Thank you to everyone who attended the 2009 Game Developers Conference and stopped by the 3DVIA booth. We had an excellent show: great in-booth attendance and a lot of interest in our products and services.

If you weren’t able to make the show, don’t worry, I’ll be recapping the highlights below.

The 3DVIA Lineup

We demonstrated four key technologies in the booth:

- 3DVIA Virtools 5: the latest release of our game engine for rapid prototyping and game development
- 3DVIA MP: NextGen visualization engine for creating online and standalone games
- 3DVIA.com: a thriving community and resource for 3D artists and enthusiasts
- 3DVIA Shape: a free, online modeling application perfect for the beginner, yet powerful enough for the expert

Show Stealers

As proud as we are of our products, we’re even prouder of the amazing, interactive 3D games and other applications our customers create using them. We had several terrific customer presentations of games and other applications currently in development/use built on 3DVIA Virtools, including Subsurface, the first game ever built on 3DVIA Virtools 5.

Subsurface

“Subsurface gameplay”

“Ian McClusky: bad guy from Subsurface”

The first game built on 3DVIA Virtools 5, Subsurface was developed to put 3DVIA Virtools 5’s design principle of “speed without sacrificing quality” to the test. We collaborated with long time 3DVIA Virtools partner, Little Chicken Game Company, and gave them what would normally be seen as an impossible challenge: develop a game in 60 days with 6 people. Subsurface was the result.

“Little Chicken demoing Subsurface”

“GDC attendees play Subsurface for the chance to win a Wii”

You can play Subsurface online here.

UPDATE: Our servers are temporarily offline, which means Subsurface is also temporarily offline. We’re working out the kinks right now and should be back up and running soon. My appologies to those who have tried to play and got error messages. I will post an update as soon as we’re back in business. 

You can also visit the official Subsurface website here.

Liight

“Studio Walljump demoing Liight”

Think of the most addicting game you’ve ever played and then multiply it by…well…a lot of lights. This game, currently in development by Studio Walljump, is totally awesome, and is another example of a game being built on 3DVIA Virtools for the Wii. Liight asks players to use color theory, strategy and brain power to solve some unique puzzles. Users can even use Liight to create their own puzzles and publish them online for others to solve.

Avatar: Legends of the Arena

“Sarbakan demoing Avatar: Legends of the Arena”

Developed by Sarbakan, and available for download on Nickelodeon’s website, Avatar: Legends of the Arena is action packed. Users can create their own characters, enter the arena and compete with players online from all over the world. This game is very, very cool and really fun.

“Show attendees watch Sarbakan present”

Virtools for Dummies

“Jim Kiggens giving a tech intro to 3DVIA Virtools“

Jim Kiggens, director of the Serious Game Design Institute at Santa Barbara City College, gave a fantastic tech introduction to using 3DVIA Virtools for game development. He and his students currently use 3DVIA Virtools to learn the technology behind making games.

For an artist, non-programmer, type (like myself), this lecture was very helpful. I especially enjoyed the discussion on how to make a realistic water shader using animated textures. Thank you Mr. Kiggens!

New Booth Design

If you’ve looked at 3DVIA.com in the past couple of weeks, my bet is you’ve seen at least one (sarcasm alert) render of our new tradeshow booth. It’s in banner ads all over the site, featured on our “3DVIA at GDC 09” page and even posted as a model so our community can visit it virtually. If you’re thinking we’re obsessed with this booth…you’re right.

The new booth debuted at GDC (I’m talking the real thing, not the model), and it was very well received. One GDC attendee even sent us an e-mail after the show commenting, “Your company rocks! You probably had one of the funnest and most interactive booths at GDC this year.” Thanks buddy!

OK. I’m done talking about the booth now…maybe. Check out the pics below.

“That’s one nice booth!”

“And from the other side”

The 3DVIA GDC Team

Here’s a picture of the 3DVIA team that staffed the booth at GDC.

“Team 3DVIA GDC”

Back Row (left to right): Pierre Emmanuel Chaut, Virgile Delporte, Arnaud Muthelet, Martin St. Germain, Romain Sididris, Derek Lane, Yours Truly
Front Row (left to right): Cyril Cohen, Gerald Nacache, Juan del Rio, Christine Moses

“A more casual shot”

Special shout out to David Laubner who took both photos!

