Electronic Arts is an American video game company. It is the second-largest after Activision Blizzard and ahead of Take-Two Interactive, CD Projekt, and Ubisoft.
Currently, EA develops and publishes games of established franchises, including Battlefield, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Army of Two, Titanfall, and Star Wars, as well as the EA Sports titles as well.
EA also owns and operates major gaming studios such as EA Tiburon, EA Vancouver, DICE in Stockholm and Los Angeles, BioWare in Edmonton and Austin, and Respawn Entertainment in Los Angeles.
And in todays video, we are going to take a look on the 3D Software that EA Uses when developing those epic games.
This company has many talented artists and many studios that use different software, so it is not going to be a clear-cut answer. It is like a spectrum of 3d software they use to get the job done in different parts of the production pipeline.
So the software that is being used not only depends on the studio but also depends on the position of the artists at the studio whether they are environment artists, character artists, animation artists, or even concept artists.
1- Character Artist:
Electronic Arts video games have always been known for having stunning characters, and there are hundreds of character artists all over EA studios who can do a fantastic job. Generally speaking, when creating characters for video games, EA character artists, almost always, are using Zbrush as a Sculpting tool, because it is very capable and it is basically the industry standard in Game development. It is used to create very intricate details like wrinkles, pores, and other details on the face and the body.
Also, the majority of those artists use Maya for general-purpose modeling, like retopology and creating other stuff.
When it comes to texture painting, they pretty much all use Substance Painter and sometimes Mari, even though it is not as popular in game development but films. The process of adding surface details and textures to game characters after they are modeled.
Substance Painter and Substance Designer, which are used to create materials became very popular and became industry standard in game development.
When it comes to creating clothes and other related details, they pretty much always use the very powerful software for this job, known as Marvelous Designer. This software was basically popular among clothes designers, but it very quickly made its way to entertainment, because it is very efficient, money, and time-wise. From basic shirts to intricately pleated dresses and rugged uniforms, Marvelous Designer can virtually replicate fabric textures and physical properties to the last button, fold, and accessory.
2- Concept Art / Concept Design
You might think that concept artists and concept designers at EA Studios don’t use 3d software to do their job, but in fact, they do. It is very important sometimes to get the perspective right and to save time when drawing, painting, or illustrating large scale environment that might include complex elements.
From what I have seen, the majority of concept artists at EA Studios use Photoshop. In addition to Maya or 3ds max and sometimes Blender as well.
3- Environment Artist
Environment art is a major part of all the modeling work that is being done in game development especially with EAs stunning and rich environments.
According to my information, EA’s environment artists use Maya a lot for modeling due to many reasons, but to be honest any major 3D software such as 3ds Max, Modo, or Blender can do the job just fine.
Usually, poly modeling software are used for most of the work but sometimes there is a need to create detailed environment elements, such as old buildings, statues, and other stuff that need more attention for details. For this job, EA’s environment artists use Zbrush to sculpt all the intricate details that are hard to create using poly modeling software. And of course, for texture painting and texturing work in general, Substance Painter and Substance Designer are a must-use software for environment art in addition to Quixel Suite sometimes because it is great, to say the least.
4- Character Animation
Autodesk Maya is a no-brainer in animation, especially in character animation. It is a very important part of any animator’s daily tasks at a game studio because it has very good tools that can be used to fill the needs of the animator whether it be a simple project or AAA video game at EA studios.
5- Game Engines
EA, like most major video game companies, is known for using its own in-house video game engines. So as you might have guessed, artists have to use the in-house game engines to put the video game together. And there are a lot of them. These game engines were created to suit the needs and the mechanics of different video games.
So here is a list of Electronic Art’s engines:
Ignite
The Ignite game engine is a collection of video game technologies built by Electronic Arts and designed to make video game sports “alive”. This is important for EA because sport video games have mechanics and the environments are very different.
Its Human Intelligence framework lets in-game players “think like real athletes”, with the ability to make snap judgments, prepare for impact, and perform as a team player.
The True Player Motion framework makes players’ bodies, limbs, and clothing, each move according to physics. The Living Worlds framework models the stadium audience members and their behavior, individually.
The audience will have expectations about the in-game sports matches and will react accordingly to the match’s progress. The Ignite artificial intelligence is able to use the next-gen hardware to handle four times as many calculations per second as older EA Sports titles.
Frostbite
Frostbite is a game engine developed by DICE, designed for cross-platform use. The game engine was originally employed in the Battlefield video game series, but would later be expanded to other first-person shooter video games and a variety of other genres. To date, Frostbite has been exclusive to video games published by Electronic Arts.
The first iteration of the Frostbite game engine made its debut in the 2008 video game, Battlefield: Bad Company. The engine was developed with an HDR Audio and Destruction. HDR Audio allowed differing sound levels to be perceived by the player whilst Destruction 1.0 allowed players to destroy the environment.
Frostbite 2 made its debut in Battlefield 3. it was also employed in Need for Speed: The Run. and in 2012 Medal of Honor: Warfighter became the first game of its series to feature Frostbite in both single and multiplayer. In 2013, Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel became the first third-person shooter and last video game to employ Frostbite 2.
When Frostbite engine 3 was developed it contributed to the development of many games over the year that came. And in 2019, sources within BioWare claimed that Frostbite’s complexity contributed to difficulties surrounding Anthem‘s development. The game was not received well by gamers because it had many issues that made the game unplayable at times.
And with all this being said, I hope you have now an idea of all of the 3D Software that EA Uses, and how it is making all the incredible games we are playing today.
