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CKIII Dev Diary #28 - Art Focus

Hello my name is Joacim, Art Lead on Crusader Kings 3, I am positing here a developer diary written by Pontus, Art Director on Crusader Kings 3, currently on paternity leave. Our artists will reply to your questions in the comments!

Art Focus
Hey! Let’s talk about the art of Crusader Kings III!

My name is Pontus, Art Director on CK3. I’ve written this dev diary together with the art team, and if you promise to tell everyone this is the best dev diary so far, there will be some sweet wallpapers at the end of it. Cool?

Certainly, you’ve seen a lot of the art already, in various states of completion, with all our diaries and previews. Let’s start by talking about the way we’ve approached creating the graphics for the game!

The starting point for the art direction is, as it should be, the game design. If you recall Dev Diary #0, Henrik Fåhreus’ vision of the game has a big focus on characters and storytelling, as well as approachability and player freedom. Reinforcing that through the art has been the main goal.

To keep ourselves on-track, three key pillars guide the art department on CK3:

A ROLE-PLAYING EXPERIENCE - This pillar is represented by our goal to give life to the characters and their unfolding stories. An example of this would be the characters’ portraits, we did not want them small and static, they are now front and center, and show off their standing or lack thereof through clothing, as well as show how they feel about what is happening to them through body language.

DD28_king_01.jpg
DD28_king_02.jpg


A MEDIEVAL GAME - We made a great effort to keep a good level of historical accuracy in our designs. Our illustrations and icons are made to reflect the time period, just like the 3D art that populate the map. Of course, sometimes we had to try and find good compromises in the designs that would work for the entire timespan of the game.

Where possible, we based clothes on reconstructed sewing patterns from extant medieval clothing. For example, we recreated the "coronation tunic" of Roger II of Sicily, a well preserved garment from the 1130s (though it was actually made some time after the coronation).

DD28_tunic_comp.jpg


Another example would be a loading screen with some really well-painted sunflowers, but these did not exist in europe until the 16th century, which was spotted in time thanks to our Beta testers: so we sent it back to get the flowers repainted…

A ROUGH WORLD - Crusader Kings is not a game for all-ages, you live dangerously and people do terrible, terrible things to each other. This is reflected in the more somber palette and overall mood of the game.

Now, let’s talk about the different types of art you’ll have fun with in CK3:

CHARACTERS
I’m very excited about our new character portraits, and what we can do with them visually. They are varied and have lots of, well, character. Every day there’s a screenshot shared in the dev chat featuring someone they’ve encountered in-game, and we usually agree, yes, that person wears that hat better than most, or indeed, he looks just like the poster boy for the Deviant trait.

For me, the real test for the characters is if they make you feel, and It IS satisfying to throw especially smug-looking Rivals into your Dungeon, and you might feel a bit sorry for some harmless looking characters before you plot to have someone deliver poisonous snakes upon them.

I really want to stress the fantastic work our Lead Character Artist Nils Wadensten and the character team have done in bringing this new generation of portraits to our games, alongside our Engine team.

In fact, he’ll go into the character portraits a bit more in a future diary, hopefully he won’t show the first iterations of the wounds and diseases, some were a bit too much for a lot of people.. :)

For now, I’ll leave you with a sneak peek of Concept art and the final piece of Clothing as how it appears in the game.

DD28_steppe.jpg
DD28_african_pagan.jpg


ANIMATION
Making the characters move was quite a challenge since the movements need to be very discreet, and not call too much attention to themselves as that could become a distraction from the gameplay.

The posing and idle animations are there to help the immersion and storytelling. Keeping the Rough World pillar in mind, they should not be silly and slapstick - while CK has some wonderful dark humor, we play it straight. I do think the look on a character's face when he realises they are locked up together with a Cannibal is appropriately shocked though.

Generally the characters have a pose that reflects their personality or the situation they’re in.


EVENTS
Here is where the role-playing really kicks in. When an event pops up, we showcase the characters involved and how they feel about the current proceedings, set against a backdrop that really helps sell the setting. This means if you encounter the same event in another play-through, the visuals might be quite different due to the characters involved.

The backdrops have a detailed but hand-painted style that complements our stylized characters’ well. In fact, we have some for you as wallpapers without text, icons and characters obscuring them, enjoy.

