MARCH 11, 2004
The Omega Stone
The making of the game
Universal Head and Cinema4D help solve the mystery of the Omega Stone.
Over the course of 2002 Peter Gifford, principal of the Sydney design firm Universal Head, used Cinema4D to create realistic 3D environments for the epic adventure game The Omega Stone.
Sequel to the best selling Riddle of the Sphinx, The Omega Stone features beautiful pre-rendered visuals in the tradition of worldwide hits Myst and Riven. The player explores archaeological sites throughout the world—including Chichen Itza, Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Devil’s Triangle, the Sphinx and finally Atlantis—discovering hidden locations and solving puzzles in an attempt to avert a long-prophesied apocalypse.
It began in November of 2001 when Jeff and Karen Tobler of Omni Adventures, based in St Louis, Missouri USA, saw Peter’s work on his website The World of Tékumel and asked him to play a key role in creating the sequel to their first game, Riddle of the Sphinx. ROTS had been a bestseller in the adventure game genre, but the sequel was to be bigger and better. One of the most important tasks, after purchasing new equipment and hiring staff, was choosing the 3D software. After testing other packages such as Lightwave, Cinema4D’s fast, beautiful renderings and proven stability tipped the scales.
A trip to Mexico
Peter’s main task was to recreate Chichen Itza (and design and create some extensive ‘imaginary’ areas as well). He was first flown to Mexico for a research trip and to meet his clients. At the site they took thousands of digital photos and hours of video, even witnessing the appearance of the ‘sun serpent’ down the side of the pyramid—which happens only twice a year at the equinoxes.
Rebuilding Chichen Itza
Peter returned to his Sydney studio and began the challenging task of recreating the huge site in scale, constantly referring to his photographs and research. At the same time he had to learn C4D from scratch, but despite its depth the program’s workflow proved clear and easy to understand. Peter used the entire C4D toolbox, but often relied on lofted splines to make basic shapes. Repeating elements like the 365 stairs that lead to the pyramid’s top were created using the Duplicate and Instancing tools. C4D’s Boolean tools made the structures appear as ruined as they are in reality. In some cases, especially for organic shapes, Peter created objects from scratch, polygon by polygon, and then placed the object in a HyperNURBS cage to smooth out the mesh. Throughout, the Object Manager was used to group and organise the huge models efficently.
When texturing, Peter used his hundreds of photographs of the actual textures from the site. After modifying and making them ‘tileable’ in Photoshop, these were mapped onto the models. (A few of these textures are available for download from this site.) He used the Bodypaint module to paint textures onto organic shapes in real time. Often textures were layered, as when a procedural texture of ‘stone grit’ was placed on a wall in order to make it more realistic from close up.
As he worked Peter placed numerous cameras so the environments could be quickly checked and test renders made from all angles. Lighting setups were next. For the outdoor environments a plugin called SkyShader was used in combination with a complex sun and shadows setup. The underground areas originally used a set of volumetric lights to give the illusion the player was carrying a lantern, but this approach was eventually abandoned in favour of carefully composed feature lighting.
Peter worked on a Apple Mac Dual 1Ghz with 1Gb RAM and OSX, and C4D remained responsive and stable throughout the project. By the time he was finished a year later, Peter had created the site of Chichen Itza, an extensive underground area beneath it including flooded caverns and kilometres of corridors and chambers, and large areas of the Easter island section of the game as well.
Putting the game together
Once the environments were finished Peter used a plugin programmed by his client in the C4D language C.O.F.F.E.E. to render six views from each ‘null’ placed in the environment. These views were then uploaded to Omni, where programmers put them into the game engine. The final game allows the player to look around at a full 360 degrees from every location.
The Omega Stone, by Omni Adventures and distributed by DreamCatcher, is now available for PC and shortly for MacOSX. For more information visit www.theomegastone.com.
Feature Gallery
Click on thumbnail for larger images
Universal Head, located in Sydney Australia, is a small, creative design firm that blends traditional design craftsmanship, the latest graphics technology and a strong understanding of visual communications. Since 1994 Universal Head has created work in the fields of print, motion, web and 3D design for clients as diverse as Telstra, the Australian Tourist Commission, Australia Post, major Australian television networks and international games distributors Ubisoft and Dreamcatcher. For more information visit www.universalhead.com or call Peter Gifford on (02) 9517 1466.
A modified form of this article originally appeared in Digital Media World magazine.
