Respected modeller and skinner milla predicts a schism in the mod community.
By Paul "m0nty" Montgomery | Nov. 25, 2003
Milla Koutsos
milla is talking about her specialty, the modelling community, of which she is a well-known member with an impressive track record of creating models and skins for Quake 3, UT2003 and other games. But she feels change in the wind, and the catalyst is the imminent arrival of id Software's DOOM III.
The spur for this prediction first came to light when DOOM III was launched at E3 2002. In an interview Robert Duffy gave to GameSpy, he said the biggest adjustment for modders and licensors would be a new method of making models and textures.
"In Quake 3 a model may have two or three thousand polygons, whereas the player models in DOOM III, the original art has probably close to a million polygons," Duffy said at the time. "That's been reduced down to four or five thousand for in-game use, but you have to have that million polygon model - you have to have a lot of polygons to generate the bumpmap data that makes it look like a high-poly model in game."
This new technique, which Duffy called "renderbumping", is a significant departure from the established norm for creating models. Instead of minimising the polygons on your model and concentrating on high-quality bitmap textures to give life to the model, DOOM III models have to be modelled at much higher polygon counts using tools like 3D Studio Max, Maya or gmax to generate visibility and lighting values, from which the textures for the in-game model are generated automatically.
"It's smoke and mirrors. It's a method of texturing that uses a lot of maths and not so many pixels," says milla.
"(DOOM III models are) low-poly models with texture mapping just like in Quake 3. There is merely an extra layer of technology behind it to make it look a lot prettier."
milla is well qualified to comment on id Software's new techniques, since she learned the ropes from listening to two of id's legends. She was attending the AGDC partly to meet up again with Paul Steed, former modeller for Quake 3: Arena, whom she met at a previous AGDC in Sydney in 1999 and who started her off on her skinning career in the first place after talking with her at the event. milla has also had a lot of mentoring support from Paul Jaquays, who spent five years at id as a level designer and is now at Ensemble Studios. The perspective she has gained from the relationship with her "two Pauls", as she calls them, has provided her with some firm ideas on the direction of the mod community after the release of DOOM III.
"(DOOM III works) completely differently, and I don't think as many people will do as many things for it," she says. "Half-Life 2 is going to be a lot more welcome to the community artists because there is still pixel work in there, there are still bitmaps. I think that DOOM III is going to be a technician's outlet, and Half-Life 2 is going to be the artist's outlet. Only the animators and modellers will be working on both. The texture artists are going to be divided."
The difference for potential DOOM III modders - and, of course, this also applies to developers at commercial companies who are considering licensing the DOOM III engine for their next title - is in the changes to the basic methodology of the creation process, according to milla, where the skinner's job might become superfluous.
"A lot of modellers are going to do the whole shebang for DOOM III, because a lot of what you do happens in 3D Studio Max or gmax, the Discreet product of your choice - or your budget! A lot of skinners don't know their arse from their ear in Max," she quips.
"I mean, I'm learning to model and I can unwrap, but skinners just take an out-of-the-box model and the mesh map that is made available for that model, and they skin it with whatever editing tools come with their game, or something like Q3Ace which is a shader editor, but they don't work with 3D software. It's a matter of do or die, because if you don't pick up 3D software, you can't do 2D artwork any more because you need to understand how to use materials at a much more technical layer to texturing. I don't think (the skinners) will welcome that."
Paul Steed
"What's happening now is that instead of splitting up your texture artist and modeller, the technology introduced in DOOM III is going to bring that together," she says.
"Your modeller is also going to do his own texturing. It will be the natural progression: you model it; you map it; you put the materials on it; you rig it; you animate it. It's all done as part of the same process. The old-fashioned way with the bitmaps was: you modelled it; either you or the skinner mapped, unwrapped and skinned it; then it came back and got rigged and animated. That has been cut down. One person is more likely to do the whole process, but he is going to have to learn so much about 3D software to do the texturing that he may as well make the bloody thing himself. That's what it comes down to."
While commercial development shops will retool to fit the new paradigm, amateur community modders who have spent years learning the tricks of skinning might feel left out in the Doom 3 way of doing things. milla also argues that the direction id is taking model creation is away from the artist.
"It's not a bad thing, because it looks dead sexy in the game, but it's sad to me because when it comes down to how effectively you can use a material editor rather than how good you are with a Wacom stylus," she says.
"It's not fine art any more. It's very technical, which takes some of the flair out of it for me. I'm probably a bit traditional and old-fashioned that way."
DOOM III might be seen as an evolutionary step that is in some cases inevitable as the march of technology moves on, but milla argues there will always be a place for texture artists and skinners, particularly with games like Half-Life 2 remaining based in the traditional methodology. "I don't think DOOM III is going to eliminate pixel art, it's not going to eliminate bitmaps, because there is nothing quite like a skin. I think it is going to divide the art community into the technicians and the artists, and I'm damned if I'm going to be left out of either side. Despite the fact that I don't altogether welcome the technical side, I know I can do it and I'll adapt. If you don't adapt, you'll end up not being a professional and you'll stay as a community artist," she says.
While the mod community has always been broken up into DOOM/Quake-versus-Unreal camps, the technical difference between the two engines are arguably not as great as will be caused by the advent of DOOM III. As with all debates such as this, the winner will be determined by bums on seats - in this case, the number of developers who choose either side, and of course the number of consumers who buy one or the other.
"It depends on what the gamers prefer," says milla. "What it comes down to is if people prefer the shiny bumpmapping 'oooh' look of DOOM III over the pretty paintings of Half-Life 2, we're going to have a shift that way, and I intend to be fully prepared for it! It may be that it goes on with two different ways of doing things. There is no rule that says the entire industry has to do things a single way, and I doubt very much that pixels will ever be gone, but they certainly not going to be the norm any more. They have only been the norm because nobody has made DOOM III yet. Carmack came along and spoilt my picnic!" •