When we create a new event background, we also do a hand-crafted lighting setup, which relights the portraits to fit the current scene:

DD28_events_01.jpg
DD28_events_02.jpg
DD28_events_03.jpg
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Besides the events, there’s plenty of illustrations in CK3!

For the loading screens, we wanted someone who can do images full of mood and storytelling, in a rough, painterly style. We went straight for the top and asked Craig Mullins. Fortunately, he was up for it, and has provided some really exciting imagery.

They all are of course showcasing aspects of the Crusader Kings experience- from Templars in battle to babies in peril!

Besides the loading screens and event backgrounds, we have cool paintings for Decision categories, terrain types, holdings, army movements, legacies… heck, our Personality trait icons and Tenets are small illustrations - there is a lot to discover and keep you entertained and immersed!

DD28_hunt_text.jpg


The Holding Illustrations make for great wallpapers as well, so we included that in our art drop!

UNITS
Our units are really cool! We were very enthusiastic about these, and really added quite a bit of detail. Let us know if you spot the nails that stick the shield handle into the shield at the back.

The units’ appearance is based on culture - We have Western European, Byzantine, Middle-east / North Africa, Pagans, Indian and Turko-Mongol.

A unit has three visual tiers, becoming more armor-clad and sophisticated as it progresses. So it was important for us to make sure a Tier 2 Byzantine looks equally as tough as a Tier 2 Turko-Mongol for instance.

They have a lot of spark to them as we added a lot of different animations, they cheer when they win, bang their shields during sieges and we make use of red liquid particles when they land some nice hits.

Culture, Tiers and Coat-of-arms colors and emblems make the Units look appropriate and unique. Here’s some examples:

DD28_units.png



HOLDINGS
The Holdings were quite a challenge, they needed to be a certain size based on maximum zoom level and minimum Barony size. Since they are small they need to have strong, readable shapes without looking like toys.

Their appearances are influenced by the region they are found in, in this case Western European, Mediterranean, India and Middle-east.

Similar to Units, they have visual tiers, tied to the Holding’s Upgrade level. Temples and Cities have two tiers, whereas Castles and Walls have four tiers.

Of course, we have primitive huts as well, and a big bunch of unique buildings, some easier to recreate (Pyramids) than others (Charlemagne's Palace).

DD28_western_castles.png
DD28_mena_castles.png

DD28_special_01.png
DD28_special_02.png



MAP
There’s a rumor going around that some of you CK2 players rarely look at the terrain map. We didn’t want that for CK3, so we made our map to not only be moody and pretty to look at, but also more useful, so you’d have more reasons to go there.

CK is information heavy, so we try to make sure that everything in the terrain map serves a function, and is easy to see. Thus a cleaner look, to make sure the icons, borders, text and 3D models that sit on top of the land read well. At a glance, you should be able to see what terrain type a Barony has without consulting another map mode.

DD28_map_02.png
DD28_map_03.png
DD28_map_01.png


If you are into Political Map modes though, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. You’ll notice it feels familiar.

It seems our Paper map has been received well, we’re glad you like lobsters too! Getting the right amount of sea-monsters without making it look cluttered wasn’t easy, but I think we managed in the end.

DD28_papermap.png


UI
A PDS game has a lot of UI. It is something made in close collaboration with UX and Game Design departments. It is constantly iterated upon and is one of the most challenging aspects of our games.
Visually we took inspiration from game design’s character focus pillar and pulled in visual influences from Roleplaying games. To make it approachable we tried to keep it clean, and give everything some breathing room.

DD28_Character_Screen.png
DD28_MAA.jpg


DD28_letter.jpg


We use a lot of illustrations in our UI’s to help immersion and flavor, and we have a cool system where some of the image types are context sensitive, so for instance your Sultan will not stand in front of a western European throne room if he is hanging out in the Middle-east, and if you are dealing with Catholicism in Religion View, well you’ll see churches and similar imagery.


Coats of Arms
Heraldry is essential to the medieval immersion of Crusader Kings, and so heralds will be excited to hear that we have totally overhauled the Coat of Arms system.

We started from scratch, poring over history books and contemporary armorials to ensure every detail is authentic. We designed accurate CoA for over a thousand titles and dynasties to complement a new scriptable random system that weights hundreds of unique elements based on culture, religion, and everything in between. We modeled minute differences across regions, so frequencies of designs and tinctures are different in Germany, France, and Spain. The amount of possible combinations? Millions.

