Thursday, June 14, 2007
My Portfolio
I had kept daily works using my in-house web site when I was in Namco. This demo reel was made by images on the web site and was made by Windows Movie Maker. The music is "BLUE BACK" performed by Grapevine, a Japanese Rock Band. (3:37)
You can watch the same reel on Youtube as well.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
09 I Need English: Farewell, Namco
After I managed to start up new Tales project, I asked my boss to go to Siggraph 2004. At that time, I could see not only conferences of Siggraph 2004 but also participate in a Dreamworks Studio tour held by Hewlett Packard that Namco was one of their customers. Also, I could visit Rhythm and Hues Studio that is one of Namco’s affiliated companies. In Dreamworks Studio, we participants could look around their plant, meet with some creators who worked for Dreamworks and see demos of their original tools, see demo trailers, such as ’Madagascar’, and also talk with a manager having lunch. In Rhythm and Hues Tour, we could visit the studio, see the company’s demo reels, and talked with creators from Japan. Every year after Siggraph, we have in-house presentation. Same as the last year, I first reported some lectures about NPR and my thinking outlook for NPR. I then talked about U.S. software development environment formed from my experiences of a Disney’s lecture in Siggraph and my Studio tours. The experiences in the U.S. was very exciting. “Someday I want to go to the United States.”
Afterwards, I was asked from my boss to do a guest speaker at KGDC (Korea Game Developers Conference ) 2004 held in Seoul, Korea. As I thought it was good for me, I accepted that offer, and I wrote about my nine years experience in Namco as the theme of my speech. That became the basis of this “Motivation for Next-Generation Graphics”. After the conference I was able to have opportunities to see creators who were not only from Korea but also from Europe or U.S. Of course our communication language was English; however, I could not speak English and even listen them as well, so I was just sitting next to Mr. Shin, president of IGDA (International Game Developers Association) Japan, and he interpreted for me his conversation with creators. I could not do anything although I wanted to talk lots of things about game or computer graphics with them. That was the same feeling as what I felt in the U.S. Siggraph tours (2003 and 04).
I had been thinking that we needed to have more communication with foreign creators, but the idea had been still vague. However, by meeting with foreign creators I personally felt the necessity. And finally I decide to come to the United States. The company allowed me to take absence for six months, but I did not think I could master English so I gave up my career. Before quitting Namco, I tried to do new things, such as web designing and played part in an amusement machine game. And I bade farewell to my nine years in Namco.
Afterwards, I was asked from my boss to do a guest speaker at KGDC (Korea Game Developers Conference ) 2004 held in Seoul, Korea. As I thought it was good for me, I accepted that offer, and I wrote about my nine years experience in Namco as the theme of my speech. That became the basis of this “Motivation for Next-Generation Graphics”. After the conference I was able to have opportunities to see creators who were not only from Korea but also from Europe or U.S. Of course our communication language was English; however, I could not speak English and even listen them as well, so I was just sitting next to Mr. Shin, president of IGDA (International Game Developers Association) Japan, and he interpreted for me his conversation with creators. I could not do anything although I wanted to talk lots of things about game or computer graphics with them. That was the same feeling as what I felt in the U.S. Siggraph tours (2003 and 04).
I had been thinking that we needed to have more communication with foreign creators, but the idea had been still vague. However, by meeting with foreign creators I personally felt the necessity. And finally I decide to come to the United States. The company allowed me to take absence for six months, but I did not think I could master English so I gave up my career. Before quitting Namco, I tried to do new things, such as web designing and played part in an amusement machine game. And I bade farewell to my nine years in Namco.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
08 Challenge NPR Again: The Importance of Writing
I played a part in ‘Tales of Legendia’. (2003-2004)
Keywords: NPR approach by technique, NPR approach from process, “color shadow”,
I was engaged in the establishment of its graphic representation for over a year as a chief designer. As I produced visual works, I was the best person who knew what kind of stuff the project needed, so I also assigned visual members, interviewed future part time stuff, contacted with out-sourcing companies, made schedules, and wrote a lot of documents.
