Hi everyone, I'm Tristan, The Art Director on Company of Heroes 3. This is the second part of the Company of Heroes 3 “Art Vision” post where I will be describing how we are applying the first 2 art pillars; Life at War and Cinematic Realism to our third pillar Living Battlefield.

The living battlefield is part of the Company of Heroes franchise's DNA. This is how every battle tells a story and involves all of the creative disciplines to achieve.

This art pillar parallels our “Emergent moments” – CoH franchise pillar 

LIVING BATTLEFIELD - UNITS 

The main goals behind units are to give them more life, individuality, variety, and expression while maintaining unit identification and supporting our “Humanizing the battlefield” – CoH franchise pillar. We have developed a “Paperdoll” approach to our units which gives us individuality, variety, and great opportunities for customization. This feature lets us mix and match all uniforms; jackets, shirts, pants, accessories, heads/skin, and weapons of course. We have also developed a wide variety of heads and skin tones to help us capture all of the different cultures and people that we’re featuring. 

Our shaders allow us to create unique unit and company-specific paint jobs and decals with a multi-layered customization system. Vehicles have materials and equipment, that will weather over time and can be damaged in battle providing layers of grit specific to your location and actions. 

LIVING BATTLEFIELD - ANIMATION 

Animation is one of the most important disciplines when adding life to the battlefield while creating familiar silhouettes. We have developed several systems and approaches to help us achieve this: 

LIVING BATTLEFIELD - ENVIRONMENTS 

Environments are the setting for the living battlefield and storytelling is the process used to dress them. Maps should feel alive and inhabited while telling stories of the past as you are creating new ones. Architecture, layout, geology, flora all play strong roles in communicating cultural texture adding authenticity to our locations. Historical and cultural details like propaganda were prevalent from all sides of the conflict and will also add more context to the period. 

We still have several environment art features that are still work in progress; Foliage shader, Structure shader, Weather, Lighting, and Atmosphere fine-tuning are all in various stages of development. 

Our main goal with the Campaign map was to make it feel like a cohesive experience with missions. We want to maintain the immersion and connection as the player travels in and out of locations on the map. Gameplay scale relationships are one of our biggest challenges in creating this immersion. Game scales are divided into tiers based on interaction. Tier 1 is the largest scale which is used for units like companies; Tier 2 is used for gameplay locations like depots and hospitals, Tier 3 is the smallest scale and used for non-interactive terrain elements like mountains. We’re still working on these scale relationships and interactions so we can expect more development in this area.

LIVING BATTLEFIELD - FX 

FX and destruction are signature elements in the Company of Heroes franchise. For CoH3 our main goals were to add more life, detail and realism to the action through various approaches: 

• Adding more weight to rounds, tracers, impacts, and ricochets 
• Explosions that impact surroundings with shockwaves and physics forces that work well with props 
• Billowing volumetric smoke plumes that transmit light and cast shadow 

FX are also used in many other ways to bring life to the battlefield. Particles are used for everything from propaganda leaflets falling from the sky to flocking birds. 

There are various FX features that are in development, our volumetric smoke\dust\cloud rendering is all work in progress. 

LIVING BATTLEFIELD - DESTRUCTION 

With our new “Destruction 2.0” system, we have improved the presentation of our game in various ways and that begins with the construction of our assets. Structures and props are designed to expose individual components like beams, bricks, plaster, and tiles that can also be used as damage states and debris. Structures are divided into “Cells” which lets us damage parts of them while providing dynamic cover and path-changing scenarios. Foliage and other detailed props use a quadrant system which allows for localized damage and animation in 4 different directions. Our physics system supports constraints and secondary animation that allow for larger portions of structures like tower tops to shatter after falling and hitting the ground. Structures have Layered materials like plaster that chip off with impacts and destruction exposing the underlying materials. 

The Damage and charring portions of our structure shader are still in development and not seen yet in demos or in this material. We will be posting follow-ups as these features are implemented. 

That concludes my high-level Art Vision post. We will be following up in the months ahead with posts from the individual artists, where the experts will give more insight into our tools, processes, and features. Thanks for reading!

