Exclusive Content: Creating a Dragon

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Updated Fri, Feb 13, 2009 by Darkgolem

Creating a Dragon

by Todd DeMelle, DDO Art Director.

While the world of Eberron® was chosen as the backdrop for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ (DDO) in part because its relative newness allows so much creative freedom, the campaign setting's roots still lie in the traditional Dungeons and Dragons® core. Many of us on the Turbine dev team have long histories exploring that core and a great appreciation and reverence for it. As an opportunity to pay homage, the responsibility for bringing the dragons to life again in this new setting has been an honor and a privilege.

When reviewing the Black Dragon encounter in Module 4, entering the chamber and watching her rise up from her horde to descend upon the invading party, I was struck with the satisfying realization that we had achieved something quintessentially core Dungeons & Dragons. Flashes of the excitement I imagined looking at the cover of the basic rule set back in the early 80's came back to me. The red dragon poised over her horde.

Building monsters for DDO is a careful balance of performance, technical and aesthetic considerations coordinated through a pipeline comprised of multiple contributors across several departments. The process begins with a “monster strike team meeting” in which representatives from the various art, design and tech disciplines work together to establish the production goals. We come out of that meeting knowing exactly what will be necessary to bring the creature to life including target numbers for complexity, UV count, texture size, specific animations, behavior scripting requirements, etc. When it's determined that those goals work in the context of the entire constellation of goals for that production cycle, the production process begins with the concept phase.

Dragons are among the most well documented denizens of the D&D® universe. The role of the concept artist in the case of dragons is to represent the creature consistently with its lore as detailed in the Draconomicon and elsewhere in such a way that the technical goals outlined in the monster strike team meeting can be achieved. That means working with Wizards of the Coast (WotC), production and tech artists to generate an orthographic rendering that can be closely adhered to by the modeler/ texturer and that can be supported within the limitations allowed by the predetermined rig that will be used for

animation. In the case of the M4 dragons, in order to generate all three being introduced in the relatively short module production timeframe, dragons with similar proportions were identified. Coordinating with WotC through concepts, it was agreed the differences between the proportions of the white, black and blue dragons could be supported on the same rig. With signoff from WotC and Turbine, the concepts are ready to be modeled, rigged, textured and animated.

This is a dragon's egg. It also happens to be the primitive shape from which a great many DDO assets originally take form. Adhering to a strict geometry complexity budget and referring closely to the concept art, the modeler builds the geometry for the dragon. The process involves refinement as the orthographic concepts are realized in the round and made to coalesce together from all angles. The model is scrutinized aesthetically and then technically to ensure it is built in a way that will allow it to deform as necessary to accomplish the range and character of animations established in the strike team meeting. The jaw must open, the wings must span, the neck and tail must snake, the legs must articulate like a cat's.

When it is agreed the base geometry meets technical and aesthetic goals, it is “unwrapped”. Its surface is sliced into “shells” and splayed out so they can be laid down with minimal distortion onto a single 2d image plane. It is onto this plane that the details and color that will add so much life to the relatively low resolution base model will be painted. When this process is finished, the geometry for the dragon is complete and it's ready to go to a tech artist for its skeleton to be built and bound and to a texture artist for painting.

The process of painting a texture is one of the most challenging aspects of asset production. Knowing how a flat image will translate onto a 3d object is not always intuitive. Neither is capturing the level of contrast, detail and pre-rendered lighting that will yield the optimal results when the final animated monster is moving around in the various differently lit environments in the game world. The process involves constant checking back and forth between 2d and 3d representations of the texture and review in the game engine. In addition to the base texture itself, in the case of the dragons there is also a clip map that is used to mask out the rough edges of the wings and a specularity map that is used to create an appearance of glossiness to the scales. It's likely when all these components are completed, their seams cleaned up and they are working in concert together in the game engine, the animation team is well into creating the list of necessary animations using the rigged base geometry.

The animation of a monster is one of the most time consuming processes in DDO production. A monster will typically have 30 to as many as 50 different animations. On a complex creature with articulating jaw, 4 legs, wings, a long neck and tail this can take several weeks from start to finish. During this process the animator works with the scripter who will take the component animations and tie them together with code to create the end result of a cohesive fluid creature that operates effectively in the DDO combat system. Typically this involves back and forth iteration to refine how the creature moves to get the best possible result within the limitations of the combat tech.

When animation is complete, although the dragon has made its way to the end of the art pipeline, it still has some way to go before it is ready for release. Scripting, Sound, story, environment, and new game mechanics in support of the encounter all need to be polished before it's ready to rise up over its horde and bring their demise to the unfortunate explorer's of Xen'drik who are so foolish as to wander into its lair.

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