First, I wanted to have a reality in ‘Tales of Legendia’ world so focused on the representation of the light (shading). We cannot see everything without the light in the real world; that is to say, the simulation of the light produces the reality in the world. I tried to make use of it. Then, using ‘Final Gathering (FG)’ and ‘Global Illumination (GI)’ renderings which can simulate the real shading, the real light was simulated, and using ‘RenderMap’, the simulated shading information was burned onto the background models’ textures (real-time renderings of FG’s and GI’s are too heavy to calculate), the light of the Tales World was represented. However, one of the attractions of Tales series is anime-like fantasy world; therefore, I really took care of adding colors to the lights and their layout on screen like artists put colors on their campuses. Also, I selected NPR approach of techniques for background graphics; it was texturing on the background images. At first, I tried several filterings of Photoshop and made up the idea of image, I then asked programmers the way of representation to realize it. By these processes, I think I could represent the reality and not “CG-ish” mild and soft graphics to the Tales World.
For the characters, I also used RenderMap and FG to represent the reality. However, a problem came about; characters' shades got dirty.
Here, I want you to imagine that you are drawing an illustration. First, you draw a draft for the illustration, and put colors for each object. And next, you will come to the stage where you try to put each shade color on each painted objects (I will omit talking about light colors). Then you would make darker colors adding black to each painted colors. Probably this is logically right; you can demonstrate by the color of the sky which gradually gets darker with the sun set, and finally it gets black.
Then, which color will you pick up when you make the shade color of yellow? If you mix black with yellow, the color will be dirty. Some of you might say it is not dirty. Then you are a designer and asked by a company for their company logo whose corporate color is yellow. Will you still use the darken yellow for the company logo? Maybe not. Because being dirty associates a negative image to the company. Thus, I will put red for yellow to avoid a dirty image. I assure that nobody says the orange-like yellow is dirty because I did not kill the attraction of yellow which is high saturation. Red is darker than yellow but still has high saturation so red can keep the yellow's attraction making yellow darker. For darker (low saturation) colors like green, blue, or purple, black works as shade color not making them look dirty; however, for vivid colors putting black shade tends to let them have dirtier images. How about Anime? You will notice that most Anime’s characters' faces do not use black shades on them. This is one of the techniques to draw the characters' attractions, and I tried to use it for our characters. This is another NPR approach utilizing how people understand colors.
One of the merits of RenderMap is automatic shadings so if I used the second NPR method, we would have to draw shadings manually. I knew it would take time, cost, and be hard to control the quality of the stuff from the experience of Seven Project. Therefore, I wanted to make the tool to do the work.
I liked FG's representation then I sought the way to composite its shadings with characters' textures. I looked up many illustration books or web sites and sought the relationship between a base color and its shading color one by one. Of course it was too complicated for me to deal with. Then I started again from the beginnings, and then tried to check the characteristics of the human's visual organ. And I figured out that human's eyes are more sensitive to the change of brightness than the change of hue or saturation; therefore, if you lightly mixed black shade with a base color, your eyes would feel sudden color change. Then I used a numerical formula for composite. And the result was near to my ideal image. Then I made an action, was a Photoshop macro, having the same algorithm. After confirming the composite action is working good, I asked a technical programmer, who mainly make designer's tools, to make a Maya plug-in, named “Color Shadow”, which made us to get easy outcome with a button.
I successfully complete what I wanted to create as a Tales graphics; however, it was very difficult for me and took us time to tell my image to other members. Representation methods that I created in the project were what we had never used before at least in the company. Most project members did not have enough experience in making games, further, the producer and the director had no experience of in-house project. So ‘sharing’ was the most important matter for the project. Thus, I had to persuade not only visual designers but also planners or programmers of what I wanted to do in the project. I wrote a lot of documents in which I explained the members, "Why is this representation necessary for the project?" "What are the merits of the representation?"
"Sharing image" is the most important thing for a project. The written documents were even for me effective because I could objectively confirm what I wanted to do by myself. Nowadays, a project is mostly divided into each occupation section. And each member has his or her professional; however contrary to this, each member does not have enough knowledge of the other occupations. Of course doing one's best in her or his section is the most important thing and we are all more or less job experiences and basic knowledge of the other occupations. However, each professional section's creativities sometimes will be beyond the boundary of others'. It is essential for group work to reach a goal together. So trying to tell is more important than do one's own best to his or her own work. Writing documents also means keeping records, the documents then will live as the project's knowledge, know-how.
Keywords: NPR approach by technique, NPR approach from process, “color shadow”,
I was engaged in the establishment of its graphic representation for over a year as a chief designer. As I produced visual works, I was the best person who knew what kind of stuff the project needed, so I also assigned visual members, interviewed future part time stuff, contacted with out-sourcing companies, made schedules, and wrote a lot of documents.