We achieved our primary goal of making our feudal European heraldry as accurate as possible, but we didn't stop there—we wanted to go into extra depth for all regions. For example, the eastern hordes decorate the Great Steppe with their special tamgha emblems, while the Islamic world is fleshed out with immersive Saracenic heraldry (no more endless stars and crescents). Emergent cadet houses differentiate their new arms by quartering, and yes, England's coat of arms will change if William wins the Norman Invasion.

Here’s some examples of the heraldry system in action - firstly how England’s arms can react to gameplay, and secondly a selection of randomly-generated COA from around the world.

DD28_COA_1.png
DD28_COA_2.png


In summary:

The art team has worked very hard and it is a delight every day to see whatever new stuff is coming in. Making games is a group effort though, so we get invaluable help and feedback from the rest of the team: code, design, QA, sound, production all contribute as well.

Of course, seeing pictures in a dev diary is one thing, we can’t wait for you to get your hands on the full experience! As always, your feedback will help guide us as we continue to make content and improvements for CK3!

And for being good sports and reaching the end of the dev diary, here's links to some sweet wallpapers!
 

Attachments

  • DD28_council.mp4
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  • DD28_event.mp4
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  • DD28_combat_vid_1.mp4
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  • DD28_combat_vid_2.mp4
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  • DD28_western_castles.png
    DD28_western_castles.png
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I'm sorry that Constantinople was not as big in real life as you expected it to be.

I'm sorry that you have no clue what the problem is.

With only 2 city levels Constantinople and all other prominent cities of that time are visually no different than some random not totally poor city next door. There is only small city and large city.
 
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Great job for all the artist team !

I don't know if this topic was already discussed, but I think it would be great to have more designs for special units and the "knights". There's a print of the "knights" Baghaturs, but they don't look like Baghaturs, and i think that Huscarls and other "knights" of another cultures will be the same thing as this screenshot shows too.
View attachment 581882

Baghaturs looks something like this. It will be more immersive if we see the differences on the unit (special or not) of each culture. I don't know how difficult is to make this changes, but I think it would be very easy for this great team, you are really doing a amazing job guys, congratulations to all the team !
View attachment 581884

Im loving the artist team work, by the way ! Keep safe everyone !

Hopefully it's just pending artwork for the culture.
 
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And yet its a small, circular town which is hardly larger than the one on the other side.
Well, if you want them to reduce the size of the other towns and cities to reflect their historical size, that's fine, but they might get a bit small to tell what's a developed barony and what isn't.
 
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Looks good. The portraits definitely look better than the initial screenshots we saw from my PoV, now that they've gotten some polish.

Still iffy on the less artistic UI, but that's a subjective quibble. As I mentioned elsewhere before, the change reminds me of how the UI of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion - very stylistic and inspired by medieval and Renaissance styles - then became the UI of Elder Scrolls V Skyrim - very minimalist, modern, and bleak, with a slight but subtle touch of medieval style.

I do miss the event pictures, as event modding was one of my bread and butter "products" as a CK2 modder, but I can see why the devs want a focus on the characters themselves. Nevertheless I am happy some art will remain with the decisions at least.

That's all I can think of for now. I'll be interested in seeing more about character portraits (as modding them used to be one of my bread and butters when I first started CK2 modding).
 
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The most important consideration for the art like the holding models is that it quickly and clearly conveys the necessary information to the player visually, in this case the type of holding and upgrade level. Adding unnecessary clutter around the models that becomes distracting and muddles the information being conveyed, thus making the player require extra clicks to more clearly see the information that is intended to be displayed, would be a bad design decision.

I was going to say that the holding models overall could perhaps stand to be a bit bigger than they are now, but considering a county like Venice and its probably multiple baronies and holdings, I can see why the holdings had to be as small as they are on the map.
 
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UNITS
Our units are really cool! We were very enthusiastic about these, and really added quite a bit of detail. Let us know if you spot the nails that stick the shield handle into the shield at the back.

The units’ appearance is based on culture - We have Western European, Byzantine, Middle-east / North Africa, Pagans, Indian and Turko-Mongol.

A unit has three visual tiers, becoming more armor-clad and sophisticated as it progresses. So it was important for us to make sure a Tier 2 Byzantine looks equally as tough as a Tier 2 Turko-Mongol for instance.

