Stellaris开发日志#231 | 11/4 水生生物肖像和美工

牧游社 牧有汉化翻译

Stellaris Dev Diary #231 - Aquatics Portraits and Art

MrFreake_PDX, Colonel

Hi! My name is Fenni and I’m an Art Producer for Stellaris.

嗨！我叫Fenni，是Stellaris的一名艺术制作人。

Today, I will talk a bit about our art processes and give you a little behind-the-scenes look at how our amazing team of artists worked when creating the Aquatics species!

今天，我将谈一谈我们的美工制作流程，从幕后的角度给你们看看我们了不起的美工团队在创造水生生物物种时是如何工作的！。

Exploring the narrative

探索叙事

When creating a new species, we first start by exploring the theme, story and narrative of the species. When creating a character inspired by an existing animal, we also first explore why this animal looks the way it does and what specific characteristics we can identify. How did the animal evolve to look like this? How has the environment it lives in shaped it's appearance and behaviour? This helps us understand what elements and why something looks and feels the way it does, and we can use it as inspiration for creating an alien species.

当创造一个新的物种时，我们首先从探索该物种的主题、故事和叙事开始。当创造一个受现有动物启发的角色时，我们也会首先探索为什么这种动物看起来是这样的，以及我们可以识别哪些具体的特征。这个动物是如何进化成这个样子的？它所处的环境如何塑造了它的外观和行为？这有助于我们了解为什么某样东西或某种元素会有这样的外观和观感，之后我们可以把它作为创造一个外星物种的灵感。

For example, we can start by exploring the deep sea as a source of inspiration. Our team of artists start by looking at what common identifiers can be found in deep sea creatures, and what emotions they convey. This helps us create a strong narrative. We always explore several different narratives and sources of inspiration, and we use these to create unique characters.

例如，我们可以探索深海来作为灵感的来源。我们的美工团队首先研究在深海生物中可以找到哪些共同的特征，以及它们所传达的“情感”。这有助于我们创造一个强有力的叙事。我们总是探索几种不同的叙事以及灵感来源，并利用它们来创造独特的人物。

Below is an example of one of these narrative explorations, when our artists explored the deep sea:

下面是其中一个叙事性探索的例子，当时我们的艺美工团队探索了深海：

Here our amazing artists defined some identifiers and shared visuals between deep sea creatures, and what emotions they convey. This helps us understand how we can create unique species that also clearly tells the story of a "deep sea dweller".
这里，我们了不起的美工们定义了深海生物之间的一些特征和共有的视觉特性，以及它们所传达出的情感。这有助于我们了解如何创造出独特的物种并清晰地讲述一个“深海住民”的故事。

After identifying these kinds of themes, materials, and narratives, our team uses it to create individual characters.

在确定了这些主题、材料和叙事之后，我们的团队用它来创造一个个的角色。

Telling a story with visuals

用视觉讲故事

While we always make sure to stay true to the overall theme of the species, we also focus on making sure each character is unique and tells their own story, conveying a range of different emotions using their visual language. Small changes in a character's design, shape, silhouette can help convey completely different emotions and characteristics. As an example of how we explore how positions, silhouettes and shapes convey different emotions, let's have a look at the exploration process for creating one of our new aliens!

虽然我们总是确保忠于物种的整体主题，我们也同时专注于保证每个角色都是讲述他们自己故事的独特个体，用他们的视觉语言传达一系列不同的情感。一个角色的设计、形状、轮廓的微小变化可能会协助传达出完全不同的情感和特征。作为我们如何探索位置、轮廓和形状如何传达不同情绪的例子，让我们来看看创造我们的一个新外星物种的探索过程！

This is an exploration of an alien which was based on crustaceans:

这是对一个以甲壳类动物为基础的外星物种的探索：

Made by art director Frida Eriksson and artist Emma Jonsson
由艺术总监Frida Eriksson和美工Emma Jonsson制作

As you can see, the artists explored several different uses of poses and silhouettes to convey a range of emotions. This is important to explore at the beginning of the species creation process, to make sure we create a cohesive visual language that’s in line with the emotion and story we want the character to convey.