First, I wanted to have a reality in ‘Tales of Legendia’ world so focused on the representation of the light (shading). We cannot see everything without the light in the real world; that is to say, the simulation of the light produces the reality in the world. I tried to make use of it. Then, using ‘Final Gathering (FG)’ and ‘Global Illumination (GI)’ renderings which can simulate the real shading, the real light was simulated, and using ‘RenderMap’, the simulated shading information was burned onto the background models’ textures (real-time renderings of FG’s and GI’s are too heavy to calculate), the light of the Tales World was represented. However, one of the attractions of Tales series is anime-like fantasy world; therefore, I really took care of adding colors to the lights and their layout on screen like artists put colors on their campuses. Also, I selected NPR approach of techniques for background graphics; it was texturing on the background images. At first, I tried several filterings of Photoshop and made up the idea of image, I then asked programmers the way of representation to realize it. By these processes, I think I could represent the reality and not “CG-ish” mild and soft graphics to the Tales World.
For the characters, I also used RenderMap and FG to represent the reality. However, a problem came about; characters' shades got dirty.
Here, I want you to imagine that you are drawing an illustration. First, you draw a draft for the illustration, and put colors for each object. And next, you will come to the stage where you try to put each shade color on each painted objects (I will omit talking about light colors). Then you would make darker colors adding black to each painted colors. Probably this is logically right; you can demonstrate by the color of the sky which gradually gets darker with the sun set, and finally it gets black.
Then, which color will you pick up when you make the shade color of yellow? If you mix black with yellow, the color will be dirty. Some of you might say it is not dirty. Then you are a designer and asked by a company for their company logo whose corporate color is yellow. Will you still use the darken yellow for the company logo? Maybe not. Because being dirty associates a negative image to the company. Thus, I will put red for yellow to avoid a dirty image. I assure that nobody says the orange-like yellow is dirty because I did not kill the attraction of yellow which is high saturation. Red is darker than yellow but still has high saturation so red can keep the yellow's attraction making yellow darker. For darker (low saturation) colors like green, blue, or purple, black works as shade color not making them look dirty; however, for vivid colors putting black shade tends to let them have dirtier images. How about Anime? You will notice that most Anime’s characters' faces do not use black shades on them. This is one of the techniques to draw the characters' attractions, and I tried to use it for our characters. This is another NPR approach utilizing how people understand colors.
One of the merits of RenderMap is automatic shadings so if I used the second NPR method, we would have to draw shadings manually. I knew it would take time, cost, and be hard to control the quality of the stuff from the experience of Seven Project. Therefore, I wanted to make the tool to do the work.
I liked FG's representation then I sought the way to composite its shadings with characters' textures. I looked up many illustration books or web sites and sought the relationship between a base color and its shading color one by one. Of course it was too complicated for me to deal with. Then I started again from the beginnings, and then tried to check the characteristics of the human's visual organ. And I figured out that human's eyes are more sensitive to the change of brightness than the change of hue or saturation; therefore, if you lightly mixed black shade with a base color, your eyes would feel sudden color change. Then I used a numerical formula for composite. And the result was near to my ideal image. Then I made an action, was a Photoshop macro, having the same algorithm. After confirming the composite action is working good, I asked a technical programmer, who mainly make designer's tools, to make a Maya plug-in, named “Color Shadow”, which made us to get easy outcome with a button.
I successfully complete what I wanted to create as a Tales graphics; however, it was very difficult for me and took us time to tell my image to other members. Representation methods that I created in the project were what we had never used before at least in the company. Most project members did not have enough experience in making games, further, the producer and the director had no experience of in-house project. So ‘sharing’ was the most important matter for the project. Thus, I had to persuade not only visual designers but also planners or programmers of what I wanted to do in the project. I wrote a lot of documents in which I explained the members, "Why is this representation necessary for the project?" "What are the merits of the representation?"
"Sharing image" is the most important thing for a project. The written documents were even for me effective because I could objectively confirm what I wanted to do by myself. Nowadays, a project is mostly divided into each occupation section. And each member has his or her professional; however contrary to this, each member does not have enough knowledge of the other occupations. Of course doing one's best in her or his section is the most important thing and we are all more or less job experiences and basic knowledge of the other occupations. However, each professional section's creativities sometimes will be beyond the boundary of others'. It is essential for group work to reach a goal together. So trying to tell is more important than do one's own best to his or her own work. Writing documents also means keeping records, the documents then will live as the project's knowledge, know-how.
