Chad Hoynacki — Art Leadership and Management

Javelin was intended to take the success of such Wargaming IPs as World of Tanks and World of Warships, and bring those game mechanics into a near future sci-fi environment. Vehicle types ranged from futuristic tanks and helicopters, to mechs and robot drones.

Although I was brought onto the project as the Outsource Manager, with a focus on environment art, I was quickly moved into the Vehicle Art Manager/Lead role. I did still maintain many of my Outsource Manager duties as I helped to setup the production and organize external vendor pipelines.

In this role I oversaw all aspects of the vehicle creation, from concept to textured 3D assets, before handing off content to the next department in the pipeline. The vehicle classes and types were consistently evolving with gameplay advances and requirements, so the vehicle concepts and vehicle mechanics had to evolve as well.

Vehicle Progression

I was responsible for working alongside my Design counterpart in determining the vehicle progress and advances each tier would need. This was a constantly evolving process as new game features or play mechanic came online. These diagrams illustrates the vast number of concepts the team created to account for all tiers of gameplay across the different vehicle classes.

Vehicle Renders

Due to a number of features still in development at the time of our Greenlight presentation, renders of the 3D vehicles assets created by the art team were composited into concept environments.

Vehicle Hangar

With Environment Art resources at capacity, I took up the responsibility to create a stand-in front end environment. Working from concept I created a basic structure, that later expanded into many bays for the various vehicle classes. I also pushed for the addition of human characters within the environment, to cement a sense of scale. I worked with Animation and VFX departments to add additional motion elements.

Working with Engineering we developed a camera system that would rubber-band between the various vehicle bays. The Technical Art department and I was able to utilize several shader techniques to add motion and depth to specific materials. VFX, SFX and the Animation department assisted in adding additional elements.

Excalibur was intended to be the modern military cousin of World of Tanks.The goal was to create a product similar to WoT, but with the intent of greater appeal to the North American market.

The project went through many iterations with changing scope, leadership, design and gameplay styles. Through all that, I led the Vehicle Art Team and Character Art Team, maintaining a AAA level of quality. The team spent time researching the assets, even traveling overseas, to achieve the highest level of detail. We worked closely with our historical researchers and ex-military experts. PBR was implemented into the graphics engine and third party software solutions, such as Simplygon and Graphine, were integrated into the proprietary engine.

My duties included not only overseeing the artistic creation of the assets, but working closely with the Design department on the vehicle and character choices. I spent a lot of time with the Meta Design team planning out customization and player options. From that planning, I was able to work with Technical Art and Engineering to create the systems we would need for our asset creation and implementation.

Publishing Renders

After seeing a number of internal project announcements utilizing rough playtest footage or early prototype art, I took it upon myself to work with Publishing to provide a series of vehicle pieces. The vehicles were rendered in engine and composited into the visual template I created. An additional poster treatment, with emphasis on U.S. vs Russia, was requested and I referenced classic boxing promotional treatments to create the final result.

Vehicle Pipeline

Vehicle creation was a time consuming task requiring many departments, for upwards of 8 months to reach completion. That time includes a deep dive into asset research. To try and streamline the process, I implemented a WHITEBOX phase, whereas my team would create basic examples of each vehicle to hand to the next department and maintain the pipeline. This allowed for parallel production by other departments, while my team worked through to final quality assets. Due to the requirements of various departments, each WHITEBOX needed to account for the specific attributes of each vehicle.

Once the final quality asset was completed, the WHITEBOX asset could be replaced, and any minor adjustments made by the downstream departments, but the gameplay and other factor would be finalized in the interim.

Vehicle Customization

Vehicle customization was a large endeavour that required collaboration between many departments. Initially, I worked closely with the Meta Design department to determine how vehicles would customize. It was determined there would be two parts, Gameplay customization and Visual customization.

For Gameplay customization we researched real world military advances and used those wherever possible. This required our Research department to work closely with my artists as these assets were created. The Engineering, Tools and Vehicle Design departments collaborated with art on the most efficient pipeline for adding the content to the build.

For Visual customization, I worked closely with the Technical Art department to create the shading network required. Together we implemented a vehicle shader that allowed for a projected paint pass over the PBR materials, without requiring a 2nd UV channel. This allowed us to create a small, seamless texture and control its projection across the vehicle. We were able to slightly modify the shader to allow for unique paint projection, across multiple UV sets, required as vehicles were comprised of multiple pieces of separated geometry.

I took on the responsibility of documenting these features and the required pipeline, for both our internal artists and our external vendors.

Character Production

Although the concept of vehicle crew is nothing new to Wargaming, we knew early on that we wanted to have a three dimensional representation of crew with the vehicles. This would help ground the vehicles and give them the proper sense of scale and power.

My lead character artist worked with Technical Art to figure out a pipeline that would allow us to hit the same visual quality for characters, that we were achieving on vehicles and environments. After experimenting with Photogametry, and not satisfied with the results nor processing time, the team looked into laser scanning. After much trial and error, a pipeline was generated, where as a full crew member asset could be completed in 1 month. Facial processing was completed in 1 week, uniforms and accessories varied from 1 week to 2 weeks depending on the complexity.

Working with the Meta Design team, I pursued the concept of HEROES. These would be more unique characters, akin to G.I.JOE stereotypes, that players would acquire to improve their vehicles. The back stories of these characters, and the potential special event materials that could be created, became a great selling point to the Publishing and Marketing departments.

Vehicle Progression

Tank Progression Chart

Gunship Progression Chart

Mech Progression Chart

SPEC-OPS Progression Chart

Vehicle Renders

Vehicle Hangar

Publishing Renders

Vehicle Pipeline

Whitebox Vehicles

Final Quality Vehicle

Whitebox Vehicles

Final Quality Vehicle

Vehicle Customization

Customization Example

Seamless Paint Projection

Customization Example

Unique Paint Example

Character Production

Russian Juggernaut

U.S. Helicopter Pilot