如你所见，美工团队探索了几种不同的姿势和轮廓剪影的使用以传达一系列的情绪。这在物种创造过程的开始阶段就非常重要，这样可以确保我们能够创造出一种统一的视觉语言，与我们希望角色所传达的情感和故事相一致。

After our artists have settled on a narrative and direction for a species, they start sketching up some more defined concepts.

在我们的美工确定了一个物种的叙事和方向后，他们开始勾画一些更精细的概念设计。

Concepting

概念设计

During the concepting phase, the artists explore a lot of different directions before settling on a design that conveys the right visuals and story. Let's look at another example!

在概念设计阶段，美工团队在确定一个能传达正确的视觉效果和故事的设计之前，会探索很多不同的方向。让我们来看看另一个例子！

Below we have some detailed explorations of a squid-like species.

下面我们对一个类乌贼的物种进行了一些详细的探索。

Like mentioned before, we first decide what narrative and emotions we base our characters on. For our Squidbert here, our artists wanted the species to specifically convey three different emotions; Enigmatic, Friendly and Hyper-intelligent.

就像之前提到的，我们首先要决定我们的角色是基于什么样的叙事和情感。对于我们这里的乌贼哥而言，我们的美工希望这个物种能够具体地传达三种不同的情绪：神秘的、友好的和超智能的。

Made by art director Frida Eriksson and artist Emma Jonsson
由艺术总监Frida Eriksson和美工Emma Jonsson制作

Several different directions are explored before deciding on a final design.Our artists did a fantastic job with exploring how to convey that this species fits the narrative described before - enigmatic, friendly and hyper-intelligent.

在决定最终设计之前，我们探索了几个不同的方向。我们的美工在探索如何传达出“这个物种符合前描述的叙事”这方面做得非常好——神秘、友好和超智能。

Rendering

渲染

After creating the final design, our artists get to work with creating a render and adding some values and more details to the design. During this stage, the artist needs to work out the light and shadows. They also need to add more detailed materials.

在最终设计完成后，我们的美工开始进行制作渲染的工作，并为设计添加一些具体数值和更多的细节。在这个阶段，美工需要解决光线和阴影的问题。他们还需要添加更精确的材质。

Let's take a look at our Aquatic Machine Portrait for an example of what a final concept design looks like, and what it looks like after the first step in the rendering process!

让我们来看看我们的水生机械人画像，看看最终的概念设计是什么样子的，以及在渲染过程的第一步之后是什么样子的！

Made by art director Frida Eriksson and artist Emma Jonsson
由艺术总监Frida Eriksson和美工Emma Jonsson制作

To the left, you can see the final design and thumbnail. To the right, you can see the rendered version with added values - showing a lot more detail when it comes to lights, shadows and materials.

在左边，你可以看到最终的设计和缩略图。在右边，你可以看到添加了数值的渲染版本——当涉及到灯光、阴影和材料时，它可以显示更多的细节。

Colorizing & Refining

着色与润色

After that is done, our artists need to refine the rendering and add some colour variations! Our artists take very careful considerations with what colors to use. It all needs to fit the overall theme and connect to the narrative! The species design needs a narrative red thread through all steps from start to finish, and color variations play an important role in that.

在渲染之后，我们的美工需要细化渲染，并添加一些颜色的变化！我们的美工会非常仔细地考虑使用什么颜色。这一切都需要符合整体的主题，并与叙事相联系！物种设计需要一条贯穿从开始到结束所有步骤的叙事准绳，而色彩变化在这其中起着重要作用。

Made by art director Frida Eriksson and artist Emma Jonsson
由艺术总监Frida Eriksson和美工Emma Jonsson制作

Our incredibly talented artists spent a lot of time polishing the colours. They used colors and materials found in our oceans as a main source of inspiration, to make sure even the color variations were aligned with our overall theme.

我们才华横溢的美工团队花了很多时间来打磨这些颜色。他们把在海洋中发现的颜色和材质作为主要的灵感来源，以确保即使是颜色变化也与我们的整体主题相一致。

After this, our artists spend some additional time refining the render and making sure it looks good in-game.

在这之后，我们的美工会花一些额外的时间来完善渲染，确保它在游戏中看起来不错。

Here are some final in-game versions of the portraits I talked about in this diary!

