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GLBInterview with Skywind Project's 3D Lead on the Team's Massive Contribution
1Article by Yuri Ilyin
The Elder Scrolls Renewal Skywind, or simply Skywind, is a long-running community project aimed at a total recreation of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind game in the more modern Skyrim: Special Edition engine.
Morrowind is, by all means, a classic RPG that still has significant traction and a formidable modding community NexusMods lists 13.2K mods for Morrowind. That's 8 times fewer than Skyrim: Special Edition, which boasts 109.5K mods available, but the new mods for Morrowind still arrive and/or get updated even now, 23 years since the original release.
Of course, Morrowind is very dated today, and not just graphics-wise. Aside from the modernized graphics, Skywind project brings in the new sounds, a full cast of voice actors, and 'all the benefits of fifteen years of gaming improvements'. Yet the characters, locations, and quests that made the original Morrowind stand out are mostly being left intact.
RenderHub sat down with Zix, one of the project's 3D leads, to talk about both games, the technology, and the challenges of running such a huge community project.
RenderHub: How long has Skywind been in development so far? Are we going to see the final release in the near future?
Zix: Release dates are always a rough estimate for any team, and as a volunteer project, we think it's unnecessary. We want to release as soon as we can, and that always affects our decisions on scope, but we're not going to compromise on quality to accomplish that. Factors like how many people will be working on the project in, say, a month's time, or how much time they'll have, or which skill sets they'll bring to bear, are unknowable.
Predicting a release date would mean possible crunch time for volunteers and possible disappointment for fans. We want to avoid both of those things. Once we're in the final stages, we'll have more to say, and we're sure to be vocal about it; we can't wait to reach that stage.
In terms of the projects age, Skywind has arguably been in development since before the release of Skyrim, as members of the Morroblivion project had already effectively laid the groundwork, and many of them formed the original Skywind team. I cannot overstate how big an undertaking the project is - it's truly enormous for a group of fans and players to take on. But, as ever, we're up to the challenge.
RenderHub: Approximately, how many people have been involved over these years? How long, on average, have they been staying?
Zix: As a conservative estimate, over 1,600 people have contributed to the project. The early days of Skywind were a real Wild West, so the real number could be substantially higher than that. It would be very difficult to estimate how long the average person stays on with the project, just because of the volunteer nature.
RenderHub: What do you think is the primary challenge for projects like this, management wise?
Zix:I think if you asked fifteen department leads, you'd get fifteen different answers! Two common themes among departments would definitely be motivation and work management. Everyone who ends up taking responsibility for a department is someone who joined because they were enthusiastic about their specific work area. Taking on the job of orchestrating, rather than, say, 3D modeling, level design, or voice acting, can be grueling.
Managing public expectations is also tricky - misinformation spreads like wildfire and our own scope can change based on resources, so over-promising is a real risk, but at the same time, we love to share what we've been doing, and the community loves to see it. It's always a balancing act.
RenderHub: What are the main factors that accelerate or hamper the progress of projects like Skywind?
Zix: Resource bottlenecks are a big one. Our quality bar is very high, so we're quite demanding of our applicants in order to ensure that Skywind is everything it could be. For niche positions, like 3D clothing artists or visual effects artists (volunteer now!), the number of people who are both interested and suitable is often quite slim, and this can have a knock-on effect on downstream departments.
This is compounded by the project being completely volunteer-based. We all use our free time to make Skywind, which varies vastly with each person at any given time.
RenderHub: What were the hardest issues the team had to face over these years? And how have they been solved?
Zix: I mentioned earlier the anarchic early days of Skywind. We've learned the hard way that proper quality controls and long-term, inter-team planning can not only help us be vastly more productive, but also massively reduce reworked or cut content. Organization and proper decision-making go a long way in making a coherent-looking and feeling final product that everyone on the team can be happy with. That last notion can be especially challenging.
RenderHub: Do changes in tech affect the progress? The technology has changed significantly since 2011, and so are the expectations of the players regarding the graphics. Is this being addressed some way or another?
Zix: Our project has always been to recreate Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. There's no opportunity to change that plan in a major way - the Starfield engine, for example, isn't something we could just port to. So, changing technology doesn't really affect us.
Fortunately, Bethesda made significant improvements with the release of Skyrim: Special Edition that widened the scope for graphics and performance improvements and allowed for a much less austere approach to development. We work hard to overcome barriers, often leveraging the accomplishments of the remarkable and ever-enthusiastic wider Skyrim modding community. Even though Skywind is certainly not comparable to brand-new AAA titles, we've pushed the engine to its limits.
RenderHub: Can you specify some of the improvements in Skyrim Special Edition? Particularly the most helpful ones?
Zix: Skyrim: Special Edition (SSE) introduced an updated 64-bit Creation Engine (over the old 32-bit version), greatly increasing RAM allowances. This grants the ability to use higher-resolution textures, higher-poly count meshes, and so on.
