Greetings warriors of Calradia!
Every single thing that you see when you look around in a 3D video game is a unique, painstakingly-modelled object. We are not talking only about the flashiest, most important things, such as warriors, weapons or impressive architecture: in order to be realistic, a 3D world needs to take care of its smallest details. 3D modellers do exactly that: they work like sculptors, giving shape to their imagination to create and populate the worlds we will “live” in when we play. In this week’s blog we talk with 3D modeller Ümit Singil, who takes care of such things – but being one of the most veteran members of the TaleWorlds team, he has a history of doing a good number of different tasks for the Mount & Blade games.
NAME
Ümit Singil
FROM
İzmir, Turkey
JOINED TALEWORLDS
2008
EDUCATION
Animation
OFFICIAL JOB DESCRIPTION
Animator, 3D Modeller, Translator, Web Design, Morale Officer
WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
“I have been involved in a number projects and had many different responsibilities during my time at TaleWorlds, so my daily routine has varied quite a lot over the years. We were a small team in the beginning, so everyone pretty much had to do a bit of everything. I worked on animations for the first Mount & Blade and designed the previous TaleWorlds.com site. I helped out with the Turkish translation for all of the titles (up to and including Napoleonic Wars) and I checked the string tags for the French and Japanese versions to see if they were implemented correctly. I handled the support mail of TaleWorlds for some time and I was responsible for processing Mount & Blade: Warband Beta applicants (and made some great friends during that period!).
Currently, I am responsible for the architectural and prop modelling tasks for the Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord campaign map. I get a great deal of satisfaction from being able to make my contribution to bringing Calradia to life!
When I am asked about the differences between Bannerlord and Warband, I say that Bannerlord is bigger, better, stronger and faster in every way. The rural areas look gorgeous, with vast grassy plains, lush forests and majestic mountains. Cities are full of life and have beautiful authentic architecture. And the combat... THE COMBAT! Charging downhill into enemy lines with a couple of hundred of your fellow cavalrymen is a uniquely invigorating experience.”
WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
“I really enjoy the depth of the game world, where everything (be it riches or troubles) is plenty! I love how I can influence so many things and get an immediate reaction within the game.”
WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
“We set out to create a game that was closer to the "ultimate game" in ours and our players' heads. We knew to achieve our goal we had to rewrite and improve the game engine greatly. The work on the engine and art asset creation have been going on simultaneously and that has meant that sometimes we need to go back and retouch the assets that we have previously created in order for them to work with the newly added features and functions. This particular challenge didn't need to be “solved”, but it was still a challenge nonetheless.”
WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“I am currently working on the settlement models for the campaign map which represent villages, castles, towns, etc. I mostly use existing scene object models for reference to create the polygon friendly map models.”
WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
“The Empire. The Byzantine empire, which our empire takes its inspiration from, is a hugely underrated empire!”
WHAT IS THE POLY COUNT FOR WEAPONS?
“The models for both weapons and armour vary a lot, since they come with several pieces. Polygon count for an armour set is usually between 8000-12000 triangles.
In the case of weapons (which are created in multiple parts so that they are compatible with our new weapon crafting system) I will use a sword as an example:
Blade: 120-1302
Guard: 320-1396
Handle: 96-928
Pommel: 144-1244"
CAN WE ADD PARTICLE EFFECTS TO MODELS/WEAPONS?
"Yes, you can! You will be able to add particles to pretty much every entity in the game. However, adding dynamic lighting to your fiery sword could be slightly taxing on system resources."
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