What were main focuses for your design?

The great thing about the FIFA World Cup is the fact that it always brings new stadiums that are built for the event.

The first thing we had to do was make sure we had all the reference material possible to build them accurately and efficiently. In addition to acquiring footage from our licensed partners, we sent photographers out to take photos of each stadium.

In many cases we took hundreds of photos to get absolutely accurate reference ranging from the way rafters look and the lighting standards on the pitch through to images of the bolts and hinges on the seats.

FIFA also gave us reference of how the graphics, such as the hoardings, and colours would be used in each stadium, so when people play the game, it will be accurate to the real event.

Also, as this is the FIFA World Cup and the biggest celebration of football every four years, we wanted to ensure we captured the festival atmosphere and ensuring our new 3D crowd to look and behave like the real thing. Fans throw streamers and confetti, as well as holding up giant flags in the crowd.

What were the challenges?

When you put a lot of detail into things like the players, their kits, and the pitch they play on - that doesn't leave a lot of room for things like balloons, fireworks, confetti, streamer, and flags.

We had to build our stadiums in a way that the best parts of the geometry were shown in gameplay cameras. That means putting less detail in the last row of the upper tier of seats, as opposed to the lower level seats, and paying attention to things like staff and photographers seen standing around the perimeter of the pitch.

When you're dealing with a video game, you've only got so much display memory that you can use at one time - so we had to re-think where to put the details in stadium. The end result is a great looking stadium, with lots of effects and a party atmosphere.

What technical tricks did you employ?

Aside from putting less polygons and detail in to the areas you don't see a lot in gameplay, we also worked on a new lighting engine for the game. We have day, night and dusk lighting conditions, with dusk being the most dramatic.

The sun will shine through the stadium gaps and cast accurately colored shadows on both the pitch and the crowd. Even the flags hanging in the rafters cast colored shadows on the crowd as our artificial sun shines through them. We also used depth of field to help focus on key areas of the stadium when viewing gameplay and the cut-scenes. This way we focus the gamers’ attention on the things that look best in each situation. Even our goal net has new physics applied, so each shot into the net will look more accurate than before.