这里有一些我在这篇日志中提到的人物肖像的最终游戏内版本！

What's next?

接下来是什么？

After all that, we're not quite done yet! We still need to create some clothes for the characters, and most importantly - we need to bring them to life by animating them!

除了之前说过的那些，我们还没有结束！我们依旧需要为人物创造一些衣服，以及最重要的——我们需要让他们动起来！

Continue reading and our amazing animator Hanna will walk you through that process..

接下来，我们超棒的动画制作者Hanna将带你了解这一过程。

And portraits and characters aren't the only thing our artists have worked on for the Aquatic Species Pack - they've also done quite a bit of other illustrations as well! Nico, our fantastic 2D artist, will show you how he created a new illustration for an event chain in the game further down.

我们的美工不只为水生生物物种包创造了肖像和人物——他们同时也画了许多其它的插图！ Nico，我们神奇的2D美工，将告诉你们他是怎么为未来的游戏中的一个事件链创造新的插图的。

I hope you had fun reading a bit about the process of how species are made! It has been an absolute pleasure to work with this team of incredible artists, and I’m so excited to get to share some of their work with you all.

我希望你们能开心地了解新的物种是如何被创建的！毫无疑问，能与一组极其优秀的美工一起工作是一种荣幸，我也非常激动能够给你们分享一些他们的工作。

Portraits & Animation

肖像和动画

And now it's time for some portraits and specifically portrait animations. My name is Hanna Johansson and I did the animations for the aquatic species pack.

是时候介绍肖像和肖像动画了。我是Hanna Johansson，我为水生生物物种包制作了这些动画。

So when the portraits land in my lap this is kind of what they look like; a dissected version of the original concept. This is called a paper doll. For me to be able to animate the portrait the artists need to chop the portrait up into smaller pieces that I turn into individual meshes. Sounds brutal I know, but I promise you that they feel no pain and the other part of my job is to patch them up again. Next, I add some nice topology so that the character will deform in a good-looking way.

这是当肖像们被传到我手里的时候的样子：一个原始概念的分解版。它被称为纸娃娃。为了让我能够制作动画，美工们必须把肖像砍开成小碎片，我会把这些碎片转换成独立的网格结构。我知道这听起来很残忍，但我保证你不会感到痛苦，因为我的另一部分工作就是把它们重新拼凑在一起。接下来，我会运用一点美妙的拓扑学，使人物的动作看起来更好。

The next step is to place the meshes so that the character becomes whole again, now shark boy feels much better. Next, I add the skeleton. I place the joints where I want the character to bend or deform to make the character come alive as much as possible. One thing that I do before skinning is placing controls by all the joints. I personally don't like to animate directly on the joints because they don't have zero transformation values. By adding controls and constraining them to the joints I have a clean slate to put my keyframes on. Once I've added the controls, I skin the meshes to the joints and bada bing, bada boom, the rig is complete!

下一步是把网格结构拼在一起，使人物重新组合成一个整体，现在鲨鱼仔看起来更不错了。接下来，我添加骨架。我把拼接点放在那些我希望人物能够弯曲或运动的地方，尽可能使它们更生动。在组装皮肤之前，我会先为所有拼接点添加控制模块。我本人不喜欢通过直接控制拼接点来制作动画，因为它们的位置不是固定的。通过为拼接点添加控制模块，我可以在更明确的模版上添加关键帧。当我添加完控制模块之后，我把这些网格结构贴在拼接点上作为皮肤，然后噼里啪啦嘭，安装完成！

Mesh placement, joint placement and adding controls

网格结构放置，拼接点放置和控制模块添加。

Now it's time for the fun stuff: Animation. When it came to animating the aquatic portraits I really wanted to capture the feeling of characters being underwater. I added a lot of slow and flowy movements and looked at some cool references, like videos of fabric moving underwater and of course, a lot of fish videos. For the portraits we create about 3-5 idles that the characters can switch between. This is so that the movements don't become too repetitive and it also gives an opportunity to create an idle that's more reactive or moves a lot more, but doesn't play as often, so it becomes distracting.

