Lost Planet

I trust you’ve already read Part 1 of the interview with Lost Planet Art Director Takahiro Kawano, with Director Kenji Oguro sitting in and providing comments as well. In Part 2 we cover more concept and design topics, and delve into the over-the-top visual effects seen in the game. And click on the images to view larger sizes of the exclusive concept art from the game (but remember that concept art is just that, and not everything you see will necessarily end up in the game).

Click to read the full text for Part 2 of the interview.

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[Brian] What was the process like going from concept art to completed assets and models, and how long did that take?

[Kawano] Coming up with the concept art like that went rather quickly, relatively speaking. It only took a week or two to get that far.

But of course thats just the concept phase. Going from there to actually getting everything in the game and running in real-time is a very long process.

Id have the artists create that kind of scenery and those kinds of robots in 3D, putting it into a running 3D environment little by little.

Going from the concept art, getting it all running on actual 360 hardware, then adding the filters and deciding on the rendering and visual style, took about a year and a half.

About that time was when the transition to the next-gen hardware was just getting under way. So while I was working on the look of the visuals, we were experimenting with and learning about the Xbox 360 hardware. Theres always a learning period and a learning curve whenever you start working with a new piece of hardware.

Plus, the producer would come to me and say, We have an event coming up on this date and I want to show off Lost Planet. Can you come up with something for me to show? That proved to be great for progress, like my homework gearing up for mid-term exams. Each time the visual quality would just shoot up.

So basically, at these intervals, Id have this pressure to come up with something cool to show off, and that pressure helped me guide the art team to create the high quality visuals in the game today.

[Brian] How do you create the art and the concepts? Do you work more in the analog domain, with paper and pens and pencils, or in the digital domain?

[Kawano] The first thing I do after the concept art is to come up with something we call Image Boards. These are basically roughs that I hand off to the other artists and designers to convey what my vision for the look and atmosphere of the game. I would come up with ideas for stages, the Vital Suit robots, etc.

When I create an Image Board, I start off by sketching it out in pencil. Then I scan it into the computer and add shading and color. Very basic steps.

[Oguro] The other designers and I create the design documents for the game, but we cant really draw. So our design documents are just text explaining concepts. What Kawano does is take our concepts and draw them out so they can be understood in a visual manner. It makes it a lot easier for others to understand. So thats one use for these Image Boards.

[Brian] So how does something go from being an Image Board to being in the game?

[Kawano] The ones actually drawing and coming up with the characters, the Vital Suits, and the environments are the designers and artists in charge of those aspects of the game. They take the Image Boards and fill in all the details based on my rough designs. And I lead the art team by giving them directions about what things should look like. I also designed a few of the characters myself.

[Oguro] When the designers complete an illustration or design, Kawano reviews it. Once that design is approved, it gets created in the 3D realm. From that point Kawano sort of hands off that design to the next person, like the Environment Lead. Talking about an environment, once the artist finishes an environment and the Environment Lead okays it, it gets sent back to Kawano for final approval.

[Brian] One thing that everybody notices when they play the game is the over-the-top explosions and smoke effects, and I think these gorgeous effects really set the game apart from the competition. How did you go about creating and implementing the explosions and smoke and fire effects for the various rockets and grenades?

[Kawano] This is something I really put a lot of effort into. You can make objects look as nice as you want, but they are still stationary objects. I think that the kinds of games that really impress people, the ones that make you say wow, are the ones that use a lot CPU on effects, like explosions, smoke, snow. Making sure the visual effects were cutting-edge was something that was decided up front.

[Oguro] Depending on the game, you have to split up your CPU power based on what you want to do with the game. Some games have to put a lot of enemies on the screen at once, while others are limitlessly open worlds where you can go anywhere.

With Onimusha, we wanted to give the characters the most amount of polygons possible and stick them with a bunch of textures, with drawn-in backgrounds. Thats where we placed the weight for that game. And we used what small amount of CPU left over to power the effects.

But for Lost Planet, we had our environments and models, and suddenly had a lot of extra CPU left over with the next-gen hardware that made all of these effects and filters, the kind of visuals you see when the game is in motion. So we decided to really push the visual effects.

In other words, for us, the days of having just pretty screenshots was over. We wanted people to play the game, see it in motion, and say wow! Just looking at screenshots, its hard for the impact to come across. But when people get to play the game for the first time and see it in motion, they say wow. We stuck with this decision from the very beginning, and I think it was crucial to how the game has turned out.

The next-gen hardware really has given us a lot more power so we can do these sorts of things with the visual effects. I am also very thankful for the power and flexibility of our proprietary Framework Engine.

[Kawano] Explosions are about more than just a single plume of black smoke. We have multiple layers of different kinds of smoke. Layering the smoke and effects creates that realism.

And if its just smoke rising from an explosion, all of the smoke can start to look the same, and disappear from the air after the same amount of time has gone by. So we added solid particles and debris to the smoke. Doing that adds something real and solid to the explosions and gives them weight and a sense of speed.

This really helps add to the realism of the game. With just one explosion, there are a bunch of elements mixed in. Stuff that may not even be immediately noticeable, but that makes it all appear realistic.

The effects group really pushed this hard without the director even having to tell them. They ran with this on their own and made something very special. Everyone on the team wanted to try and experiment to see what was possible.

[Oguro] And of course it wasnt like the effects were all of a sudden complete one day. There was an extensive trial and error process, and Kawano and I looked at a lot of explosions and told them to change it or do it over.

The limited edition version due out in the US has the original trailer for the game. If you watch that its pretty clear how far the explosions and effects have come to get where they are in the final game.

[Kawano] Exactly. Even a single explosion in Lost Planet has a history. Waynes face in the game even changed 3 times.

Check out Part 3 for the conclusion of the interview, where we cover Vital Suit and Akrid designs! And of course a bunch more artwork!



—Brian