Phantom Liberty is the critically acclaimed expansion to CD Projekt Red’s expansive sci-fi role-playing experience, Cyberpunk 2077. Cyberpunk 2077’s world expanded with Phantom Liberty, which introduced new locations, missions, and weapons for players to enjoy. Magic Media is delighted we could lend our expert services to the project to ensure it was ready for players to experience.
Problem
For Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, our client required us to leverage our game art talents to work on the level of detail (LOD) of numerous in-game objects, including buildings, cranes, terrain, rock formations, and much more. LOD work is intricate and requires extensive knowledge of 3D game art to pull off successfully. It’s a common technique in modern game development that reveals different levels of detail on an object relative to the in-game camera’s distance – the closer the player is to an object it’ll show more detail and less detail when the player is further away from the object.
Solution
To tackle our client’s requirements, we assembled a team of 3D artists, quality assurance specialists, and more. We scaled our team depending on the project’s needs at any given time, with over 15 people working on the project at the team’s largest. At the beginning of the project, before we even started delivering our game art services, we established communication pipelines with CD Projekt Red so that any questions or issues could be communicated efficiently through Slack or Jira.
Our 3D game art services for this project necessitated us to use CD Projekt Red’s proprietary REDengine, something our client helped us with as we learned the ins and outs of the engine by providing exceptionally quick technical support. Our process began by extracting the asset from the REDengine, which we optimized as best as possible by using trims and overlaps and setting the LOD distances required for every object. Though this might sound like a straightforward process, we optimized countless objects of various descriptions that each had wildly varying parameters that required adjustments. We also baked the textures in-engine.
We worked closely with CD Projekt Red throughout our one-year collaboration. In particular, we worked closely with their environment and production leads to ensure that our work was consistent with the rest of the game.
Result
Our client was pleased with our game art services on Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. At launch, critics and players alike lauded Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty in basically every regard, but its technical state received particular praise. We’re delighted we could contribute to the project and that it received such a positive response.