They have a lot of spark to them as we added a lot of different animations, they cheer when they win, bang their shields during sieges and we make use of red liquid particles when they land some nice hits.

Culture, Tiers and Coat-of-arms colors and emblems make the Units look appropriate and unique. Here’s some examples:

View attachment 581771

Can you clarify why you have "pagans" listed as a culture group here?
There are different groups of pagans scattered all over the map, including inside some of the cultures you specifically mention as having their own unit models.

It doesn't entirely make sense for all of them to look the same, and since it's quite easy to end up with Western European cultured pagans (via Norse shenanigans), there's a conflict as to which models make sense.
 
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DD28_special_01.png

That Constantinople is looking kinda pathetic.

That Constantinople looks pretty accurate considering the size and scale of the map. Have any of you actually looked at the size of the Golden Horn vs. the Bosphorus Strait? I am as hardcore a Byzantinophile as anyone, and I say this looks pretty accurate for me. I bet you are just used to the urban scrawl covering the entire province unrealistically like it did in CKII.
 
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my own head cannon for the holding precise is just going to be like with every other grand strategy game that this is just my rulers war table and thats why the holdings looks like they do.
 
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That Constantinople looks pretty accurate considering the size and scale of the map. Have any of you actually looked at the size of the Golden Horn vs. the Bosphorus Strait? I am as hardcore a Byzantinophile as anyone, and I say this looks pretty accurate for me. I bet you are just used to the urban scrawl covering the entire province unrealistically like it did in CKII.
I think people just look at a wider map and assume that Constantinople covers the entire length of the Bosphorus. Never mind that not even modern Istanbul does that, and Istanbul has a population 20 times Constantinople had. For most of the time period CK3 covers, Constantinople's average population is more like that of modern day Bakersfield or Tulsa.
 
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I was definitely one of those people a bit nervous about the art when the game was first being revealed. However, I knew it wasn’t finished and had faith that you guys would do a great job.

Well, you guys proved worthy of that faith again. The art looks amazing and I have a feeling that I will find it hard to ever imagine going back to static portraits again. Great work and can’t wait to see it in action!!
 
Just a detail but it matter to me. I have a feeling that realm colors are too bright or too saturated (much more than colors on historical maps used to be). Which absolutely don't fit into somber mood of the game, as you've put it. Are colors fixed or are still subject to change?
 
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Can you clarify why you have "pagans" listed as a culture group here?
There are different groups of pagans scattered all over the map, including inside some of the cultures you specifically mention as having their own unit models.

It doesn't entirely make sense for all of them to look the same, and since it's quite easy to end up with Western European cultured pagans (via Norse shenanigans), there's a conflict as to which models make sense.

You are right, "pagans" isn't the most accurate name here as it isn't actually tied to religions, it's just a name we have used internally. It's more of a "Northern European" unit set, and is used by cultures like Norwegian, Lithuanian, and Finnish.
 
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The character and backgrounds are looking really good. I think they will really help with the role playing. Though I agree with others that the brightness could be turned up a bit.

I really like that the terrain map has so much useful, but still readable, information in it. On the whole Constantinople doesn't look big enough discussion. I think adding some extra housing to a settlement based on development would be a good way to make the map look more alive, but also give some more useful information. I think development is tied to the county, in which case I think you can just add the extra housing to the de jure capital of the county to make the county captial really pop.

But overall I think the art looks great and I love the direction it is going. It's a really nice balance of aesthetic and function.
 
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I really like everything in this diary... except the holdings on the map, they look really tiny because its just a castle instead of sprawling city like in Imperator, like Constantinople looks so tiny, while Rome in Imperator looks like a mega-city!
 
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I'm going to be pretty pissed if the game doesn't have 3d light and heavy cavalry models at launch. These are a must-have for steppe nations and for crusader armies!
I really want them to return because I play mostly hordes. Not seeing cav models in Imperator was very disappointing... I'm not trying to demand anything I just think it would immerse players more.
 
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I really like everything in this diary... except the holdings on the map, they look really tiny because its just a castle instead of sprawling city like in Imperator, like Constantinople looks so tiny, while Rome in Imperator looks like a mega-city!
The problem then is with Imperator Rome having way too much unrealistic city sprawl. But in Imperator that was a necessary abstraction to convey the gameplay-relevant information of a province's population size to the player.
 
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