Monday, April 30, 2007
07 ‘Siggraph 2003': The Real Definition of NPR (Non-Photorealistic Renderings)
Keywords: great change, technique and process
Siggraph is an annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. I was very busy in starting a new project so I was not going to there; however, one of my senior worker asked me to go there. He said to me, "If you asked your boss to go there with me, maybe I can go."
After the producing of 'Tanabata', I was interested in new representation methods of NPR, and also, I was trying to use some NPR methods for the new project. Therefore, I participated the conference mainly focusing on the lectures about NPR. I then encountered a very interesting NPR lecture.
The lecture was mainly divided into two parts. One was 'Artistic Expression' which introduced NPR brushing techniques or textures, and the other was 'Inspiration' which explained how humans captured and understood their seeing image of world in the brains.
For me NPR was, at first, just the copies of drawing approaches, such as brushes, pencils or paints which you use, and textures on whch you paint or draw; however, even deformation or balance which I did not think about they were NPR was the NPR techniques! That is to say, deformation might be an act of distorting but also could be said what humans feel. If you visualized the pictures children draw, you would understand NPR is on the basis of what they see, focus, and understand. Through the lecture, I was able to think that, "If representing an image by hands or tools was one of NPR output methods, the former process by which humans make an image in the brains could be NPR as well." It was great change in me. 'Non-Photo' is literally 'everything but photograph'.
I think that designers seek a key by which they express the direction of graphic representation which they aim at in the future. In may case, NPR had accidentally came to me as the key.
Siggraph is an annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. I was very busy in starting a new project so I was not going to there; however, one of my senior worker asked me to go there. He said to me, "If you asked your boss to go there with me, maybe I can go."
After the producing of 'Tanabata', I was interested in new representation methods of NPR, and also, I was trying to use some NPR methods for the new project. Therefore, I participated the conference mainly focusing on the lectures about NPR. I then encountered a very interesting NPR lecture.
The lecture was mainly divided into two parts. One was 'Artistic Expression' which introduced NPR brushing techniques or textures, and the other was 'Inspiration' which explained how humans captured and understood their seeing image of world in the brains.
For me NPR was, at first, just the copies of drawing approaches, such as brushes, pencils or paints which you use, and textures on whch you paint or draw; however, even deformation or balance which I did not think about they were NPR was the NPR techniques! That is to say, deformation might be an act of distorting but also could be said what humans feel. If you visualized the pictures children draw, you would understand NPR is on the basis of what they see, focus, and understand. Through the lecture, I was able to think that, "If representing an image by hands or tools was one of NPR output methods, the former process by which humans make an image in the brains could be NPR as well." It was great change in me. 'Non-Photo' is literally 'everything but photograph'.
I think that designers seek a key by which they express the direction of graphic representation which they aim at in the future. In may case, NPR had accidentally came to me as the key.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
06 Keep Quality: Original Tool 'Tanabata'
Chapter Two: Materialization
I played a part in ‘Venus and Braves’. (2001-2002)
Keywords: limited stuff, retouch work of Seven Project, ‘Tanabata’, Budget and quality, the awareness for NPR,
©Namco Limited
Again, I came back to Seven Project and played a part of ‘Venus and Braves’ was the sequel to ‘Seven’. Our project’s big objective was to hold down its product cost and make profit utilizing our know-how acquired through Seven Project. So there were only two people in the character team excluding a character designer. Of course this is the sequel of ‘Seven’ so we made good use of Seven’s character data for the data of ‘Venus and Braves’, but still, there was too many character data for us two to deal with. Then we considered in which part of character data process we should increase efficiency and came to the conclusion that the retouch process was the problem.
In Seven Project, visual stuff manually retouched every rendered pictures one by one, and the difference of hand-drawn retouch among frames produced an animation an uneasy movement, and it gave the animation an attraction which matched with what Seven Project wanted.
In the Seven retouch process, we added high-lights and shadows for each picture. The number of total character was approximately 50, each character had about 10 actions, each action had 8 frames, and further, we prepared three rendered pictures (normal 3D rendering, toon paint rendering, and toon line rendering) for composite. Therefore, retouch members finally dealt with over 10,000 pictures!
Their professional had gradually heated up with the progress of the project and they finally started to draw furs, blur of eyes’ movement, lights, and even effects. Of course they were nicely finished but it took them more time. The retouch member was at first only two, but finally it amounted to over ten! Increase of the number of member engendered the quality gap among members. Then I asked the art director to have a retouch meeting to prevent it.