Amazing blog post Tristan, loved all the details you shared and the videos you posted! Two notes of attention/feedback:

1) I am glad you guys are building a more structured set of tools to help you creating a living battlefield, which is one of the unique factors that make coh unique compared to other RTS titles. It would be cool if at some point we could watch a video with those paperdoll variations to include all the cultures you intend to portray in coh3.

2) Regarding the improvements to physics, I am super excited about the tools built to help you bringing not only more variation in terms of assets and their realistic behavior when they interact with the combat system but also in making things easier to map makers building coh3 maps (map design is such a crucial element to truly highlight all the features and the systems nuances the game has to offer). That said, while I know many things are work in progress, I would specifically ask you guys focusing on tuning the havok engine on falling debris and those thrown away by explosions. 

The behavior in both these situations feels quite off from what I would consider the expected an believable result (eg: tanks crushing statues, statues debris just collapsin5 from top to bottom as if they would fall down, they don't seem to actually interact with the tank pushing them so they don't fall realistically. Another example is with fallen debris from damaged buildings, many times debris just get thrown away in an unrealistic way and at high distances compared to what you would expect.

Thanks again!!

This looks fantastic. (of course, taking into account this is pre-alpha)

You probably already know about this, but you might need to do something about the 'lego-like' appearance of building chunks sometimes appearing as.

Will infantry and their uniforms also suffer envoronmental effects, or just the tanks? Can I expect my infantry crawling through mud or fighting over a contested VP with shells raining down, to come out covered in mud, Soot and dirt?

1. The design of the troops is actually nice but in my opinion is maybe in a squad you can make the helmet with a bit variety in the americans 45th inf. so it will not be plane to see this is . And the helmet is not similiar to the M1 helmet which they used and that is a bit odd like the picture below

2. The sherman in the video is to shiny maybe you guys can add roughness to it and add a little detail on the sides. The decal is great and maybe you can add sumthin like text or drawings by the soldier like the sherman Jumbo in bastogneSherman Jumbo in Bastogne

3. The "Destruction 2.0" is a bit concerning like the bricks is just flying weightless so please add more phsyics to it so if there is an explosion near the rubble it would not just fly over the screen and when the explosion hit the building i would expect that the shell would make a hole in the building but it actually just make sum bricks fall or being throw. The way of the tower fell is nice it goes down like a destruction of a tower being demolished.

4. The shells that are hitting is too slow and can you add the hissing sound when shells are coming maybe this is not at your department.

This is just my opinion for the feedback that i give so feel free to disagree

Hi Tristan,

It was Legends of the Fall, not a River Runs through it. My apologies.

Thanks for including the preview of your work in progress. These are the ideas that I liked and stood out to me: 1.) customization 2.) intent system and personalities that add more life and variety to the units by having them react to situations in unique ways, 3.) living battlefield FX like shockwaves and physics forces that work well with props, 4.) billowing volumetric smoke. 

My constructive feedback:

The first photo you show us is very similar to the COH3 cover art and is once again very crowded IMHO. I get it, you're showing off the environment and locale but all previous covers were just the soldiers and more stoic and less artistic but more realistic? I'm not sure it really matters but it was the first thing I noticed scrolling down on your post. I think it's beyond changing at this point so I will not continue to comment on the art style, that art style is established and we've already shared our feedback in your other thread but it just comes off as a board game cover to me. Let's get to the content with your five videos shared...

1.) First video - Paperdoll approach - keep it up, looks awesome, nothing to add.

2.) Second video - multi-layered customization system, the model still looks a too much toy like, @Mr. Sleaze is like that devil on my shoulder whenever I see these spinning art models, if that's how it will look in game then that seems too much like Toy Soldiers, it's too shiny even when dirty. I don't think it's the color choice or artwork, just the lighting and reflection effects. It's shiny like chrome but not chrome, I don't have the artistic background to explain further than this so hopefully my idea is somewhat understood.

3.) Third video - Animation of Sherman coming towards screen - the tank tracks just seem to be populating behind it and it seems to be floating on the ground surface opposed to gripping the dirt with treads, the sound effects really help this video but i think one of the most important artistic features any RTS can develop is for the troops and vehicle animations seem as authentic as possible with their animations on the terrain. Troops running should seem like they are actually running on the ground not sort of animated looking like they are running with that dreaded skating sort of glide. The tanks need to do the same. I think the percussion and kick of the tank firing looks powerful and cool, the falling roof debris looked good at first until explosions nearby bounce them far too dramatically, it felt a bit exaggerated like it was overcompensating to show that demo feature. 

