Chapter 440 438. How did this be done?

The word hardcore is the Chinese translation of the English word "hardcore". In fact, it has been available for a long time. In the 1990s, the most cruel style in punk rock was derived, and various nuclear music were later derived.

Now that the Internet is becoming more and more developed, and with the popularity of a group of rappers, the corresponding culture has been successfully brought to life. The word "hard core" has been spread many years earlier than in previous lives.

Later it was extended to mean "things that are aimed at the core audience, with certain difficulties and thresholds for appreciation."

In recent years, its meaning has been further extended. People often use "hard core" to describe it as "very powerful", "very tough" and "very tough".

Such as "hard core regulations", "hard core mother", "hard core player", "hard core life", etc.

In early 2007, the hit of the movie "The Wandering Earth" triggered a discussion of "hard core science fiction", and the popularity of "hard core" further increased.

So the word hardcore is no longer a new word in this world. Now the company's staff have seen the entire aerial transformation animation of "Mecha Girl". The girl in the mecha transformed into a mecha and put the male protagonist into her body. This operation made countless people at the scene call it too hardcore.

"It's so awesome, right? What happened just now? I didn't have time to see clearly."

"Yes, what did I see? I used to think that the gun girl has become a very powerful person. Now, when you compare it, you will find that the gun girl is simply a scumbag."

"My God, I've seen it clearly, but this effect is too strong, right? I really scared me."

"Awesome, how did this performance in "Mecha Girl" be done?"

"Our company's technology is too awesome, right? This effect is simply explosive. I already thought that the gun girl was the ultimate real-time calculation in the game, but I didn't expect that there is still a mecha girl now."

"This effect is really amazing. I don't know if it's a good technical team or an excellent art team, or both? But apart from admiring it, I really don't know what to say."

"Is this really a game that our company can make? It feels like watching a movie."

"That's right, I thought I was watching the Heart-Changing King Kong movie just now."

Transformers was released in 2007 because the Autobot variants are so cool that they leave a very profound impression on everyone.

Now the mecha girl can make the same feeling. It is no longer just a few simple animation sequences of the girl's guns when she was a gun girl. You can clearly see that after the girl's metalization, the whole body is transformed. The parts inside are spread outwards, forming a mecha shape in the air. Moreover, the mecha also cooperates with the male protagonist, puts his body in, and seals it perfectly. From the appearance, it is a very smooth game effect comparable to a science fiction blockbuster like Transformers.

But everyone on the scene knew that this was almost impossible.

"This should be a fixed animation, right? Otherwise, if you calculate it in real time in the game, the difficulty will be too high." A programmer who made a client sighed.

The entire transformation process of the Mecha Girl is too fine. Thinking about watching a Transformers movie, it will take several days to render it with a fixed shot to achieve such a good effect. Although the mecha Girl now has a fineness and number of faces not as high as the Transformers, the effect is already very impressive.

You should know that in the game, the more complex the polyhedron and complex game models, the more difficult it is to make a factual animation.

So many times, in the game, you will cut a recorded CG. If you do this, it is actually equivalent to playing a small video clip in the game.

In fact, this CG has been rendered before and does not need to be rendered in real time in the game, otherwise it will be too much for the machine.

But now when everyone is watching it, they haven't noticed the appearance of CG animation.

Because making CG has the advantage of relatively small performance overhead when calling, you only need to play in the game, and the problems that can be brought about are also obvious.

The feeling of splitting is very serious.

In many island countries' two-dimensional games, the method of CG insertion is widely used. However, in this case, because it is a dead thing and cannot be integrated with the scenes in the game, many CGs have very fixed lens languages. During the CG playback, you cannot control the characters you control.

The most classic is the Robot Wars series. As long as the robot attacks, there will be an obvious screen-cutting, and the robot will play the corresponding shooting animation.

In the Final Fantasy series, CG usually appears in the game's cutscenes to explain the current plot.

You will clearly realize that, oh, it is no longer a real-time process in the game.

But the demonstration of this mecha girl in the mecha girl game is definitely not the case, because the mecha girl’s transformation is the same as that of the gun girl. You can change it while moving. Although the process is relatively short, the background behind it is constantly changing. From this point of view, it is hard to say that it is done through CG.

"It doesn't look very similar. If it's a CG animation, there's no reason to blend with the scene so well, right? I think Han Wei could have transformed and moved the position of the male protagonist just now."

"But you must not tell me that this is a real-time calculation in the game. If this is really done with a real-time effect, won't the machine be stuck?"

"Maybe it will really get stuck. Now the best graphics card on the market can't be carried, right?"

"But, if that's not the case, how did they do it?"

Yes, how did it do it?

...

Hearing everyone's comments, Han Wei, the main planner of the Mecha Girl, was so happy.

This feeling is like the child you gave birth to is praised by others for being smart and beautiful.

As a parent, Han Wei's complacent feeling was beyond words.

The key is that the effect of the mecha girl is indeed crushing enough, so Han Wei is full of pride in the game he makes.

