In 2006, Insomniac Games delivered an impressive release for Playstation 3 consoles. Resistance: Fall of Man successfully transported players to a grim apocalyptic environment. Set inEurope in 1951, players battled alien beasts known as Chimera in a survival effort. The first-person shooter garnered a number of awards and sold more than 2.7 million copies worldwide.
Recently, Insomniac Games released a sequel named Resistance 2. The new version expands upon the previous version and allows players to roam the wastelands once again. This new version isset in the United States. Single player mode lets you play as Sergeant Nathan Hale, who is not only battling the aliens, but he is also infected with a virus that threatens to turn him into aChimera.
Along with the stand-alone single player mode, Resistance 2 also offers an 8-player online cooperative mode that lets a team of players work together to fight the aliens. There is also a60-player online competitive multiplayer mode that you can access.
First impressions of the game's graphics are outstanding. The artists at Insomniac have out-done themselves with a ghastly array of alien beasts created using Maya. Using normal maps andother cutting-edge techniques, the visuals help drive the story home. Equal to the visual imagery are the articulated motions of the various characters made possible by MotionBuilder.
The Autodesk people put me in touch with the artist team at Insomniac and I was able to learn about how they used the Autodesk tools to create this incredible environment and its other-worldlyinhabitants.
I spoke in-depth with Samuel Sharit, senior character artist, at Insomniac Games about and how the Autodesk tools fit into their unique pipeline. Samuel was responsible for creating many of thecreatures found in Resistance 2 including the 300 ft. tall Leviathan beasts.
The Insomniac artistic team used Autodesk's Maya coupled with MotionBuilder to bring these creatures to life. Altogether the team has roughly 50 Maya seats which are spread out between theartistic and programming teams.
When production of Resistance 2 started, the entire team was using Maya 8.5, but halfway through the production cycle, the team was upgraded to Maya 2008. I asked Samuel about the affect ofupgrading software midway through production and he said the transition didn't cause any delays or issues. Of the new features in Maya 2008, Samuel remarked that the ability to preview usingthe Active Smooth mode was a huge time-saver.
The artist team at Insomniac altered its pipeline flow for Resistance 2. The first step of the process was to rough and form the models. During this step, the modelers quickly created roughgeometry with a rough rig. The goal of these roughs was to create something quick without any details. The roughs only needed to show the most basic shape of the character. These rough models werethen handed over to the gameplay group who used the model to test out the game engine. The results were then used to create the game's AI.
After a valid gameplay test, the working model dimensions were passed back to the artists who would start the final pass. Most final pass models would be complete with models and textures in about3 weeks per character. Some creatures, such as the large Leviathan, took around 6 weeks. There were 6 character artists working simultaneously on the project.
Because of the advanced next-generation consoles, the team didn't need to prepare a separate set of assets for creating the game cinematics. All cut scenes were created using game assets,but high and low-res models of each character were created in order to produce normal maps.
All the modeling was completed using Maya, which worked extremely well with their pipeline. Samuel was actually a Max user, but found it more convenient to use Maya with their pipeline. It tookhim about 2 months to become comfortable with Maya.
The animation team used a mixture of motion capture and hand keying. The animator's used motion capture for most of the human action, but most of the facial animations are hand-keyed. TheHybrid and Grim alien's actions were also motion captured, but the Spinners and most of the bosses were hand-keyed. Insomniac used two different motion capture studios including Sony San Diegoand the House of Moves. The team found that the experience at Sony San Diego was more personable.
The animation team found that using MotionBuilder was a huge time-saver. "By switching to MotionBuilder, the technical artists were able to work with multiple rigs at once," saidSamuel. This enabled technical artists to verify the model's motions in real-time instead of one at a time.
Of all the characters, the humans posed some of the greatest challenges. In particular, the lip-synching took some time to get right. It was accomplished using a bone-based system along with someblend shapes.
Overall, the game graphics speak for themselves. With skill and the right tools, the results are outstanding. The Insomniac artistic team has effectively integrated Maya and MotionBuilder intotheir production pipeline enabling them to quickly and efficiently produce the needed assets.
I've recently discovered the Chimeric Animals from Icewind Dale on DNDBeyond. I'm really curious about what they are, what the lore is behind them, etc. I've looked on the Forgotten Realms wiki, and I can find no information whatsoever about them. I've googled every iteration of "chimeric animals 5e" that I can think of, and I've found basically nothing. I know that Icewind Dale isn't covered under the OGL, but its still weird to me that I can find nothing about them.
The reason I ask is because I'm playing a druid who has been to Icewind Dale. They're listed as beasts, so I'm assuming they can be used for Wildshape, am I correct on this? And if so, are the abilities they have worth it?
The creatures you refer to do not have a proper stat block. Rather, they're listed as "Chimeric creations", which can be selected from a table. The creatures are listed as based on an existing beast, as you've correctly noticed. For example, the cat you mentioned is described as follows :
The closest match with official monsters I could find would be the Chimera, which is classified as a "monstrosity". However, apart from the name, nothing else explicitely links the Chimera to those Chimera-like creatures, so we cannot conclude on their creature type just with this information.
As such, assuming your character has already seen said creature, which means having them visit this specific location in this specific adventure module, RAW it is possible to transform into those Chimeric creations.
Those artificial, one-of-a-kind creatures are basically beasts that you could already transform into, with additional abilities added on top. This means that allowing a druid to turn into them is giving them more tools for solving problems.
As such, depending on the situation where this rule is invoked (especially if used in another module, after running this adventure), it could have unexpected side effects, ranging from not changing much, to completely breaking a scenario.
Ythryn is a location featured in the final chapter of the adventure Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. It was a Netherese flying city which had a big magical accident and fell out of the sky and into the glacier a couple thousand years ago. While exploring the ruins of the city, the player characters can piece together bits of lore about the ancient society, one of which being that many denizens owned chimeric pets:
In the Menagerie location within the city, the PCs can find the Chimeric Creator, a magical machine which is used to create these creatures. You feed it a bunch of blood, pull a lever and out pops one of these chimeric creatures, as randomly selected from a table.
That's the sum total of the information available about these animals. There's no indication that any such creatures or descendants thereof have survived to the present day - and no indication if they can even reproduce anyway, or if their offspring would retain the chimeric traits if they did. The only way to find one of these creatures, as written, is to go exploring Ythryn and find/activate the Chimeric Creator.
Ythryn is a dangerous location - the adventure considers it appropriate for characters to be 9th level by the time they arrive there, and could potentially get them up to 12th over the course of exploring it. Moreover, it's impossible to access without first jumping through several other hoops over the course of the adventure - figuring out how to get there is a significant part of the previous chapters.
So, altogether - unless your druid is a veteran of the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure - you would not expect to have ever seen or encountered such a creature, rendering the question of whether you can wild shape into one moot.
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