we want our technology to become essential
Gustavo Liévano, physics solver, Adam
that defined the look of the first part of the film. This was bolstered by a solution for tube lights and volumetric fog.
“One small tool we developed to quickly populate our exterior scene with detailed objects was a Spray brush, which uses Unity’s physics engine,” explains Clive. The outside terrain, for example, was created with a new system that enables highly detailed sculpted objects and textures.
Bespoke tools
The team decided to try a different approach to the one offered by Unity’s built-in Rates system, and decided to place some tools and shaders with two distinctly different features: ”All the tools we used for sculpting, painting and masking were heavily based on Stamps and Smart brushes, and Stamps can be created from anything from satellite data to rock geometry to colour and height images,” Clive explains. He also reveals that the terrain texture blending was based on text level displacement height, adding that an automatic tile displacement system was also used in order to prevent obvious repetition.
The main tool used on Adam was the Visual Sequencer, “which we call Storyteller,” says Clive, who let slip that this will be out in a forthcoming beta release of Unity. First used in Veselin’s cinematic demo The Blacksmith in 2015, Storyteller is a toolset that includes mixing, sequencing, mixing, previewing and playback of audio, animation and video clips. It’s a filmmaker’s box of tricks inside a game engine.
“We’ve always wanted to create the ability for game makers to bring their story to life, we’ve always seen that as a huge part of the game experience,” explains Clive. “Unity has been OK at doing that, but we’ve seen this as a need for us to develop a specific set of tools – so what you’re seeing is us delivering against the need with tools within Unity that can provide more advanced storytelling. The benefit is that over time those tools are going to be used by people who don’t make games to create non-linear stories.”
There’s a certain convergence starting to happen, explains Clive: “Studios are always looking to optimise their previz of the VFX components of their production, even before they get into optimising the production. Up until now, options from game engines have not really been there as their visual fidelity hasn’t been good enough. Really what you’re seeing now is the hardware at the top end of gaming allowing us to really spill over into cinematics and VFX.”
While the industry gears up to embrace real-time cinematics and interactive storytelling, is this technology a reality for small studios, individual artists and even hobbyists? For Clive, ensuring the technology behind Adam is accessible is a must – in fact the Adam assets will soon be made available for all Unity users to download and experiment with.
“We want to empower creativity for as many people on the planet as possible, that’s why we exist,” states Clive. “It has to be easy to use and we need to make it easier to use, as we need it to have a broader use for creators.”
Discover more about how the Adam short film was created on the developer blog, www.bit.ly/making-adam