- The image of the courtyard and church steeples looks great, a very cool angle with shadows and the sun setting lighting. That's a great photo.

Cohesive experience with missions as a main goal is reassuring, glad the game scale tiers are great. Instead of just American/German flags, I'm hoping we can see specific flags like Panzer Elite(PE) or Italy etc. I'd like to see that not just country but potential faction identity representation on the campaign map.

4.) Fourth video - living battlefield destruction - showing the sherman tank with .50 cal opening up. The smoke looks too repetitive and scripted. I understand a part of that is necessary especially if a fire is below but if it could disperse or raise through the air and dissipate that would be cool. I thought the physics is too dramatic and cyclical like a meme, if the shrapnel is not ricocheting 10ft away it's falling in slow motion like matrix style. These both should be tweaked and can be easily fixed I believe.

5.) Fifth video showing front row seat of rising stairwell to church of some sort crumbling under barrage fire. This was I think supposed to show us the damage 2.0 but really was the weakest art piece for me from your thread, or the one with glaring updates still needed. The first thought that came to mind, after whatever sound effect that was (it sounded awful whatever it was) and one you don't want players necessarily having was this thought, but visually my first thought was toy Lego's. It was like watching a lego building. The explosions really looked like someone planted a breach charge in the corner of the building and it was blowing outwards dramatically. When the tower falls i'm glad it just falls straight down and not exploding dramatically outwards like the the bricks and walls. It wasn't all bad, just noticeable enough for me to raise my eyebrow.

Finally - I understand 110% this is a work in progress, everything is under development and not finalized or polished. I completely understand, so my comments are just to hedge on the safe side if it were to continue with the same trajectory it could lead to these comments actually becoming concerns. As of now, I am confident it will all be updated and polished in the months ahead making all this feedback a moot point. Keep up the great work and I appreciate your transparency with your Art Vision.

- Art of War

OMG Tristian.

-People say that graphics are not important in a game... how wrong they are! after watching this, I am even more interested to play in this game than before, What I don't understand is why AGE IV did no get the same  or similar graphics immersion...   For me immersion is everything in a game.

My only feedback is with the explosion, something is not ok with those, It feels like they are not part of the game,  explosions look better in in coh2 but everything else looks pretty nice. 

Speaking of destuction system its for sure the weakest aspect right now. I dont want to be rude, but sadly it just looks very ugly right now. 

Mainly because:

1) Buildings do not take damage like that

2) There are just way too many parts flying around without any feel of weight or physics

3) It just looks like all buildings are made out of paper 

4) I can also imagine how laggy it will be when explosions\arty\bombardment of the urban areas is happening

The closest game with simular destuction system is Men of War. Here is a video which more or less shows how it was made, but for better understanding you can watch some other videos.

Its and old game, but it nailed the whole aproach towards destuction and CoH3 should definitely look at how it was made in it. Because it has all the same elements behind CoH3 destuction philosophy.

It was indeed the weakest aspect of alpha\trailer\previews right now. If if should stay like this and its just unfinished, then please give us option to specifically desable it in options, because not only it looks like it will mess up perfomance but also I pesonally dont like it one bit. 

Again i'm not trying to be rude, so no offence here.

Thank you for sharing these updates. I’m loving the openness and theses early looks.

Amazing post! I'm loving the eye-popping art direction (a nice change from bleak, desaturated, grey-brown WW2 media). The hellish look in the Pre-Alpha FX Demo video definitely looks stunning. Looking forward to the multitude of different visual looks. Yeah, the physics looks 'lego-y' but it's not a big issue. I guess the biggest worry is how much it'll impact performance (since physics tend to be CPU-heavy).

There is one thing I'd like to see considered and maybe implemented. Has anyone suggested rim lighting in CoH3? Rainbow Six Siege is getting an update to increase character visibility, especially in less well-lit areas.

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I think something like this would definitely help in darker levels in CoH3.