是时候讲讲有趣的东西了：让画动起来。当我动画化水生生物肖像的时候，我希望能捕捉到这些生物在水下时的那种感觉。我添加了大量慢及飘忽的动作，并参考了许多很酷的东西，比如编织物在水下移动的视频，当然还有一大堆关于鱼的视频。我们为这些肖像创造了大概3-5种晃悠的方式，肖像会在它们之间切换。这是为了不让肖像的运动看起来过于重复。同时它也使（我们）可以去创造一种更有活性或晃动更多的晃悠的方式，当然这种方式不会经常出现，否则会分散注意力。

To finish off, I'll show you my top 3 animations that I did for aquatics. These were the ones I found the most fun to animate and made me feel the most inspired when I saw the design of them.

作为结束，我会给你们展示我最喜欢的三个水生生物动画。这些是我觉得在动画化的时候最有趣的，而且在看到它们的设计的时候我觉得最有灵感。

https://vimeo.com/586654802/1e2cc81483

https://vimeo.com/563610785/c81a23ac28

https://vimeo.com/639153186/ec93df53cf

2D Art

2D 美工

Hi!

大家好！

My name is Nicolas Lennman and I am a UI/2D artist working on the Aquatic species pack. In this dev diary I will show you a rough process of how we approach the making of event images for Stellaris.

我是Nicolas Lennman，我是制作水生生物物种包的一名UI/2D美工。在这个日志里我会展示制作Stellaris事件插图的大致的过程。

Starting off we (the artists that is) are handed a short brief of what kind of story the event image will try to convey. In this case, we have the new aquatic space dragon which is looming out in space.

我们会收到一个关于事件插图需要去展示什么故事的简要概述。在这个例子里，是一条慢慢从阴森的太空中出现的新的水生生物太空巨龙。

The very first step to creating a more elaborate illustration like this is to create a bunch of simple composition sketches. Just to get a good idea of the basic layout of the illustration, where are the major shapes and values placed. Most of the time one would make a bunch of these quick iterations and pick out the best one.

在第一步制作一个像这个一样的更详细的插图之前，我们需要先创造一些简单的组合草图。这一步只是为了获得一个更好的基础构图，比如在哪放置主要物体和亮度数值。在绝大多数情况下，我们会快速地制作一些这样的简单草图并选择最好的那一张。

The next step is to draw the illustration. For me personally, spending quite some time here really helps in the next few steps of the painting. Luckily for me in this case I had a lot of great references to work from provided by our great concept artists and 3D-artists

下一步是为这个插图勾线。对我来说，在这一步花费一定的时间可以帮助接下来几步的绘画。幸运的是，对于当前这个要求，我有一大堆由我们非常棒的概念美工和3D美工提供的非常棒的参考。

The third step is to make a black&white render. This is to flesh out the shapes and areas of light and shadow. Some artists refer to this workflow as an "occlusion pass".

第三步是制作一个黑白阴影图。这是为了让形状和明暗变得更充实。一些美工称之为“阻塞通道”。

In the next, fourth step, I apply the general colors on top of the previous occlusion pass. Here I spend some time making sure to find nice color compositions and colors that compliment each other. Like in this case how the blue/green of the dragon compliments the red/purple of the background.

接下来第四步，我为之前的阻塞通道（黑白阴影图）大致上了一些颜色。在这一步我花了一些时间去确保寻找到合适的颜色组合以及颜色互补。就像这幅图里一样，龙的蓝/绿色与背景的红/紫色互补。

The final fifth step is by far the step that takes the most time. It's the refining stage where all the details, effects and major lights are added. It seems like quite the large leap from the previous stages, but these were crucial to have an easy transition into this stage. The last step is to adjust the values and colors and make sure the illustration really pops!

最后第五步，是目前为止要花最多时间的一步。这是添加细节，效果和主要打光的精修的一步。看起来难度与之前的阶段相比有很大的提升，但那些之前的阶段对于简单地进入这一阶段来说是非常重要的。最后一步是调整数值和颜色来保证这张插图的冲击力！

Thanks for reading! Wishlist the Aquatics Species Pack on Steam!

感谢阅读！快在Steam上把水生生物物种包列入愿望单吧！

翻译：Frost qqqqyyy

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