Hi everyone, my name is Aleksandr Shably.
And I'm Anton Andreev,
and today we're going to tell you how the largest virtual shipyard in the world
works in World of Warships.
Production of any ship starts with finding and selecting reference materials—
the blueprints and photos that will be used to make an in-game model.
Our Historical and Archival Research team are searching for such materials for us.
These guys! We just stopped by for a few words.
When will you hand over the ***** blueprints?
Well, some of them are here already.
I’ll go to the archive to get the rest.
You'll have them by the end of the day.
By the way, there will be some technical notes;
I think your guys will find them very interesting.
As you see, our work hinges on historical materials
since they're the starting point for production of all our in-game ships.
Now we're going to show you how we survive
in the harsh reality when there are no such materials.
Welcome to Art QA Department.
The department consists of two teams: the Engineering Team and the QA Team.
The Engineering Team are the ones
who help to compensate when reference materials are lacking
by restoring them or by filling in
what’s missing with new designs.
That's how “paper ships” are made.
For example, we’ve had cases where we developed an entire ship
based on nothing but the blueprints for a single turret.
Design does a lot of heavy calculations.
Thanks to them, we know that if the ships that our Design Bureau develops were
actually made in metal, they really would be able to sail across seas and oceans.
Designing a single ship takes a month, on average.
Once the blueprints are made, they are passed to our artists for production.
Production of an in-game model starts with arrangement
of blueprints and an overall box in a 3D editor scene.
As the old saying goes, a single blueprint set is better than several.
And that’s when the magic happens—
when a 2D blueprint is transformed into a 3D ship model.
When the primary geometry of a ship is done,
we can add the armament and all the small equipment that goes on that ship.
In reality, each production stage undergoes a separate QA check.
This is a very nerve-wracking time for any artist.
Because, at this stage,
the artist’s child is being inspected by QA specialists.
A quality assurance team is basically production support—
the specialists consult the artists on technical and historical issues.
They can help in a search for additional reference materials.
They also verify the aircraft, armament, antennas, radars,
and other shipborne equipment.
It's time to lend color to our everyday modeling life—
let's talk about textures.
At this stage, we render everything that isn't a part of the geometry design—
welds, rivets, portholes.
On a texture, it looks like a chaotic mass; it's created based upon
blueprints and photos, and it sometimes reaches such dimensions that you just...
you just open the textures and think to yourself—
that's enough, I'm going on a vacation.
It gets more interesting later— we start to cover a ship with mud,
drips, and traces of the routine activities of its crew,
plus all those sea creatures.
But the most interesting part of creating a skin for a ship is that
there are no photos and blueprints; you just need to stick to the approved theme
and dimensions of a ship.
You haven't said anything about camouflages!
Camouflages are made based on the existing prototypes, diagrams, and photos;
but sometimes we make an exception.
The production cycle of an in-game model is almost over.
But how can we make a model playable?
TechArt Team knows the answer to that question.
Hi, I'm Ed.
We're working on artists' tools, testing and tuning the content.
There are a lot of nuances in the settings.
Without those, you wouldn’t be able to play on the ship modeled.
At these stages, we often get into tiffs with the artists.
It may happen that a ship arrives— you take a look at it, it's so nice,
but from the technical point of view, it's no Tolstoy.
It takes a lot of work.
This is a very funny process— local memes are born every week,
but, unfortunately, we cannot show them to the public.
What happens to a model next is a completely different story.
We’ll say goodbye for now. Click the like button.
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See you!
Did you hear? I was talking about the ****, and there was this beep sound!
Yeah, the same was with me when we came to the historians.
I think it's the NDA.
Let's try again—*****!
Right! NDA!