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From Lump of Clay to Action Hero
Today’s computer games are far more advanced than the 80´s best sellers, Packman or Donkey Kong. But how do you create a computer game? How do you get the characters to move and look so natural and alive?

GRIN is a small company in Stockholm that develops computer and arcade games. Bo Andersson, one of the owners and CEO, tells how GRIN develops their games, from concept to characters, environments, and music.

Game Idea and Prototype Becomes a Plan
“First of all, you must have a good game concept”, says Bo. GRIN works with concept prototypes that describe the game’s background, story, and rules. The prototype also includes sketches of different characters, environments, and other details for the game’s important information. To produce a complete prototype takes up to three months and out of six ideas, usually only one really becomes a game in the end. In other words, there are plenty of long hours that don’t show behind a computer game! Despite all the work, it takes less than a year for GRIN to develop a game from concept to a finished product on store shelves. This is possible since GRIN uses, and often is involved in developing, the latest technology for computer character creation and animation.

Currently GRIN is working on their next gladiator game, Vultures, developed for X-box. The game benefits from new technology that is part of GRIN’s Diesel Engine, and GRIN is not compromising when it comes to detail and animation.

(Screen shot from the Vultures game.)

GRIN Stays Ahead
GRIN uses brand new technology when they create their game characters and environments–a technology that hasn’t been possible to use due to previous lack of computer power. Now that new more powerful games, like PS2 and Xbox are on the market, it is possible to make games with really advanced programming, something that GRIN wasn’t late to take on!

That’s why GRIN has developed their own 3D-engine, called Diesel Engine, a robust multi-purpose platform. The 3D-engine is the heart of the game and determines how things behave in the gaming environment. It handles movements, bump mapping, specular lighting, bones, chrome positional sound and music, as well as dynamic surfaces and more. All this comes together to insure that there are no limits when developing a GRIN game.

The Diesel Engine was built to take full advantage of the potential of Xbox and nVIDIA's upcoming chipsets. GRIN cooperates closely with nVIDIA, makers of the Gforce graphic cards for Xbox, in order to be ahead and offer the gamer the best possible gaming quality and feel.

A Character is Born…
A complete plan is written when an idea passes over from prototype to production. The work with characters and environments are continued based on the earlier prototype sketches.

Based on the sketches, organic clay models of the characters and environments are made. Peter Johansson, 3D Graphic Artist, is the creator of GRIN’s characters and models them, part-by-part, at his desk. Clay is put on a skeleton of steel wire and tin foil. The characters are then scanned with a MicroScribe® G2 desktop 3D digitizer.

The point data from the MicroScribe G2 system is imported in the 3D engine by a GRIN-developed JAVA/XML-script. This is a very efficient way of work when developing characters and environments in a game. This method and technology make it possible to create complex structures and gives great detail.

”MicroScribe have made us twice as fast in our game character development compared to when we used to model in a 3D-program”, Bo and Peter agree. ”MicroScribe is easy to use and gives us very fast, accurate results without the ”noise” of a 3D-scanner.”

Based on the sets of 3D data from the digitizer, a light model with normal mapping is swept around a low polygon model of the character. The low polygon and the light model combined create the complete character, and it’s the light model that makes the character look natural.

…and Brought to Life
GRIN is also ahead of the competition when it comes to animation. They have their own motion capture studio where the characters are brought to life. The studio is a large room with 480 IR-cameras to register every move of an actor. The studio has been developed in cooperation with Hypervision, and GRIN has adjusted the software solution to meet the requirements of the gaming industry.

The unique thing about GRIN is that they animate the characters movements in full size. An actor puts on a special suit with 32 transmitters that together with the IR-cameras in the motion capture studio register the transmitter positions through out the movement. Every transmitter sends 60 signals per second, which gives very accurate data that can be used instantaneously. Then every motion is connected with the game pod in different combinations to make a character run, jump or pick something up.

A character game contains approximately 2000 different animations, each one about 1 - 2 seconds long. The Motion Capture studio makes it possible for GRIN to do between 60 and 70 animations in one weekend. The studio also makes it possible to animate impossible movements if the start position of a sensor is manipulated. If you program the software to record a motion negative instead of positive it is possible to manipulate, for instance, a knee to bend forward instead of the natural backward movement. This technology is very common within commercials and TV productions today, and is starting to enter the movie bushiness with films like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.

”Our MoCap studio have made us 3000% more efficient”, says Bo. ”At GRIN we have one animator, and with our studio he can make as many animations as five animators using a more traditional methods. Efficiency is one of our key words. We want to be ahead–first, but not biggest”, he says.

For more information

www.vulturesgame.com
www.grin.se
www.protech.se