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.
骑马与砍杀系列的粉丝们和路过的读者们，这个博客意在成为一个可以一览我们的游戏开发的世界和TaleWorlds大家庭的窗口。我们的办公场所是由一系列排成一个长廊的房间组成的。每一个房间物理上各自组成一个个有着不一样的目标的团队，体现出我们目前团队所基于的开发结构。这周的博客将介绍美术组，我们这儿叫artist takımı。
美工们是办公室里拥有最深专业背景的人。一些是古典艺术、艺术史或者图形设计专业科班出身的，而其他的则是半路出家自学成才的。不管是行业老手还是刚毕业的都同坐宽敞舒适的椅子。你会找到洋洋自得的小胡子、自命不凡的眼镜男以及一堆个性迥异的人。每张桌子都整齐排列了一堆东西，其中最给力的就是一个叫做“pen displays”这么个没特色的名字的东西；可以用一种配套的笔形的输入设备直接在上面作画的巨大、高分辨率的屏幕。这设备用比如保存、缩放和弄不脏的画布等数字图形软件的方便特性来模拟在真实的画布上作画的工作。
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.
游戏中任何角色、武器、建筑都是美工在虚拟空间中建模制作的。美工使用软件操作多边形来创造想要的3D形体（比如所一张盾）。要给这个形体上色，需要贴图。这马上涉及到在任何对象的暴露在外的表面上绘制逼真的的图像并放置到3D形体或是叫“模型”上。游戏的菜单、图标、界面元素也是需要美术的。动画师在美工工作中也占一席之地，使用动作捕捉和手动编辑动画来给游戏中的活动的东西赋予生机。这些工作流程与写代码是分开的，而且需要不同技能的不同人士来担任。
在美工的工作房间里，TaleWorlds工作区的最大的房间而且是每周公司用来开例会的房间里，有一个白板，有代表性地用一组导图而不是计划或目标装点着。要做的工作写在速贴纸并贴在班上，同时也放在网络共享文件里。下面放着一张桌子，不是为了最理想的交流而是为了更轻松的条件。通常在上面瞎画，台灯用来提供正确的气氛并降低屏幕的耀眼程度。大家都带上耳机，很安静。好像一个巨大的孵蛋箱。
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，为了直接用建模和贴图程序工作，美工们将自己代入游戏里的角色，使制作与文档里要求向游戏中加入的东西更接近。通过这些额外的技能，美工工作的效率大大提高了；他们在搭建一个场景的时候能在场景中走动并创造一个新的场景物体或建筑，如果他们感觉自己需要这么做的话。能够在游戏里放置物品同样也使他们可以在成果中直接预览到他们想要放置的模型，使他们能为了达到最好的视觉效果调整材质和贴图。这在游戏制造业的工作中是一个好的方面，也是一进入公司就需要学习的东西，对于那些只精通于一般的3D艺术或设计的人来说。
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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):
角色的头发上是当前美工工作的重点之一。头发对于所有的游戏来说都是一个巨大的挑战；实时模拟真实的运动和贴图，让那么多独立的发丝分别运动，真的是一个巨量的资源消耗。一些游戏用某种技术来提高模拟的效果，但在像骑砍这样的游戏里要节约资源，百人同屏，这种平衡的把控变得实在是更加困难。我们现在的工作方式是：一个贴图基底（像头发一样颜色的浮动遮罩）配上许多组发丝（用alpha通道渲染到多边形上）在各个方向上移动来使头发看上去自然些。这比战团里用到的方法增加了更多了深度，战团靠贴图来给头发赋予深度。你可以在下面看到差别（左战团右砍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，但你现在看到的是游戏在这个阶段的样子，头发以后会有长足的改变与提高。也就是说，如果这里有些你不喜欢的地方，怎么喷都可以，尽管提，但我们也不会那么高兴的，趁现在。最重要的就是，这是一起不用极大的画质冲击就能够做到的，一种我们的新游戏引擎能实现的可能。
下一篇：《骑马与砍杀2：霸主》开发者日志（2）：植被上色
作者：qt911025编译
原地址：http://www.mountblade.com.cn/news/Bannerlord/2016-03-30/67.html
原译文：https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/2
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