Trailer Article Part 2



OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTS

Another example of the perfect creating of this 3Dworld, is the outdoor environments.
For a real-time engine it's impossible to accurately recreate an outdoor scene, so what do the 3D Artists have to do? Capture the right mood.

I can safely say that they succeeded in doing this, the colors and chosen textures perfectly reflect the hot, desolate landscape that surrounds RLC, and just look at those clouds!


CHARACTER ANIMATION

But I think it's time for some criticism now, cause as long as the game is in production, I can only see the benefit in that.
so yes, there were still some things that bugged me when I was looking at the trailer.
Things that might still need to be corrected during the game development process, especially when Sierra announces their engine as:

"allowing you to interact with intelligent, lifelike characters, who have fluid animations as never before seen in a real-time game."

I'm talking about how the characters are integrated in the environments. When you look good at the scene where the Persian man bows, you see that his hands and feet ar IN the floor, instead of ONTO it.
The trailer showed some other examples of 'anomalies', for instance the way the hands are sometimes placed on the arms while they are moving.

Ohps


So I talked to Adam Bormann, about this and he said:
"someone on the team just noticed the hands going through the floor as well.
He was UNHAPPY!!! Actually, I talked to the animator who did that, and he knew about it."

Grace from the Trailer Grace in early screenshot And then there is Grace...from the start I loved the way all characters looked, NO blockiness whatsoever. Considering that some games cut-scenes don't even achieve this kind of perfection PRERENDERED, it is really wonderful what the art team has achieved.
Grace however seemed an exception, why she looked like a group of polygons between all those lifelike characters was beyond my comprehension.

It was more so strange, because on one of the images GAMECENTER showed us (VISIBLE ON THE RIGHT),
Grace wasn't blocky at all! And this isn't the first example of where I see that the characters on the AVI's don't look as good as on the screenshots we got to see.

Now this doesn't mean you have to start worrying, because it might be that the art still needs to be corrected. But still,when they show something like this in the TRAILER, I started wondering.

Grace from Character Section of GK3 Site Adam Bormann however assured me that Grace is NOT blocky at all:
"All the screenshots on the GK3-site as with all the screenshots from articles, are everywhere from a year and a half old to about 4 months old. Nothing very recent. The most recent stuff they did was E3. They've been working on the game since then."

And looking at the new headshot from GK3's Characterpage,I think he's right! Now let's hope they'll still be doing something about Grace's anatomy!

CONCLUSION I guess we shouldn't worry very much about the art not being entirely perfect right now, according to what I've seen with the trailer, the art is constantly being altered and perfected.

Real Asmodeus Photo by Nico Sels GK3 Asmodeus - Preliminary Art GK3 Asmodeus - Trailer Art

There is for example the obvious difference we get to see on the images of ASMODEUS, the statue of the devil at the entrance of the RLC church.
Compared with a picture of the REAL statue, the preliminary art and the "trailer" art of this statue..you'll see for yourself, that they are trying to make the best out of it.

I know that for some of you I have been nit-picking, for others I've been to kind.
You've heard it before: GK3 is all about storytelling and the art isn't so important at all.
But think, wouldn't it be great if GK3 could even reach that GIANT audience that only plays 3D-games?

I think this is what the GK3 team had in mind in the first place: ensure the future of ADVENTURE gaming!

Let's hope they succeed!