Forza MotorSport 5

For the last year I have been working at Turn10 Studios on the latest revision of the critically acclaimed Forza Motorsport franchise, Forza MotorSport 5.  FM5 is based around a totally new propitiatory engine specially designed for the XBOX One and this release.  With this new engine there is the ability to create complex shaders and materials using custom node based editors.

At Turn10 I worked primarily on the showcase track “Prague” which earned over 30 e3 awards including 8 wins when shown this year, the “homespace” track – which is the main area where you view your car; and providing shader, material and script support to every other track being produced.

 

 

Prague:
1) Responsible for designing a modular system, both model and material for building a complex city of varying architectural styles to high detail levels for buildings at track side.
2) Responsible for designing and implementing a procedural city approach for more distant buildings, that would change given road and terrain inputs, and generate a 3d city based off a variety of stock pieces, using a custom scripted rule system.
3) Architectural modeling and texturing of key buildings along the track route
4) Design, creation, and implementation of complex grass and terrain blend shaders and systems.  Ran tutorials and demonstrations on using these artist friendly material systems.  Development of blend shaders both alpha and threshold height mask based.

 

 

Homespace:
The “homespace” is the key space of the game.  Here you view your car, modifications to it, paint colors and so forth.  The virtual garage if you will.  In previous Forza games the environment for the homespace has been a 360 spherical image, however for FM5 we wanted to go with a full 3d environment.
1) Brought on to the homespace project to raise the visual bar of the environment
2) Design of blend shaders for walls, floors, using multi-layered materials with realtime reflections to give the correct look to sealed concrete floor.  Creation of anisotropic metal shader for turned metal parts.
3) Material tuning and texturing for both architecture and props within the homespace

 

 

 

 

Additional Support to other track groups:
 
1) Part of a polish team that would help push the visuals of a track close to completion. This included development of shaders and materials to give each track an individual look. Implementation of complex shaders to handle road edge blending, terrain and grass blends.
2) Model, material, and texture work on tracks close to completion, both internal and those provided by outsourcing companies. Again, this is to push the visual bar of all tracks to a high level.
3) Closely assisted the development of external outsourcing teams including both visual and technical support.  A common contribution in this role was the creation of examples on how to achieve the visual look we wanted.  This was done for many areas of our game including, mowlines on the terrain, 3D grass, gravel traps, roads and many more.

Some press compliments, focused on the visuals, from our e3 release:

Guardian UK – “Forza has always been easy on the eye, but the latest iteration is a cut above anything released in this franchise before it.”     “On the track, the frame rate is as smooth as butter and the draw distance is mind-blowing.”
Telegraph UK – “Forza Motorsport 5, for instance, is a triumph of visual fidelity for Microsoft’s Xbox One “
Financial Post – “Forza 5 delivers unadulterated next-generation graphical goodness.”
IGN – “a pre-order might be wise move.”       “Your hands will literally shake with excitement”
Eurogamer – “It’s pretty thrilling stuff – and it’s just pretty, too.”

 

 

Screenshots:

 



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