SIDNEY EXCLUSIVE:
Interview with AUBREY PULLMAN, Lead Environment Artist of GABRIEL KNIGHT III.
Nico: Can you tell me a little about your background in art and 3D?
Aubrey: I have been drawing since I can remember but mostly it was just for fun.
I never thought about it as a career.
In high school, I started realizing that I had to pick something to do for a living, and the only thing I thought I could stand doing day in and day out was art.
I had some great art influences in high school that really helped me with my skill and ideas.
I decided after looking at colleges that I wanted to go to art school. I attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art for a semester, then dropped out.
I spent the rest of the year taking art classes at a community college. After that I moved up to Olympia and enrolled at the Evergreen State College.
It was in middle school that I was first exposed to a computer animation festival, and I knew after I saw it that I wanted to do computer graphics.
It was not until late in high school that I got the chance to play around with 3d. After I enrolled at PNCA I really got into it, and have been going ever since.
Nico: You have been working on GK3 since september 1997, this means you have been following the art ever since,
did the 3Dart change alot compared to the original prototype art done by Ron Spears?
Aubrey: The art has changed quite a bit since this game started.
There have been many people that have done environments for GK, but since Chris and I have been on the longest,
it is our look that has taken hold in the game.
This is not to say that Ron has not had a significant visual impact on the game,
It was he that instructed Chris and I on making texture maps, and we tried to follow him the best that we could.
Ron is a very hard act to follow artistically, but we have tried our best.
Nico: What were/are the most challenging parts about this project?
Aubrey: The most challenging part of GK3 has been adapting the art to the changing needs of Jane, the programmers, and the animators.
Gameplay and creative decisions were made at the beginning of the project with the art being created to fit into those needs.
Over time the needs of the game have changed, so Chris and I have had to try and retrofit the old scenes without breaking too much animation.
Nico: What does a regular day of the lead environment artist look like?
Aubrey: It’s hard to pin down what a regular day for me entails since things are changing all the time,
but lately it’s been like this: I check in with the other scene artists and find out what they are working on,
and assign tasks if necessary.
I start doing some production work.
I answer questions about art or the schedule or Max, or the game to whomever comes by my cube.
I throw Captain Crunch and candy hearts at Chris for a while.
Do more production work, answer more questions, swear at Max/my PC/other team members, etc. Repeat.
Nico: How do you start creating a room? Are first sketches of the environment made or do you start right away in a 3D program?
Aubrey: We start creating a room by looking at a room description document.
Then we head over to Jane or Adam to find out if there is anything that’s not in the description that should be in the room.
Then we talk to the animators to find out if any animations have been done for the non-existent room (this does happen),
then we find out what animations need to take place in the room and anything that has to be done to accommodate them.
After that we make sketches of how we would like the room to look, and brainstorm ideas.
When Ron and Richard were around we would ask them for concept sketches when we got stuck.
Then and only then do we go into Max and begin the modeling, texturing, and lighting.
What happens a lot, unfortunately is that we will build a room, and then find out later from someone that it needs to have one thing or the other, or something else entirely.
Nico: Do you get alot of liberty while creating the environments for GK3, or is everything quit planned upfront?
Aubrey: See above.
Nico: How is the experience of working on this game for 1.5 years?
Aubrey: Working on this game has been a lot of fun and a lot of pain.
This artistic subject has been really great and I love making the old maps and buildings.
I love having the amount of control over the way my art looks that I do.
The really trying part of being on GK3 has been the amount of communication that has to be done to make sure we get everything right.
It really has been a learning process for the whole team, because when I started we really had no good communication channels between the team members.
This and the lack of organization have made this project quite a headache.
Nico: What 3Dfeatures does the G-engine provide for the environmentartists?
(dynamic lightning, shadowing, etc..)
Aubrey: The GEngine has been a constantly evolving animal, and has become a very powerful engine.
Now with a little tweaking we can get our game scenes to pretty much match what we can see in a Max rendering.
The few features that really stand out are the lighting tools.
We have a lot of control over how the shadows get built, and 99% of all the max lighting parameters get translated into the game.
We also have a special texture plug in that allows us to do translucency, alpha blending, and a special kind of environment mapping developed by Peter Freese, our effects programmer.
We also have skyboxes, which are nice because we can have sky above us and backgrounds on the sides.
Also see my earlier email.
Snippet from an e-mail from Aubrey Pullman to Nico Sels:
"A lot of the (fancy 3d) features that a game has are dependent on the 3d card used. Things like pixel filtering (bi-linear, tri-linear, antistropic (sp??)) are a function of the card only.
Pixel filtering in software is too compute intensive.
We will be sporting a special type of environment mapping developed by our effects programmer, Peter Freese.
This mapping will be for hardware only.
As far as I know the pixel filtering and the environment mapping will be the main differences between hardware and software.
I have to say that a lot of people are down on software rendering, but our software renderer is dynomite.
It is often hard to tell between a Max rendering and the software renderer.
This is a testament to the flexibility designed into the engine by Jim Napier, the original architect, and the swift programming of Peter (Freese).
Both renderers support translucency for textures, as well as full color lightmaps (shadow maps).
We have alpha blending for special shadow as well as windows maybe.
Peter has put in so many features into the engine that us environemnt artists will have a hard time making full use of them before we have to ship.
The engine has matured so much during development that I see no real problem using it as is for the next game we do.
However Jim or Peter are not resting on their laurels. Peter is developing even more cool rendering features, and Jim is building the engine for a new project.
I guess you'll just have to wait until we can release more screen shots to see the true beauty of the engine and artwork.
Let me just say that if you didn't think the church could look any cooler, it does. :)"
Nico: How is working with the other artists and programmers?
Aubrey: Initially, I worked only with Ron in developing my scenes.
As the game has progressed, I have worked closely with just about every member of the team at one time or another.
I feel very lucky to have the team that we have had.
Working with them is really great because everyone has their own specialty, and can contribute on that level and many others. I really feel that the GK team has become my family.
Some of us are very close, and we have created many good working relationships as well as friendships.
I couldn’t make any discussion of the team without mentioning how great Chris (Brockett) is.
He is the best partner I can imagine having.
Our skills balance out very well, and we work extremely well together.
Mostly we’re known as "the environment guys". Like twins joined at birth.
Nico: Would you like to be working on future GKprojects, if so what would you like to see in the future games?
Aubrey: I would really like to work on future GK projects.
Adam has already started talking about it, but we’ll see what happens.
I have a lot of respect for Jane as a writer and a designer.
With GK I feel like I’m on a project that promotes my values of good story telling, great environment, and great acting (animation included).
In terms of future GK projects and what I’d like to see in them, I really can’t say.
I’ll leave that to Jane. So far I have been very impressed by her vision, and the creative visions of the past teams.
Nico: Which GK is your favourite in the series and why?
Aubrey: I have to admit I haven’t played any GK all the way through (including this one). There are certain things that I like about each one. I’d have to give my hat tip to #2. The acting was really great, and the environments were wonderful.
Nico: What is your all time favourite game?
Aubrey: That’s a tough one. I’d have to say the Marathon Trilogy from Bungie.
I think they did an incredible job with the story and the art.
I spent so much time with those three games that they are a permanent part of my psyche.
GOOD LUCK ON FINISHING GK3!