cgCoach Blog

To create a spectacular conclusion for "Gears of War 3," Epic Games extended its creative pipeline with middleware and creative tools from Autodesk. Epic integrated Autodesk Scaleform with Unreal Engine 3 to deliver a tour de force UI that features highly polished gameplay with expanded multiplayer modes and the longest story campaign of Epic's games to date.

Beyond UI, Autodesk Digital Entertainment Creation tools were at the foundation of Epic's art creation pipeline for "Gears of War 3." The concluding title presented formidable new challenges for the Epic Games team, with twice as many cinematics as "Gears of War 2," and required the studio to rig 27 faces. Artists created and textured models in Autodesk 3ds Max software, and animated in Autodesk MotionBuilder and Autodesk Maya software. The Maya scripting tools enabled Epic to write a custom auto-rig to help boost efficiency.

Autodesk FBX was used to import assets into Unreal Engine 3, as well as to share files between MotionBuilder, 3ds Max and Maya software. "We used to use a proprietary format to import content into the engine, but with FBX we have a centralized format to get all skeleton meshes, animations, targets -- the whole works -- easily into the editor," said Ernst. "It's a great bridge that enables artists to use whichever program they're most comfortable using."

Crytek has officially released its DirectX 11 update to Crysis 2. This now means gamers get tessellation, high dynamic range motion blur, improved water rendering, HDR post-processing, particle shadows and more. Basically, the changes take an already attractive game and make it look even more stunning. Honestly, I still can't believe the level of complexity that gamers get real-time these days... makes me feel old thinking about all the hours playing Duke Nukem 3D.