Thus, I thought I should avoid the manual retouch work, and at first I tried to use an another rendering method ‘Final Gathering’ by which I tried to represent the characters not hand drawn picture but kind of dolls. However, the resolution of characters on screen was low and the rendered characters could not be distinguished from normal rendering ones. At last we came to conclusion that we should use retouch. Then we asked a person from a technical support department and started making a retouch tool together.
Then I tried to make image samples using Photoshop on a parallel with modeling and motion works. At that time I accidentally met an article on a computer graphics magazine. From the article I acquired a hint of direction how to represent Seven Retouch. We had continued trial and error for about a half year and the number of version-up had been over 200, and at last, we succeeded to complete an original retouch tool, ‘Tanabata’.
'Tanabata' ©Namco Limited
*The articles about 'Tanabata' also can be seen in Japanese Game Graphics (ISBN:0-06-056772-4), Patent Storm
Using ‘Tanabata’ once you complete retouch parameter settings for each character and pushed a button, retouch, composite, and making animation data process could be completed. Then we could finish all the characters’ data with entirely satisfied quality. ‘Tanabata’ enabled us to accomplish a strong strain of visual stuff as we wanted keeping the project’s deadline, and also, it showed us a new method of 3DCG representation and its possibilities. I was able to acquire a lot of things through original retouch tool work. I was very satisfied with the result.
However, I think I could not come to the success without the experience in Seven Project. When you urged to make a tool, there must be like “why you need it” or “how you utilize it” on its basis. The basis for me was made through the experience in Seven Project; therefore, I could successfully complete Venus Project.
In 2004, ‘Tanabata’ was awarded superior patent award in the company celebrated its result.
I played a part in ‘Venus and Braves’. (2001-2002)
Keywords: limited stuff, retouch work of Seven Project, ‘Tanabata’, Budget and quality, the awareness for NPR,
©Namco Limited
Again, I came back to Seven Project and played a part of ‘Venus and Braves’ was the sequel to ‘Seven’. Our project’s big objective was to hold down its product cost and make profit utilizing our know-how acquired through Seven Project. So there were only two people in the character team excluding a character designer. Of course this is the sequel of ‘Seven’ so we made good use of Seven’s character data for the data of ‘Venus and Braves’, but still, there was too many character data for us two to deal with. Then we considered in which part of character data process we should increase efficiency and came to the conclusion that the retouch process was the problem.
In Seven Project, visual stuff manually retouched every rendered pictures one by one, and the difference of hand-drawn retouch among frames produced an animation an uneasy movement, and it gave the animation an attraction which matched with what Seven Project wanted.
In the Seven retouch process, we added high-lights and shadows for each picture. The number of total character was approximately 50, each character had about 10 actions, each action had 8 frames, and further, we prepared three rendered pictures (normal 3D rendering, toon paint rendering, and toon line rendering) for composite. Therefore, retouch members finally dealt with over 10,000 pictures!
Their professional had gradually heated up with the progress of the project and they finally started to draw furs, blur of eyes’ movement, lights, and even effects. Of course they were nicely finished but it took them more time. The retouch member was at first only two, but finally it amounted to over ten! Increase of the number of member engendered the quality gap among members. Then I asked the art director to have a retouch meeting to prevent it.
Thus, I thought I should avoid the manual retouch work, and at first I tried to use an another rendering method ‘Final Gathering’ by which I tried to represent the characters not hand drawn picture but kind of dolls. However, the resolution of characters on screen was low and the rendered characters could not be distinguished from normal rendering ones. At last we came to conclusion that we should use retouch. Then we asked a person from a technical support department and started making a retouch tool together.
Then I tried to make image samples using Photoshop on a parallel with modeling and motion works. At that time I accidentally met an article on a computer graphics magazine. From the article I acquired a hint of direction how to represent Seven Retouch. We had continued trial and error for about a half year and the number of version-up had been over 200, and at last, we succeeded to complete an original retouch tool, ‘Tanabata’.
'Tanabata' ©Namco Limited
*The articles about 'Tanabata' also can be seen in Japanese Game Graphics (ISBN:0-06-056772-4), Patent Storm
Using ‘Tanabata’ once you complete retouch parameter settings for each character and pushed a button, retouch, composite, and making animation data process could be completed. Then we could finish all the characters’ data with entirely satisfied quality. ‘Tanabata’ enabled us to accomplish a strong strain of visual stuff as we wanted keeping the project’s deadline, and also, it showed us a new method of 3DCG representation and its possibilities. I was able to acquire a lot of things through original retouch tool work. I was very satisfied with the result.
