a single feature; we can use this function for multi-purposes. Rendermap is a very attractive feature to the game industry. XSI polygon reduction is amazing. We can reduce polygon numbers and still retain the character shape. This function is also very useful to generate LOD models.
What features of XSI should be improved?
We expect Softimage will improve Material editing and UV editing.
It seems the MGS project utilized the Synoptic editor. What did Konami artist change after you introduced synoptic view?
We cannot imagine executing a project without synoptic view UI. Even for animators who do not understand RIG construction, synoptic view makes it easy to understand. For example, many designers joined in mid-production and synoptic view was very useful for them. We also used netview for data management.
What do you think of Softimage support?
It is awesome. Actually we had many meetings and spent several days with the staff of Softimage. We discussed many things with them. We believe our feedback was realized as Softimage features, like a construction mode, easy envelope editing which use symmetrize polygon, and so on. We think the Softimage staff provided us with an improved development environment. We can prove it by making the best quality title.
http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=94
Interview with Hideki Sasaki
A Lead Character Artist at Konami, Hideki Sasaki talks about the Metal Gear Solid series, the production pipeline, and XSI.
December, 16th, 2005, by Raffael Dickreuter, Yoichiro Kadoguchi, Bernard Lebel, Will Mendez
...
3D models of the design drawings from the Metal Gear Solid 3, seems to have very high repeatability. How is this being done?
Nothing special is done. We only have to repeat the retake in order to raise the quality, so we take it as an important element to create an easily retake-able environment. By improving the schedule and workflow, designers will have more time to be insistent, for example, being proficient with tools such as XSI.
Each cinematic sequence is presented as if it’s were a film. Are these the direction from Kojima Director?
From script to storyboard, instruction of motion capture, camera work, acoustic effects and all other operations were done under the editorship of Director Kojima. In the field of motion capture, he directs the action of the actor. The storyboard does exist, but it’s very likely that director changes the instruction during field work. In the exchange between actors and the staffs, we always look for new interpretations and sometimes we face the audacity of change, such as adding more characters to the scene. Also, one of the elements that define the Metal Gear Solid series are the jokes found throughout the game. These are fully done by Director Kojima with his good sense of humor. The actual process of using CG tools are transferred to each member of the demo-scene staff, however ultimately all the elements, including all scenes, cuts, camera works and timing of the acting are checked by Director Kojima himself.
How was XSI used in the MGS3 project?
It was the main tool for modeling, character setup, and animation. XSI became the main pipeline of MGS3.
Which XSI features did you find very useful?
We cannot say specify because XSI has many powerful features. If we were forced to say, then it is probably the XSI construction history since v.4.0. It is the ideal function to edit character modeling because we can see animation results and modeling results at the same time. It is easy to freeze operators because XSI has four construction stack groups. We can move specific operators to another operator stack group. XSI v.4.0 was released during the final stages of MGS3 development, but we still changed to XSI version v.4.0. This is a very rare case to change XSI versions in mid-production. However we decided to change to it because v.4.0 construction history and other new features were very exciting.
It seems Fx-tree is not a game development feature, but we used this feature very often. Fx-Tree can generate texture animations in XSI. For example we made texture animations like “Snake Tear” and the final part of The Boss’s “Snake Animation.” We think Fx-Tree will be very useful to next-generation real-time shader image processing tools.
Did you use Render map and polygon reduction?
We think rendermap is a necessary function to generate high quality texture mapping. This function is not only used for prelighting but also to make seamless texture generations, texture map for LOD object. Rendermap is not a single feature; we can use this function for multi-purposes. Rendermap is a very attractive feature to the game industry. XSI polygon reduction is amazing. We can reduce polygon numbers and still retain the character shape. This function is also very useful to generate LOD models.
What features of XSI should be improved?
We expect Softimage will improve Material editing and UV editing.
It seems the MGS project utilized the Synoptic editor. What did Konami artist change after you introduced synoptic view?
We cannot imagine executing a project without synoptic view UI. Even for animators who do not understand RIG construction, synoptic view makes it easy to understand. For example, many designers joined in mid-production and synoptic view was very useful for them. We also used netview for data management.
What do you think of Softimage support?
It is awesome. Actually we had many meetings and spent several days with the staff of Softimage. We discussed many things with them. We believe our feedback was realized as Softimage features, like a construction mode, easy envelope editing which use symmetrize polygon, and so on. We think the Softimage staff provided us with an improved development environment. We can prove it by making the best quality title.
