Gran Turismo Car Models Now Made in Three Months, Outsourced to India

[benzy]

Previously it took them 6 months to make one car model per 3d artist. For GTSport, each fictional GR2/3 race car also took an extra six months since they had to design the cars themselves for a total of 1 year to produce each fictional race car.

Gran Turismo Car Models Now Made in Three Months, Outsourced to India

Back in August 2018, we brought you some rather interesting information on the inner workings of the Gran Turismo series: after two decades of almost exclusive in-house development, Polyphony Digital had decided to bring in some external talent by outsourcing some of its vehicle modeling tasks. W

www.gtplanet.net

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"According to some posts on professional art portfolio site ArtStation, PD has outsourced to not only local experts but those elsewhere around the globe.​

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A specialist automotive 3D CGI artist by the name of HansaPallavi Srinivasan has posted up some of her portfolio on ArtStation. Srinivasan works for a company called izmo, based in Bangalore, which seems to have been working on Gran Turismo's 3D models since 2018. The cars featured within the portfolio are the Toyota Tundra TRD Pro, introduced in v1.40 in June 2019, and the Porsche 911 993 Carrera RS ClubSport from the December 2019 v1.53 update.​

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According to a post on her own blog, Srinivasan was responsible for the "mid-poly models of the interior and exterior". Interestingly she also notes that this is an ongoing project for izmo, and that other cars that she's worked on are yet to make an appearance in the game.​

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In response to a question on the ArtStation site, Srinivasan also comments that the vehicle model came from Polyphony's scans rather than CAD data, and this one car took around three months to complete. That's a significant acceleration compared to previous Gran Turismo games, with six months being the normally quoted figure."​

 

[UnluckyKate]

Finally PD is getting with the times and maybe their content out put will be on par with industry standarts

 

[Raigor]

Good.

Now make a Gram Turismo Horizon game if they can speed up game developement now.

 

[nsilvias]

that sounds expensive. making one fighting game character is expensive so i wonder how it compares

 

[Sems4arsenal]

Huge

 

[Humidex]

Outsourcing of this nature isn't massively surprising. My hazy old-man memory reminds me that Codies was one of the first to outsource work on games like TOCA Race Driver to Malaysian entities. As long as the the artists are getting a fair rate for their (good) efforts, can't see the problem in getting content out to consumers faster.

 

[Raigor]

that sounds expensive. making one fighting game character is expensive so i wonder how it compares

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That's how game development works.
If anything it's cheaper than doing the same work in Japan or elsewhere

 

[Deleted member 31092]

Oh yes, cheap labour ftw.

 

[Raigor]

Outsourcing of this nature isn't massively surprising. My hazy old-man memory reminds me that Codies was one of the first to outsource work on games like TOCA Race Driver to Malaysian entities. As long as the the artists are getting a fair rate for their (good) efforts, can't see the problem in getting content out to consumers faster.

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Codemasters owns two studios in Malaysia and India for outsourcing.

 

[Humidex]

Codemasters owns two studios in Malaysia and India for outsourcing.

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There you go, thanks for that.

 

[Aurc]

Wait, it takes a modeler 6 months to make one 3D model of a car?

 

[Teenage Fansub]

I wonder if they could get models from the manufacturers.
Edit: Or if they start with them.

 

[Deleted member 5725]

GT7 early 2021, let's go!

 

[chilleverest]

As far as i can remember, Rockstar did similar thing in their graphics department with rdr 2.

 

[Arex]

Hope they can up the car count for GT7, with newer cars too :P

that sounds expensive. making one fighting game character is expensive so i wonder how it compares

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Outsourcing to India (and the rest of Asia in general) can probably cost half or even 1/3 or 1/4 or more of what i'd cost if it's made in house in Japan, and USA/Europe for that matter.

The hard part is quality control, but once you establish a good working relation then it's money and time saving.

Outsourcing of this nature isn't massively surprising. My hazy old-man memory reminds me that Codies was one of the first to outsource work on games like TOCA Race Driver to Malaysian entities. As long as the the artists are getting a fair rate for their (good) efforts, can't see the problem in getting content out to consumers faster.

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Codemasters has a studio in Malaysia, in a way it's outsourcing, but more investments involved and also control I guess.

 

[benzy]

Outsourcing of this nature isn't massively surprising. My hazy old-man memory reminds me that Codies was one of the first to outsource work on games like TOCA Race Driver to Malaysian entities. As long as the the artists are getting a fair rate for their (good) efforts, can't see the problem in getting content out to consumers faster.

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It's big for Polyphony because they have always been against outsourcing and always wanted to be in control of creating all of their art. After the GTSport car and track list backlash after 4 years of development, looks like they finally realized it just wasn't feasible to do everything themselves with the increasing development time to create the higher quality graphics art.

 

[arsene_P5]

Good.

Now make a Gram Turismo Horizon game if they can speed up game developement now.

