| Old man Chimere. An example
of my character design from Battlespire. The old man Chimere was rendered
using Alias once again. After experimenting with Alias' particle hair system
on Daggefall, of which the horses mane and tail are examples, I decided
that for most of the character in Battlespire I would use the traditional
"sausage" hair. This gave me more control, and for the resolutions we were
going to use, looked better.
In the animation from which this image is taken Chimere would look deep
into the flame and then raise his head and wag his finger at you in a stern,
knowing sort of way. All of the dialogue animations were saves as "FLICS"
an Animator Pro animation format. This had the benefit of giving us very
clear, crisp animations without taken up too much space on the CD, albeit
they only had a pallete of 256 colours per FLC. Depsite the realtively small
size some had to be taken off the CD as the Segue and Intro animations
were so big. This gave less variety to the final dialogue sequences but
no one seemed to notice.
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
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| The Clannfear. To the right
is a small sample animation of one of my favourite creatures I created
in my time with Bethesda. The animation cycle shown here is 16 frames.
The actually game characters used only 8 frames, still this was a big improvement
over Daggerfall's 4 frames. Click on the walking image to the right
to see a large animation of the Clannfear strutting his stuff. (663 KB) |
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The Clannfear was all my own design. We were in pinch as our monster design guy Mark Jackson was busy and did not have time to complete his sketch of the proposed Clannfear, a bird like creature with a nasty temper. It fell to me to come up with something quick and the green guy you see here now is the result. All textures were designed using Alias' extensive procedural texture facilities. To the Left is a larger example of the Clannfear. The Clannfear itself was built to be used in advertising and possible TV commercial work and is thus very detailed. Most of this has been lost in the game but if you would like to see a larger animation please click
here. A still larger version is also on my Gallery
page. |
| To the right is an early test render of the head. Note the back frill
is not quite complete at this stage and the red patterning has yet to be
introduced onto the frill. |
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Xivilli TXivilli, another of
the Daedric ruling class. Near the end of the project characters were being
introduced that had not been origianlly in the design. These had to created
within a few hours. Fortunately most were humanoid in basic design and
were only needed in the dialogue screen. The graphic to the Left is an
example of this. |
| Spider Daedra. The Spider daedra
pictured to the right is an example of another of the weird denizens of
the Battlespire. Originally he supposed to have a human hand but I thought
a Preying mantis look would seem more threatening to the player. Click
on the image to the right to see an earlt test walk. (281 KB) |
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One of the critisms of Batlespire was its use of sprites and this character
was ill fitted for a world of gloomy corridors and tight passage ways.
Being so wide his legs would clip through the wall edges which resulted
in rather wierd enemy, certainly not the threatening preying mantis creature
I originally envisioned. |
| Vermai. The Vermai was the
first creature I modelled for Battlespire. Again this model was built with
the intention of using it for press release and possible TV advertising.
It's very detailed and was intended to stand up to close scrutiny. |
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I made the decision to model it this way early on as we had come across
problems with Daggerfall when we had tried to used some of the models for
other, non game, purposes. The models just did not stand up to that kind
of work, nor were they intended to. So with Battlespire I took time to
ensure that we would not run into the same problems again. For an early
version of the model ratating 360 degrees click on the image to the right
(226KB) |
| Clarentavious Clarentavious
the mage. One of the characters you meet during the course of Battlespire.
The image here comes from the dialogue screens. A variation on this theme
appears on my title page, which has a combination of old man Chimere and
Clarentavious. This was done in my own time and I will eventually design
the old Bethesda web-mage in 3D.(See gallery
for more detail) Here though Clarentavious has a similar animation to the
old man Chimere and will gaze into the light at the end of his staff before
answering your questions with a knowing look. |
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Daedra Lord This Daedra Lord
may look familiar as it was used for online banner advertising of the game.
I wanted to give the character horns that felt heavy. Similar to the movie
"Legend"'s
Tim Currie's Demon character, although mine don't bounce!
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
| Dark Seducer
She is in fact the same character from teh cover of the game. Originally
these characters first apperared in Daggerfall and there she would morph
into the winged creature that you see at the top of this page. The transformation
scene was scrapped from Battlespire to save memory and time. By the way
Daedra have no toes, so her feet are intentionally toeless. Honest! ;-)
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
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Imago Many of the characters
in the game were added as we went along as the design was still evolving
as we started production. The character to the right, Imago, was added
late in production as a sort of supporting character. I'm actually unsure
if he made it to the final game. Again, like some other later additions,
only a few hours were put aside for characters such as these which explains
his general humanoid appearance.
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
| The Scamp The scamp became
one of the more enduring characters from the game. Origianlly intended
to be just a two legged version of Daggerfall's rat his personality blosomed
with the joining of Ken Rolston, the internationlly renowned game designer
of Paranoia, to the team. Ken's own acting skills enabled me to have a
really good understanding of these pesky scamps and I was able to add additional
animations to their dialogue, such as scrathcing themselves and hopping
up and down. To the left a scamp scratches his ear.
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
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SumeerSumeer, another of the
Daedra. I was pleased with the way he came out as he was very close to
the original sketch which gave him the attitude, I thought, of a genie.
If you look closely at his clothing you can just make out Daedric symbols.
A whole alphabet was designed for the game which used these symbols. The
battlescythe had them embossed onto the blade for example, aand some of
the games puzzles required some knowledge of them.
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
| Herne The Daedra are a demon-like
race that feature heavily in the Elder Scrolls world. To the right is a
Herne. Vritually all modelling, animation and rendering had to be completed
within two days for each character. To make this possible I used Alias's
batch processing facilty. I would line up the renders before I left at
night and write a batch file to render and process them over-night. Using
this method I only had minor processing to do on the PC the next morning
and then continue to model and animate.
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
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Zenaida. The Daedra are a demon-like
race that feature heavily in the Elder Scrolls world. To the right is a
Herne. Virtually all modelling, animation and rendering had to be completed
within two days for each character. To make this possible I used Alias's
batch processing facilty. I would line up the renders before I left at
night and write a batch file to render and process them over-night. Using
this method I only had minor processing to do on the PC the next morning
and then continue to model and animate. If you wish to view a sample dialogue
animation click
here
Image copyright Bethesda Softworks |
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