Fight Night Official Blog

Browse by Tags

• arenas
• art
• Boxer styles
• Brian Hayes
• graphics
• gyms
• muscle flex
• Photo Game Face
• rendering
• venues
• VES Awards

FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 Earns Nomination from VES

Last week the Visual Effects Society (VES) announced their nominations for their annual VES Awards to be handed out February 28th in Los Angeles, CA.  Among the nominees, the FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 team has earned the nod in the category of Outstanding Real Time Visuals in a Video Game.

"The Visual Effects Society is proud to present these nominations as the most outstanding work in the field this year," said Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society. "It's important to keep in mind that it wasn't machines that created these images but incredibly talented artists. We congratulate them all and look forward to seeing who is chosen as the best of the best at the awards show in February."

"I'd just like to say how pleased the art and rendering team are on the recognition we are getting for the FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 visuals," replied Jen Freeman, the game's Art Director.  "We are very hard at working on the next game and sometimes forget that everyone is still playing and enjoying FIGHT NIGHT Round 4.  This is a great honor since games' visuals are now being recognized as an art form.  Fingers crossed that we will walk home with the award on the night, and even if we don't, it's a privilege just to be nominated."

For the full list of VES nominations, check out the press release here:  VES Announces Nominees for 8th Annual VES Awards

A look at Photo Game Face

By Jenny Freeman, Art Director

Hi there,

I thought I’d give you a quick peek into our Photo Game Face feature in Fight Night. We’ve had tons of fun creating some very realistic, or sometimes some very bizarre looking new boxers for the game. Using this feature is a great way to put yourself, one of your friends or your favorite boxer in the game. I thought I’d show you the results we got using a photo of Brian ‘Brizzo’ Hayes our game play producer on Fight Night.

After uploading Brian’s photos, I placed the markers onto the images so Photo Game Face can accurately work out where to put features such as eyes, his chin and the basic shape of his face. This way, you aren’t just pasting a photo onto any piece of geometry. Photo Game face takes the photo and changes the geometry to fit, this makes the face you create much more individual looking and accurate. If you can get a side view of yourself or whoever you are creating, as well as the front view, then your head model will be even more accurate.

Placing the markers…

This is the result you get from the photo, the hair is a default one and facial hair colour isn’t set from the photograph, so that needs to be changed…

And here are the results once facial hair and skin-tone was changed. I also tweaked his chin and forehead to make it bigger with the advanced facial morphing tools and added facial hair...

For really good results, make sure you are in a well lit room or even outside so the light is very even. We found you didn’t get good results if there were loads of shadows all over your face.
With the advanced facial morphing section, you can push and pull the facial topography to really get accurate with the boxer likeness.
After playing with the face a bit more, you can go and tweak your boxer’s body type, attributes and all his equipment, plus much more. The Create Player section is pretty huge, so I won’t go into the details in this blog right now. Here’s a image of some of the screens in create Player:

After that, into the game…

Brizzo Vs Calzaghe:

Using Photo Game Face has been a lot of fun, we’ve created all sorts of boxers, and some people who aren’t boxers… but I’d get in trouble if I showed you those images!

That’s it for now.

Jen

Venues in Fight Night Round 4

By Jen Freeman, Art Director

Hi, Jenny here to bring you more insider info on the graphics in Fight Night 4. This week we’ll take a look at some of the venues in the game

There were a few reasons why we picked the venues we put in the game, firstly we wanted to make sure every one of them was authentic and had some historical value and meaning to boxing. We also wanted to create a lot of variance in the feeling of every venue you went into, from East Coast to West Coast USA, and then onto the UK and all the way to the Philippines. Variance in the size of the venues was also important from the 19,000 seated New York arena down to the 3,500 seated State Palace theater and even the 30 people in the crowd venue of the Windy City gym.

For the complete blog with visuals, go to the Inside EA SPORTS blog:  Venues in Fight Night Round 4

A closer look at Graphics - Art Director Blog

By Jen Freeman

At the beginning of FNR4, when we were planning the visual priorities, a crucial feature was ‘authenticity’.  To us this meant being true to the sport, and making every boxer unique and accurate.

Height, weight and reach, every boxer is unique – every boxer in our game has his own unique body.  What we did was created 7 different body types that your boxer could be, and combined that with non-uniform scaling. So this means that your reach is independent of your height, and also your weight. As reach is so important in boxing, and essential to the gameplay in Fight Night, we created a system where 2 boxers who were roughly the same height could have very different lengths of arms. Take George Foreman and Tomasz Adamek for example; there is only one inch in height between them and 10lbs in weight, but a difference of 7 inches in their reach. Getting this non-uniform scaling system in the game was one of our top priorities, and one that we’ve managed put in our create player feature. Now you can create any boxer you like accurate to the inch and the pound.

For the complete blog, check it out on the Inside EA SPORTS blog:  A closer look at Graphics