Champions, Armor at Volume

2004–2005 Tech ArtPipeline

350+ armor pieces, two games, one artist. The pipelines are the reason that was possible.

Three Champions characters in full armor sets

Four entries · start at the overview, or jump anywhere

STEP 1 Champions, Armor at Volume 350+ armor pieces, and the pipelines that generated their variants STEP 2 Dark Abyss Customization, modular armor, and procedural ambient effects STEP 3 The Huntress One character: model, rig, shaders, deformation STEP 4 War in the North Severing, status-effect materials, and character lighting, shipped

01 · Problem

Champions of Norrath is an action role-playing game, so armor is the reward. Every race and gender needed cloth, leather, chain, and plate, at multiple tiers, each in several color variants, each with an inventory icon. Snowblind was a team of 15 people when I started. The volume was not going to be met by authoring every variation by hand.

02 · Champions of Norrath

I concepted, modeled, textured, rigged, and skinned 350+ armor pieces across the two Champions games, roughly two thirds of the armor in both. After the first few sets the Art Director let me take armor from concept through to the finished skinned model with textures, without an approval step in between.

Champions of Norrath plate armor on the wood elf male character

Champions of Norrath leather armor on the wood elf male character

Champions of Norrath chain armor on the wood elf male character

Champions of Norrath plate armor on the wood elf female character

Champions of Norrath leather armor on the wood elf female character

Champions of Norrath chain armor on the wood elf female character

Champions of Norrath plate armor on the human male character

Champions of Norrath leather armor on the human male character

Champions of Norrath chain armor on the human male character

Champions of Norrath plate armor on the human female character

Champions of Norrath chain armor on the human female character

Champions of Norrath plate armor on the dark elf male character

Champions of Norrath leather armor on the dark elf male character

Champions of Norrath chain armor on the dark elf male character

Champions of Norrath plate armor on the dark elf female character

Champions of Norrath leather armor on the dark elf female character

Champions of Norrath chain armor on the dark elf female character

Champions of Norrath cloth armor on the erudite male character, first variant

Champions of Norrath cloth armor on the erudite male character, second variant

Champions of Norrath cloth armor on the erudite male character, third variant

Champions of Norrath cloth armor on the erudite female character, first variant

Champions of Norrath cloth armor on the erudite female character, second variant

Champions of Norrath cloth armor on the erudite female character, third variant

1 / 23

03 · Champions: Return to Arms

The same job again on the sequel, with new races. The Iksar and Vah Shir sets are here.

Return to Arms plate armor on the Iksar male character

Return to Arms champion armor set on the Iksar male character

Return to Arms chain armor on the Iksar male character, marketing render

Return to Arms chain armor on the Iksar male character, second marketing render

Return to Arms plate armor on the Vah Shir male character

Return to Arms champion body armor on the dark elf male character

Return to Arms champion armor on the dark elf female character

Return to Arms cloth armor variants on the erudite male character

Return to Arms cloth armor variants on the erudite female character

1 / 9

04 · The pipelines behind the volume

The volume came from two pipelines I built rather than from working faster.

Grayscale to multicolor output. I authored one set in grayscale and the pipeline generated its color variants, so a tier did not require a new texture pass per color.

Item icon rendering. Inventory icons rendered from the assets themselves instead of being drawn separately, so an armor change could not leave a stale icon behind it.

I was later promoted to Character Art Lead and took over production of all player, enemy, and NPC characters, built the materials and artist-facing tools with the tools engineers, and set up world lighting with the Art Director and the Environment Art Lead.

05 · Credits

Concept, modeling, texturing, rigging, skinning on the armor shown; grayscale-to-multicolor output pipeline; item icon rendering pipelineMiles Germer

Textures on the Iksar armor with the protruding bonesAndrew Arcanti

Characters, animation, engine, world art, and the rest of both gamesThe team at Snowblind Studios

06 · AI's role

None. This work predates the tools by more than a decade.

07 · Result

Champions of Norrath shipped in 2004 and Champions: Return to Arms in 2005. The armor pipeline is the reason one artist could carry two thirds of the armor in both.

08 · What I learned

The pipelines mattered more than the sets. Any one armor set is a week. The grayscale output path is what made the next hundred sets possible, and building it early is the reason the schedule held.

This was my first real generation problem: author one thing well, then define the rules that turn it into a hundred. I have been solving that same problem ever since, and it is the problem an AI art pipeline puts in front of you on day one.

Four entries · start at the overview, or jump anywhere