However, I think I could not come to the success without the experience in Seven Project. When you urged to make a tool, there must be like “why you need it” or “how you utilize it” on its basis. The basis for me was made through the experience in Seven Project; therefore, I could successfully complete Venus Project.
In 2004, ‘Tanabata’ was awarded superior patent award in the company celebrated its result.
05 My Conflict: The Importance of Flow and Tools
I played a part in ‘Moto GP 2’. (2000-2001)
Keywords: real, working flow, my conflict
©Namco Limited
After ‘Seven’ was finished, I was invited to a project from other department for supporting them; it was ‘Moto GP 2’and I was involved in the background-graphic team. ‘Moto GP 2’ was a real-oriented race game using the same title as real motorcycle race. So the stuff at first went around the world race courses and survey them to achieve the race’s reality. Courses-making flow was very sound and divided into ‘run-off area’ which was from road to fence and motorcycles can ride, outside ground of the run-off area, buildings, walls and signs, and people and other small objects to increase efficiency. In my case, as I was a supporting stuff, I did all the part making two courses with a junior stuff. They used unpopular Softimage tools, such as Softimage’s ‘Tag2Path’ or ‘Shrinkwrap’ for making courses and original tools for adjusting Texture UV; they lots of tools.
Further, the project had a web page the called data center. And designers who wanted to check their data could convert them by original plug-in into converted Playstation 2 data individually without bothering programmers. After converting, each member then got the convert report via e-mail and the data information, such as user (who converted it), image ( with transparent), data sizes (individual / total data size of a course), number of colors, and even error information, was able to check on the data center. This system later became common system in the company, but at that time it was surprisingly revolutionary.
Also, replay camera’s movement was as if human operating, representation of drips on the shield of helmet on rainy days were beautifully finished by the power of programmers.
Thus, the project had much concern with flow or system and accurate schedule accomplished by sound flow and efficient use of tools. I had never experienced before. Motor sports has season, so the product needed to be on sale fitting to the season. Graphic works needs much time, but the time is limited. In the project, I sometimes felt some kind of businesslike thought for graphics. Honestly I felt I wish we could have additional time to refine graphics, but it must have meant the project would miss a good time to sell. Project producer said, “I don’t like to use the words ‘our works’, but ‘our product’. If you really thought the best way for the product, I think, you would not have felt the conflict which you should choose; quality? or time? However, you don’t need to give up quality. Then, you can consider about more efficient flow to realize what you want.”
Keywords: real, working flow, my conflict
©Namco Limited
After ‘Seven’ was finished, I was invited to a project from other department for supporting them; it was ‘Moto GP 2’and I was involved in the background-graphic team. ‘Moto GP 2’ was a real-oriented race game using the same title as real motorcycle race. So the stuff at first went around the world race courses and survey them to achieve the race’s reality. Courses-making flow was very sound and divided into ‘run-off area’ which was from road to fence and motorcycles can ride, outside ground of the run-off area, buildings, walls and signs, and people and other small objects to increase efficiency. In my case, as I was a supporting stuff, I did all the part making two courses with a junior stuff. They used unpopular Softimage tools, such as Softimage’s ‘Tag2Path’ or ‘Shrinkwrap’ for making courses and original tools for adjusting Texture UV; they lots of tools.
Further, the project had a web page the called data center. And designers who wanted to check their data could convert them by original plug-in into converted Playstation 2 data individually without bothering programmers. After converting, each member then got the convert report via e-mail and the data information, such as user (who converted it), image ( with transparent), data sizes (individual / total data size of a course), number of colors, and even error information, was able to check on the data center. This system later became common system in the company, but at that time it was surprisingly revolutionary.
Also, replay camera’s movement was as if human operating, representation of drips on the shield of helmet on rainy days were beautifully finished by the power of programmers.
Thus, the project had much concern with flow or system and accurate schedule accomplished by sound flow and efficient use of tools. I had never experienced before. Motor sports has season, so the product needed to be on sale fitting to the season. Graphic works needs much time, but the time is limited. In the project, I sometimes felt some kind of businesslike thought for graphics. Honestly I felt I wish we could have additional time to refine graphics, but it must have meant the project would miss a good time to sell. Project producer said, “I don’t like to use the words ‘our works’, but ‘our product’. If you really thought the best way for the product, I think, you would not have felt the conflict which you should choose; quality? or time? However, you don’t need to give up quality. Then, you can consider about more efficient flow to realize what you want.”
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