DOOM2016开场白

DOOM2016开场白
A discussion with Principal Animator BRETT PATON of id Software.
Could you give us a little background on yourself and how you came to be at id Software?
Brett: I started in visual effects and animation at Café FX (then Computer Café) back in 1998 as a 3D generalist. We did lots of commercial and film work there ranging from things like Armageddon and Sin City to HBO and NBC bumpers and promos. I had a design background from school and while I do enjoy visual, motion, and graphic design, my passion was really in character and CG animation. Back then there weren’t a lot of options for how to become a CG animator, so I just learned as much as I could in school, received a BFA in design, and then focused on animation once I got my foot in the door.
Brett: Eventually, I got onto some CG films as an animator working for Sony Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues, and DNA Productions on films like Open Season, Surf’s Up, and Jimmy Neutron. I really enjoyed film and VFX production but I’ve been a gamer pretty much my whole life and knew that at some point I’d want to get into the games industry. I spent a year modding different first person shooters for fun and enjoyed it so much that I decided to start applying for game animator positions in the industry. When id Software was looking for animators back in 2008, I thought applying was a no-brainer since I considered it to be one of the top places to work in the industry.
So what does an animator on a AAA video game like DOOM do?
Brett: It mostly involves animating characters and the first-person player. However, we are a small animation team and we all do a lot more than just animate. Since I have a good amount of experience with different productions and techniques, I do a lot of rigging for things like weapons and props and occasionally simple characters. A big part of game animation, as opposed to film, is actually making that animation work in-game in real-time. Modding really gave me a strong grasp on that side.
Screenshots from DOOM (2016)
Brett: And since I’m also fairly technical, I’ve written tools to help get certain types of animations into the game – something that really came in handy when doing the end credit sequence. My film experience was also directly applicable to this, not just conceptually but the technical execution as well. While the credits do play in real-time, I approached creating them like you would any short film or animated CG sequence.
What’s your personal history with the DOOM series? When was your first exposure to the original games and what were your initial impressions of it?
Brett: I remember seeing DOOM in a computer gaming magazine the summer before I went to college. It looked so good, I couldn’t believe it was coming from a shareware company. I believe it came out the day before my birthday in 1993 and I tried downloading it from my modem in my dorm room. Too slow. So I went to the library with three floppy disks and downloaded it on the T1 speed computers. I remember thinking I was going to get in trouble for connecting to a BBS (Bulletin Board System), but it downloaded quickly. I went back to my dorm room and installed it in MS-DOS, fired it up, and could not believe how good it looked.
Brett: Years later, the day DOOM 3 came out, I was playing the first level and shortly after the moment all hell breaks loose, my screen went pink and I could smell smoking electric parts. DOOM 3 had literally melted my graphics card. Turns out I’d had my case fan going the wrong way for years, but I used that as an excuse to justify upgrading my graphics card to see DOOM 3 in all its visual glory.
So let’s talk about 2016’s DOOM. Unlike film and television, video game title sequences are still a bit of a rare thing. At what point in the game’s development did the team start thinking about an end title sequence?
Brett: I’ve always thought about this in a vague sense, because I loved when I saw cool title sequences starting to crop up in movies during the early to mid-90s.
Right before E3 2015, where we’d show the game to the world for the first time, I worked on a video to share with the team. It was kind of a rah-rah video to get people pumped for E3 and I used demo footage cut together with this great football speech I found online. I was so excited to make this video I came in during the weekend to make sure I could do it. When I was all done, it gave me goosebumps to see it. I felt that it really showed the power that it takes for a team – from QA to the most sophisticated programmers – to make a game like this.
Brett: Marty Stratton, the Game Director and Executive Producer, liked the video so much that he asked me if I had any ideas for a credit sequence and to start thinking about it. This was about a year from the ship date and I think I said something like, “It’s never too early to be thinking about stuff like that.” I started thinking of some really cool fully animated sequences on and off, but I always kind of felt like there wouldn’t be time to see them through. We went into heavy production in the months following E3 2015 and the idea of a credit sequence pretty much left my mind. As much as I had always wanted to do something cool like this I didn’t begin thinking about it again until just months before the game was supposed to ship.
What was the original concept for the end titles and how did you develop it?
Brett: When we were done with animation production on the game, I was playtesting it every night and taking screenshots of all the beautiful artwork the team had made. I would send out a few screenshots every night for everyone to see because it’s easy to get caught up in meeting deadlines and not realize how good things are looking. After looking at it for years you really don’t see giant leaps that often.
It’s more like watching a child grow, you never notice how much
they’ve grown on a day-to-day basis until you look back or stop and really take it in.
Anyway, I was listening to music one night and started to think about doing another team video when I finished going through the entire game with just screenshots, no real motion. This got me thinking about the credits again, which I had previously put out of my mind. For the next two days I mulled over whether there would be enough time to do anything cool for the credits. Most of the ideas I had in the past would be way too ambitious. However, I decided to put together a few test shots in the engine with 3D text, characters and environments to see how fast I could do a shot and what it could potentially look like. I just wanted to rough something in, but the idea was to come out of the player’s point of view and show the experience from a more cinematic perspective. Sort of show the player a history of what they did in the game.。