Lyriel (AHITR) - Halloween special WIP#2

Let’s keep breaking down the Lyriel special from the game A House in the Rift!

While we’re having fun with Lyriel through the glory hole, a second Lyriel’s voice comes in. She bursts into the booth, tears the door off its hinges, grabs us by the throat and throws us into the middle of the hall. There were a few ways to handle this segment. The door could have shattered into pieces, or its flight across the hall could have been simulated so it crashed into every pew along the way. But that would have been chaotic and unpredictable, and it would have caused problems with the other shots in that area: there’s no place for a door lying around in the middle of the frame. So we did this one the honest way. The flight, the collisions and the door hitting the floor were all animated by hand, favouring control over its position.

Lifting his head off the floor, the main character turns around and finds himself surrounded by three Lyriels, discussing what to do with him next. The scene is fairly static: all the Lyriels just stand over him and talk it over. The main problem here, and from this point on, is the cloth simulation. There’s a lot of it, it’s layered, and the layers sit close together, which creates endless clipping. Every bit of it had to be fixed by hand, and that ate up a huge amount of time.

That brought us to the start of the final segment, a complex scene in the middle of the cathedral. The clothing on each of them needs watching, and in the animation itself every bone has to be worked through, with the loops given slightly different timings so the desync comes out realistic, and the fat layer simulated using tweak bones. The lighting in the scene was painstaking work too.

On top of the main light, each Lyriel had to be lit properly, with attention to the points of interest: the breasts, the crosses for a nice bit of shine, the teeth so the fangs stay visible and don’t get lost in shadow, and the faces, which should be a pleasure to look at.

That’s all for now. We’re looking forward to the release, to see the result ourselves and share it with you. We’re planning to wrap this up any day now (better not to promise an exact date, as you can imagine). You can find part one here:

Lyriel (AHITR) - Halloween special WIP#1