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They can speed up car models, but not the design of the game.

 

[Arklite]

Looking through her Artstation page, it seems she's done work for Forza as well. Well hopefully it helps. Polyphony keeps remaking models that have probably only needed touch ups since their GT5 iterations.

 

[Raigor]

As far as i can remember, Rockstar did similar thing in their graphics department with rdr 2.

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Rockstar has a big studio in India of over 500 devs as well.

Last year they bought another indian studio from starbreeze

 

[Humidex]

It's big for Polyphony because they have always been against outsourcing and always wanted to be in control of creating all of their art. After the GTSport car and track list backlash after 4 years of development, looks like they finally realized it just wasn't feasible to do everything themselves with the increasing development time to create the higher quality graphics art.

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And we benefit as a whole from it. Already looking forward to GT7!

 

[arsene_P5]

Good to see PD focusing more at outsourcing, because I believe outsourcing companies can make some stellar car models and help the games having more content than before. Looking forward to the PS event and hopefully we see more of Gran Turismo 7.

Wait, it takes a modeler 6 months to make one 3D model of a car?

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Yes, both Turn 10 and PD talked about it. Tracks take even longer to make. As I recall up to a year. Both companies are now creating cars in a shorter time.

 

[ps3ud0]

Finally PD is getting with the times and maybe their content out put will be on par with industry standarts

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Honestly you're right, but I'm still surprised Sony hasn't more investments so it has such talent rather than allowed PD to do it in-house for so long.

ps3ud0 8)

 

[DieH@rd]

Wait, it takes a modeler 6 months to make one 3D model of a car?

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Modern sim games don't mess around, they model everything. Here is Project CARS 1 modeling, and that game was originally conceived to run on gen6 also

 

[Megasoum]

Yup, that's standard practice. For example there are studios in China that specializes in 3d Modeling weapons so a lot of FPS games get all their weapons created by outsourcers.

People often joke about Ubisoft having "1000+ staff on a game" but the reality is that Ubisoft has so many studios around the world that stuff that would normally get outsourced to third parties are done by satellite Ubisoft studios (and they still outsource to external partners too) so that inflates the number of Ubisoft employees who worked on the game but any AAA games will end up using a similar headcount except that in their case, most of it will come from outside companies.

About time PD does this if this is indeed new practice for them. Their slow output is ridiculous and would never fly if they weren't a first party studio.

 

[shinken]

Outsourcing of this nature isn't massively surprising. My hazy old-man memory reminds me that Codies was one of the first to outsource work on games like TOCA Race Driver to Malaysian entities. As long as the the artists are getting a fair rate for their (good) efforts, can't see the problem in getting content out to consumers faster.

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Outsourcing in itself isn't suprising, tons of companies are doing it. I think all AAA games have outsourced help. The surprising thing is that it's from Polyphony. People wanted them to outsource car models since ages. At least I have been talking about how they should outsource modeling cars since GT5, because the games are getting bigger and bigger, modeling cars takes longer and longer. They can no longer do everything by themselves. They are finally outsourcing some of their work since 2018. Which is good news. The dev time for a GT game is gonna be shorter and with more cars at launch.

 

[Gvon]

I can't help but feel this has been known for a while. I seem to remember reading an article a few years back about them outsourcing car models.

 

[bud]

i wonder what this'll mean for the accuracy of the car models.

 

[benzy]

Modern sim games don't mess around, they model everything. Here is Project CARS 1 modeling, and that game was originally conceived to run on gen6 also

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On top of all of that modeling and texturing work, they also have to create multiple LOD models of the cars. Kaz talked about how time consuming that process was.

"The Jaguar Vision GT 3D model, as received from Jaguar's designers, contains over 7 million polygons. The challenge for Polyphony's 3D artists, then, is to figure out how to reduce the number of polygons while retaining as much detail as possible. Kazunori explains this is a very difficult process which cannot be automated. Only humans can identify the exact shapes which are most important to the car's appearance.​

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To give you an idea of the immense amount of work this requires, the Jaguar Vision GT was reduced from 7 million to 70,000 polygons for the game. From there, even more models with less detail need to be produced by hand."​

 

[sirap]

Wait, it takes a modeler 6 months to make one 3D model of a car?

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Yeah. The actual modeling part doesn't take that long, having to get approval from so many different parties is what slows down the process. Everything has to be perfect. The right contours, the right shade of paint, the right stitching etc.

Car manufacturers are a pain to work with. It's probably one of the most stressful jobs you can work on as a VFX/3D artist.

 

[arsene_P5]

About time PD does this if this is indeed new practice for them. Their slow output is ridiculous and would never fly if they weren't a first party studio.

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They started with GTS basically and before that did everything in house.

 

[Gvon]

i wonder what this'll mean for the accuracy of the car models.