In fact, the Mecha Girls team has accumulated a lot of production experience in "Gun Girl". This time when I was a Mecha Girl, the corresponding variant animation was taken into account in the early stage.

When people were working as gun girls, they were very troubled. On the one hand, it was because Boss Cao had high requirements, which made it difficult to develop. Moreover, the hardware level at that time was really different from that now.

Three years have passed, and according to Moore's Law, the hardware level alone can be improved by 8 times. If the mecha girl did not achieve a better effect than the gun girl this time, it would be too embarrassing.

Before the Transformers were not released, Cao Yang had already implemented the idea of ​​the gun girl. Now the Transformers have been released, which is enough to give the art and program team a very vivid reference example.

When Cao Yang said he wanted to make the girl in the mecha feel like a Transformer, the program and the artists were all over the head.

In the game, the entire mecha girl team discussed the variations of the mecha girl for a long time, and finally used two production methods to achieve this process.

One is to make it through skeleton animation.

Although it seems that the animation process of the girl transforming into a mecha in the game is very fragmented, especially similar to the parts in the Transformers flying out, disassembly and then splicing them into a complete mecha according to the scattered parts, giving you the illusion that it must be very difficult to make.

In fact, the accuracy of the mecha model is far less than that of the Heart-Changing King Kong, and many parts are relatively regular. The final model looks very shattered, but in fact it is because the model's map is relatively shattered, and the effect displayed is like a very advanced mecha image.

However, the number of faces of these game models is not that high, and you can see this from the outer contour. Generally speaking, the mecha models are large and more large, and the general rules are that only some small places will be made more refined.

During the transformation process, the girl model and the mecha girl model are two completely different things. Before the transformation, a special effect was made to replace it. It seemed that a model had changed, but in fact it had become a metalized model in the middle.

Later, the artists split the metal model and bound the skeleton animation to make the transformation process through skeleton animation.

Overall, the difficulty is not very high, but the artists spend a lot of time, and it took a long time to debug it before it could appear in this effect.

However, even so, the performance requirements for the game are still high in the performance of the skeleton animation. If it is a better graphics card or CPU computer now, it will run smoothly, but it will be stuck on low-end machines. So the programs later thought of another method.

That is to do screen layering in the game.

Screen layering is actually nothing new. The layering mentioned here is actually superimposing two video playback windows together.

In other words, when players are playing the game, they see one picture, and actually two pictures are superimposed.

The girl’s transformation window plays the transformed animation made by art classmates, that is, video files, and not in-game animations that are calculated in real time.

This can still achieve good performance on low-end machines.

The reason why no one can see the flaw is mainly because in the window where the animation is played, the entire background is transparent, and only the girlish variation outside can be seen.

PS, flash animation production software is based on this principle.

If you find a folder outside that Mecha Girl is specially used to store video files, you will see a video window with a completely transparent base plate.

This technology has been available a long time ago, but art classmates have used some clever ideas.

Among the mecha girls, it is actually the central perspective.

The so-called central perspective means that the center of the model of the mecha is the center of your entire game window. This can ensure that when playing this video, the character will not be misleading because of the stranger place.

In addition, several fixed shots are mainly used in the game, so they can be displayed through the combination of video and game scenes.

The videos are used on the low-end machine, while the high-end machine is a real-time effect in the game, which meets the needs of different players in two different ways, but the experiences that everyone gets after playing are relatively similar.

Unless you study it carefully, it will be difficult to find the difference between the two.

As the main planner, Han Wei actually didn't know much about art and program content, but just described it based on his own understanding.

After Han Wei explained, everyone at the scene felt a sudden realization.

"Wow, so that's it. It turns out that human wisdom is endless."

"It's also considered that the "Mecha Girl" team is amazing. I can come up with two different solutions like this, and the effect is really good. If it were me, I wouldn't know where to start."

"Yes, otherwise they would be one of our company's top production teams."

"Hey, I'm so envious. The mecha girl really combines science fiction and girl love so perfectly."

"Yes, now I see this here, I want to get started and have fun."

"Hahaha, do you want to play girls or mechas?"

"Of course...the two are together. Is there any difference?"

"Ha ha ha ha……"

...

With Han Wei's demonstration, the atmosphere on the scene became more and more lively.

Although the mecha girl has a lot in common with the gun girl, the difference is even greater.

In the game, the mecha girl can not only shoot and close combat in the form of mecha, but also have many levels that are played in barrage games.

The mecha girl has two types of human form and fighter form. When she transforms into a human form, she is a 3D shooting game. When she transforms into a fighter form, she is a barrage shooting game.

So Mecha Girl is a combination of shooting action games and barrage shooting games.

Although both barrage shooting games and shooting games have the word "shooting", the difference in experience is quite big.

Shooting games require you to know how to use cover and turn the camera to aim at the opponent for shooting. Barrage games do not require special aiming. The most important thing is to avoid the opponent's bullets and hit the enemy through your own ballistics.
To be continued...