GDC 2001: Turbine demos its latest engine

At the Game Developers Conference this afternoon, Turbine demonstrated the way character models and environments will appear in their new graphics engine to illustrate the versatility of its homegrown toolset, which was developed within the Maya environment.

While the actual demonstrations were brief, we were able to get a good glimpse of some of the in-game characters and environments. The character model took the form of a slender humanoid female, and it showed a wide range of walking animations. The model's textures--which included impressive thick hair, smooth skin, and rough snakeskin pants--looked incredibly sharp.

When placed in the environments, however, the character looked much more impressive. The first environment resembled a sort of arboreal grassland whose tall grass swayed, in real time, with the wind. Populating the environment were sets of trees, identical in appearance, whose branches swayed along with the grass. The environment was lit in real time, with smooth shadows granting them a tangible feeling of life. The effect was doubly impressive when the character was placed in the environment--lights and shadows would bounce off her contours, creating an astounding impression of realism.

The second environment Turbine displayed was a dungeon setting. Its feel was suitably dark and dank, and harsh columns lined both sides of the hallway the demo opened with. Again, the environment was impressively lit, with warm patches of light illuminating the otherwise dark nooks. Turbine eventually ventured out of that hallway and moved toward a spiraling ramp that presumably led to a lower level of the dungeon. The ramp in question was made up of impressively curvilinear surfaces, and, when the camera was aligned properly, we were allowed to see that it wound down quite far.

We managed to shoot some video of Turbine's demo, so you will soon be able to witness all of this first-hand.