Capturing the Look of Star Wars: The Old Republic
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The overarching goal of the art for Star Wars: The Old Republic is to bring concept art paintings to life in 3D. This goal has led the artists to forego the use of photographs for surface textures in favor of hand-painting every asset. The concept art also drove the game art to match its heroic and idealized proportions of the characters and environments. Part of remaining true to the classic big screen vision of Star Warsâ„¢ is not only to look like it, but also to ensure that the art feels like it on the small screen. There is a fine line to follow in being true to the realistic expectations that we inherit from the movies while making style choices that will play well on the computer screen. This distillation of the Star Wars vision through a painters eye and a fan's heart forms the core of the visual direction of the game.
The stylized realism approach has many advantages. For instance, Star Wars: The Old Republic will have a unique and instantly recognizable appearance which will continue to look great as it ages. Being on the bleeding edge graphically is a lot of fun for artists, but as that edge moves forward, games that were once living at that frontier of graphics tend to look dated as technology improves. We want to achieve visuals that look great at the lower-end computers, knowing that if they look great there, they will look great on all machines, both now and in the future.
One of the visual style choices made for Star Wars: The Old Republic is a modeling technique we refer to as the (crease). The crease can be described as the lines you would make when drawing a character in ink. Each line creates and defines the shape of a surface and is often seen in modern industrial design. It helps define surfaces and works very well with the in-game lighting.