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If as the article states they are using the scan data provided by PD themselves then it should be as accurate as anything they do in house. No doubt the same quality checks apply, the only difference is where the artist is based.

 

[DieH@rd]

On top of all of that modeling and texturing work, they also have to create multiple LOD models of the cars. Kaz talked about how time consuming that process was.


"The Jaguar Vision GT 3D model, as received from Jaguar's designers, contains over 7 million polygons. The challenge for Polyphony's 3D artists, then, is to figure out how to reduce the number of polygons while retaining as much detail as possible. Kazunori explains this is a very difficult process which cannot be automated. Only humans can identify the exact shapes which are most important to the car's appearance.To give you an idea of the immense amount of work this requires, the Jaguar Vision GT was reduced from 7 million to 70,000 polygons for the game. From there, even more models with less detail need to be produced by hand."

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UE5 Nanite system could be used in racing games quite nicely, enabling modelers to only create top-tier detailed model.

 

[SliChillax]

I hope they keep up the Polyphony standards in details.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I can't help but feel this has been known for a while. I seem to remember reading an article a few years back about them outsourcing car models.

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We knew that they'd outsourced some to a company in Japan, but we didn't know if that was actually going to be the future for the company. Now that seems to be the case. It should be good news as far as there being a lot more content for GT7. Especially since it'd likely mean they've been doing outsourcing for several years now.

 

[cooldawn]

I don't like it but they have to move on. Cars in Gran Turismo have always been the most stunning pieces so I hope they can continue to keep the standards extremely high.

UE5 Nanite system could be used in racing games quite nicely, enabling modelers to only create top-tier detailed model.

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What about deformation? I thought Nanite couldn't deal with that?

 

[Raigor]

Modern sim games don't mess around, they model everything. Here is Project CARS 1 modeling, and that game was originally conceived to run on gen6 also

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This was also a KS project.

Modelling is expensive and takes a lot of time, same goes to fighting game characters.

 

[Konosuke]

I hope they keep up the Polyphony standards in details.

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Surely is anything is not up to par Polyphony won't put it in the game.

 

[aeroslash]

Modern sim games don't mess around, they model everything. Here is Project CARS 1 modeling, and that game was originally conceived to run on gen6 also

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that's not 6 month work for any professional modeler

it has always sounded to me like Polyphony bs.
Reducing a cad model from 7 milion to 70000 polygons can be time consuming, of course but it's exactly the same process as when someone does a very high poly model and then converts it to RT.
the LOD models after that should be much easier to make as well.

 

[benzy]

I hope they keep up the Polyphony standards in details.

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The artist in India said she worked on the mid-poly model and took 3 months, so it's possible Polyphony had originally created the super high-res model before outsourcing it for various LOD work.

that's not 6 month work for any professional modeler

it has always sounded to me like Polyphony bs.
Reducing a cad model from 7 milion to 70000 polygons can be time consuming, of course but it's exactly the same process as when someone does a very high poly model and then converts it to RT.
the LOD models after that should be much easier to make as well.

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Turn10 also said it takes them 6 months.

 

[WellbornWarrior]

What about deformation? I thought Nanite couldn't deal with that?

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Car manufacturers don't allow their cars to be damaged anyway.

 

[JoeNut]

Another reason that supports my unfounded confidence GT7 is a launch title!

 

[cooldawn]

Car manufacturers don't allow their cars to be damaged anyway.

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Lots of games have damage, to varying degrees. Gran Turismo 5 had procedural damage.

Maybe Nanite would just replace an object i.e. a wing with a damaged version, rather than it being contact specific, if that's how it could work.

 

[SixelAlexiS]

Good.

Now make a Gram Turismo Horizon game if they can speed up game developement now.

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GT Horizon made but the original Driveclub team, let's do this :'0

 

[Bosch]

For a proper GT7 I expect something between 400-500 cars.

 

[g-m1n1]

They might get help from PS Studios Malaysia soon.

We know Sony open a studio there for supporting other first party studios, would be interesting to get an update (how many people working there, etc).

 

[Yopis]

Good.

Now make a Gram Turismo Horizon game if they can speed up game developement now.

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Please no. Don't infect this series with that corny garbage.

 

[Raigor]

Please no. Don't infect this series with that corny garbage.

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Corny garbage?

 

[SolidSnakex]

For a proper GT7 I expect something between 400-500 cars.

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That seems pretty likely. GTS ended up with 336 cars after starting out with 168.

 

[Rippa]

Corny garbage?

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yeah, corny Arcady garbage.

Leave the arcadey racers to need for speed and Horizon.

Leave my sim racer alone.

 

[Jiraiya]

yeah, corny Arcady garbage.

Leave the arcadey racers to need for speed and Horizon.

Leave my sim racer alone.

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Yea...cause there's no way to do both. Who could manage such a thing??? A more sim track based racer and an offshoot open world more arcade title. Possibly switching releases.