Again, thank you to everyone who came to the show and visited us and thank you to everyone who visited us online!

Those of you who went to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and stopped by the 3DVIA booth may have seen us demo a game called Subsurface. Many of you played this game (three players won a Wii) and asked whether there were plans to post a playable version online. After hearing the overwhelming requests for a playable online version, we decided it was a must.

As of this week, you can now play Subsurface online.

UPDATE: Our servers are temporarily offline, which means Subsurface is also temporarily offline. We’re working out the kinks right now and should be back up and running soon. My appologies to those who have tried to play and got error messages. I will post an update as soon as we’re back in business. 

For those of you who weren’t at show, but want to learn about Subsurface, don’t feel left out! The next couple of paragraphs in this post are devoted to summarizing the game and its importance to 3DVIA. If you want even more details, you can always visit the official Subsurface website.

The Story Behind the Game

Subsurface is the first game built on 3DVIA Virtools 5, the latest version of our game engine devoted to rapid prototyping and game development. Designed with the idea of drastically decreasing development time without sacrificing quality in mind, we put 3DVIA Virtools 5 to the test with the development of Subsurface. We collaborated with long time 3DVIA Virtools partner Little Chicken Game Company and gave them what would normally be seen as an impossible challenge: develop a game in 60 days with 6 people that’s not only engaging, but serves as a learning tool for other 3D application developers. The result was Subsurface.

The Subsurface Narrative and Gameplay

The year is 2041 and the world is in peril. With our natural resources nearly depleted, world powers are frantic to find new forms of energy. In the midst of this tension, a deep sea species capable of generating massive amounts of inexhaustible energy, known as the “Glowspheres,” is been discovered. Theoretically, this unharnessed power could be used to solve the world’s energy crisis or, if discovered by the wrong people, could generate a weapon far greater than any ever before conceived.

You are Dr. Valerie Toulè, a marine biologist specializing in deep sea ecosystems and aquatic species. The G20 has brought you back from sabbatical to investigate and retrieve the Glowspheres before Ian McClusky, the world’s most wanted narco-terrorist, uses them for evil purposes.

Enjoy!

GDC 2009 is Now History! We had an excellent show and thank you for taking the time to watch 3DVIA live. You can catch many of the pictures from the show on Flickr.

Not going to GDC? 
Check out the daily blog post here, our live booth video or you can follow us live on Twitter!

Check out the interactive 3D render of our spiffy new trade show booth!  Click the "Play 3D" button.

See you at the show!

Baking Textures

One way to do it is to fake it, by “baking” the high poly information into a texture and then using that texture on the material of the model. Baking is the process by which render information is transferred to an image file like a jpeg or targa format. To achieve the quality of models you see today in games like Gears of War, Crysis, and Unreal Tournament III each character model has a high polygon and a low polygon version. The high polygon version is used to bake all the detailed information into images, used in the textures of the low polygon version or game model. A combination of renders, including: Normal, Occlusion, Specularity, Diffuse, Bump, Displacement, Glow, and Reflection maps are created from renderings of the high poly model. When used on the game model, they reproducing all that super detail at a fraction of the processing cost to the game engine.

This is done for every object, from a massive space monster to the toilet in the dungeon. The end result is one really beautiful game, with really simple, low poly models, pretending to be super high detailed models. Many of the house models on 3DVIA follow this example, texture over geometry.

Level Of Detail Models

One other way to achieve a smooth 30 frames per second is to use Level Of Detail Models. Have you ever seen objects in a game that look fuzzy from far away but as you get closer they look better and better. This is done by swapping models at certain distances. For example, you have a dwarf that is 2000 polygons, up close and up to 5 ft away he looks great! 10ft away he’s now 1000 polygons and he’s looking ok. 20ft away and he looks like a bop up inflatable punching bag at 500 or less polygons. The texture sizes also decrease per model so that the furthest away the model is, the less resources it uses to be displayed. This is used most often in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In order to give the player a rich experience they give the area around him all the attention, and anything further away from the player gets less resources.

I’ve had to make a few LOD models in the past and its painful to take a beautiful 2500 model down to a 100 or less LOD model. But in game you really don’t get to see the 500 polygon model as its always the size of a peanut on screen, and as you get closer to inspect the bop up doll, it magically turns into this awesome crazy dwarf!!

-Juan