03 Change of My Perception: “Self-satisfaction” to “For the Team”

I played a part in ‘R4 -Ridge Racer Type 4-’ and ‘Ridge Racer V’. (1997-1998)



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Keywords: connection with programmers, first patent, adherence to my title, perception for group work, appearance of PS2, senior employee,

When I played a part in R4 project, there still were more 2D visual designers than 3D designers. I had been played 3D part from the first project so I was selected as the car model designer on my own. It was great offer for me because I had wanted to have my own title for closing credits. Therefore, I started to move around voluntarily for my own title. I dealt 3D model data and converted them to Playstation data as well so I often had a talk with programmers. And the talk triggered me to think of hardware system or possibility of representation. Finally, at that time I did not know, though, I gradually came to know that programmers saved room for the final stage of project although they said first that, “The representation would be difficult to process.” Then I came to ask programmers more (smile).

One year before ‘R4’ was released, that ‘Gran Turismo (GT)’was put on sale. And we project member were very surprised to see that GT’s cars had environmental mappings (representation of reflection) on them. It was, at that time, the cutting-edge technology. I asked programmers to adopt the technology and we managed to put environment mapping on cars only when selecting cars and replaying races.

(it is hard to explain in English due to my skills of English)
The mapping method was called ‘sphere mapping’, is a texture has normal data as well, by which mapped-texture on polygon surfaces was decided comparing surface normal with sphere normal pixel by pixel. So if adjoining surface normals had different angles, for example 0 to 90 degrees, pixels between 0 to 90 degrees could be picked up from the sphere mapping texture, and the pixels could be put on the surface between the normals. However, Playstation could not use a lot of polygons so, for example, car spoiler was just a rectangle polygon. Its surface normals (one polygon has four normals on its vertexes) were all same angle so its surface just blinked even if you used environmental mappings. Then I asked a programmer to make a tool so that I could adjust surface normals on polygons, and we were successfully able to put beautiful mapping on even a polygon. Also, with the programmer I realized to represent the beam effect of brake lights, seen in the film of ‘Akira’, offered from art director. I was happy the effect had a good reputation from users, and I could get the first potent by it.

At this time I had a lot of fun doing freely by myself within my position and I thought I did not want to be interfered. Therefore, I did not like my 3D models were to be corrected by a car designer, but I was then shocked seeing corrected 3D models by the car designer. And I noticed my thought was wrong and came to think that I wanted to make ‘our best models’, not ‘my models’ getting many advices. Finally, I think, I discovered the interest in group work, so were communications with programmers. I was able to be aware of the limit of individual power.

I stayed in the project after R4 project was finished, and I made a car model for the announcement party for Playstation 2. And then I joined ‘Ridge Racer V’project. The appearance of PS2 lighted more the fire in my soul of modeling. Also, I had some junior members so I thought I had to do the best work as a senior member. Yet, I could not afford to have time to think about it and was not good at working with leaving things to junior members so I sometimes corrected data of junior members by myself.

In the project, making use of the reflection in R4 project, I exchanged car model data again and again with the car designer; it was like, rough 2D design, low polygon 3D model, detailed 2D design, high polygon 3D model, check stage, and fix 3D model. Cars for the series Ridge Racer were all originally designed so we needed to have several steps to fix a car. “My skills are needed for the image of the car designer to take form”, I thought, and I had a pride and a motivation to it.

Further, ‘Ridge Racer V’was the sequel to ‘R4’so I considered if cars could have some new factors, and realized moving retractable headlights, using two kinds of environmental mappings, shade effect in the shadow of background models. Of course, normals adjustment and beam effect were done. Also, I had a lot of motivation about managing car data because all the process is the important part of a product.