Autodesk hails success of An Evening with Epic Games
9 August 2007 - Autodesk's recent series of evenings with Epic Games were attended by more than 500 people. Attendees at the events in London, Frankfurt and Warsaw were treated to an exclusive insight into Epic Games' current project Unreal Tournament 3 by character artist Chris Wells.
Chris talked through the entire character development process from concept to creation, using the male character Loque (30 million polygons) and the female character Akasha (9 million polygons) as examples. This included the concept phase, high and low polygon modelling, the modelling pipeline using Autodesk 3ds Max as the hub, rendering, animation and motion capture with Autodesk MotionBuilder, and tips on creating assets for next-generation games.
With more than eight years experience in the industry, Chris has been a character artist at Epic Games for two years, where he also worked on Gears of War. He previously worked at Ubisoft's Redstorm Entertainment and Ubisoft Paris on games such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and the Rainbow Six series.
Autodesk's senior games industry manager, Michel Kripalani, kicked off the events talking about industry trends and the increased complexity of next-generation game development. A veteran of the games industry, Michel founded Presto Studios in 1991, producing successful games such as The Journeyman Project series, Myst 3: Exile, and Whacked!
Autodesk's Maya application engineer Nick Jovic showed off the modelling capabilities of Maya nCloth, the first module of the Maya Nucleus framework launched in Autodesk Maya 8.5. He also showed how Insomniac Games used Maya nCloth and MEL scripting to animate the Chimera in the PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall of Man.
Autodesk's 3ds Max application engineer Jamie Gwilliam showed how the Autodesk 3ds Max 9 Productivity Booster was used by Volition for the Xbox 360 game Saints Row to animate destructible environments and add detail to the characters' clothing.
About Epic Games
Epic Games, Inc., based in Cary, NC and established in 1991, develops cutting-edge games and game engine technology for PC and consoles. The company has created multiple million-selling, award-winning titles in their Unreal series and their latest game, Gears of War, broke sales records on Xbox 360 selling more than 3 million copies worldwide in the first ten weeks and was awarded overall Game of the Year for 2006 by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, Game Developers Choice Awards, GameSpot, GamePro and many others.
Epic is also responsible for the Unreal Engine, which is the underlying technology for a wide range of games including: Console Game of the Year winner, "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" by Ubisoft; PC Gamer's Game of the Year, "Deus Ex" from Ion Storm/Eidos; "America's Army: Special Forces", by the United States Army, and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (PC) by Electronic Arts. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current holder, and three-time consecutive winner, of Game Developer magazine's Front Line award for Best Game Engine.
Epic Games was also awarded Studio of the Year at the 2006 Spike TV Video Game Awards and Developer of the Year by Official Xbox Magazine. Additional information about Epic can be obtained through Epic's Web site at http://www.epicgames.com.
-ends-
Contact: Kim Willsher or Raj Dehil, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, +44 (0) 20 7403 8878
Email: kimw@rlyl.co.uk or rajd@rlyl.co.uk