The game generally crashes much less frequently and runs far smoother by being able to handle more activity, whether it's the number of draw calls or the number and complexity of scripts being run by the engine. Many other minor improvements that Skyrim could have used at the original launch were added to SSE, such as slightly better occlusion and anti-aliasing.
RenderHub: Are there any 3rd party community mods used by the Skywind team? Like, patches, fixes, or even graphics content?
Zix: We use a handful of community-made mods, ensuring that we have permission from the original mod author(s). They are typically very small-scope mods that would save a headache on our end, like an objective improvement to a book mesh that is used all over the game or an improved visual effect from base Skyrim. Oftentimes, Skyrim-specific patches and fixes don't apply to our project since we are not using what would be patched or fixed in the first place, such as a broken quest or a poorly mapped armor UV. We have our own bugs to introduce (and fix)!
RenderHub: What is the hardest part, content-wise, to produce? How much does it ease development and why?
Zix: This answer will depend on the person or group of people you ask. For me, I think upkeeping the classic armor system is very challenging. I have to ensure that every piece of armor or clothing plays nice with each and every other adjacent armor or clothing piece. For example, every cuirass has to physically function with every pair of greaves and every pair of pants. There cannot be any permutation of armor/clothing that creates weird clipping, otherwise an artist's work would be looked down upon by the player due to the poor implementation.
RenderHub: Screenshots from the Skywind showcase some very lush foliage. Has it all been created by hand or something like SpeedTree has been used?
Zix: Some of our artists have used SpeedTree in the past, yes. Some foliage has been made by hand though. Each foliage artist had or has their own preferred methods for making something that would look good once implemented. The biggest challenge is making everything be presented coherently and consistently (i.e. branch and/or leaf density).
RenderHub: Are there any, let's say, unorthodox, rare or outright obsolete tools that the team has to use in the pipeline? And if so, what has made them a necessity?
Zix: We are constantly having to use third-party, community-made tools, such as Nifskope, Outfit Studio, or NifUtilsSuite. The Creation Engine requires such a unique method of integrating assets.
Unlike Unreal Engine, for example, a 3D artist is unable to drag and drop an fbx, obj, or even a png file into the game. There are several conversion programs needed to translate those file types into something readable by the engine, each one just as niche for sometimes extremely specific functions.
All of these tools are community created and updated, so we are definitely using unorthodox methods.
I wouldn't say we use obsolete 3D software though - just outdated techniques in that software. We can still use Substance Painter/Designer, Maya, and so on! Skyrim's version of Creation Engine is too old for PBR textures, for example, so we have to settle with older metal-roughness texturing workflows with rigid cube-maps.
RenderHub: At the end of the day, just how much Skywind will be different from Morrowind (given the age of the latter and its dated mechanics), and in which regards? Are there any traits in the original game that are no longer considered acceptable and that had been fixed in Skywind?
Zix: This is a huge question that would have a huge answer! I would encourage anyone interested to head over to our discord server and view the FAQ to get a quick rundown of some key things that may be different or the same. I don't personally find any of the mechanics 'outdated', they are just a product of their time and appeal to different people (I am one of them)!
An example of a dropped mechanic is the chance to hit/miss on a weapon swing, while an example of a mechanic retained is the classic armor system. Some dungeons have been overhauled to make their experiences feel more impactful and unique. Some dialogue has been overhauled to make it sound more natural in a game with voice acting (non-repeated terms). And so on There is always a conversation involved for whether something is going to change; nothing is arbitrarily changed just for the sake of being different.
RenderHub: Has the Skywind team been in contact with Bethesda? Has it affected the project in some way?
Zix: We've only had informal contact with Bethesda, but it's all been supremely positive. We're elated that they've been enthusiastic and supportive of our work, but we don't have any formal relationship with them. Near the start of the project, there were early chats that clarified modding policies, which have been useful in directing our efforts.
RenderHub: Do you plan to retain the original music by Jeremy Soule (most importantly, his Nerevar Rising theme)?
Zix: We are unable to redistribute original Morrowind files. Luckily, however, Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC re-released a lot of Morrowind's soundtrack into the 2012 expansion as Skyrim files, which we can use in Skywind.
Jeremy Soule's Nerevar Rising is not a track that we plan to use, as one of our own composers - Fredrik Jonasson - has created his own rendition of the classic piece specifically designed for Skywind. We currently have it playing on our Main Menu. Here is a link to that.
RenderHub: One last question: do you think the core members of the team eventually form some commercial entity like Crowbar Collective has done in the past?
Zix: Skywind will always be a free project. Core members of the team do have a great working relationship, but whether any of us launch a new project isn't something we've discussed or planned.
RenderHub: Thanks a lot, and good luck with your endeavor!
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