The Case Study of Metal Gear Solid 4

[MGS.]

C09. Modeling Size
In MGS4, there are many guns, items and machines that have non-human shapes. The production direction for these machines was performed by Keiichi Umatate.

Modeling work screen for the Gekko machine model


Large machine model with fine details

In the same way as character production, the team produced the machinesby obtaining a high-res model for a normal map from a low-res model. Further, because all gun types supported LOD in runtime, they also created an LOD model for changing guns. There were over 70 gun types, with multiple LOD models for each type. Including the custom parts, quite a large amount of data needed to be prepared just for the guns. The gun is always at its most visible when the player switches to first-person shooter mode during the game, though the player might not even notice it.

The team took these factors into account and put a significant amount of effort into the modeling. The design and size of machine model data such as guns and cars were completely different. There were few cases where existing data could be reused, so the team was always dealing with the issue of data size.