The Venues in Fight Night Round 4

Jen Freeman, Art Director for Fight Night Round 4, brings us more insider info on the graphics in Fight Night Round 4 with a focus on the venues in the game.

There were a few reasons why we picked the venues we put in the game, firstly we wanted to make sure every one of them was authentic and had some historical value and meaning to boxing. We also wanted to create a lot of variance in the feeling of every venue you went into, from East Coast to West Coast USA, and then onto the UK and all the way to the Philippines. Variance in the size of the venues was also important from the 19,000 seated New York arena down to the 3,500 seated State Palace theater and even the 30 people in the crowd venue of the Windy City gym.

Here are screenshots and some info on a few of our venues in the game. 

Click on all images to enlarge.

Boardwalk Hall

Atlantic City

Seating – approx 14,770
Some of the fights in this venue….
o    December 7, 1963, Richard D Tiger vs. Joey Giardelli, WBC, WBA Middleweight Title Giardelli w. decision in 15th round
o    January 22, 1988, Mike Tyson vs. Larry Holmes, WBA, WBC, IBF Heavyweight Title Tyson w. TKO in the 4th round
o    June 7, 2008, Kelly Pavlik vs. Gary Lockett, WBC/WBO Middleweight Championship Pavlik w. TKO in the 3rd round

Thomas and Mack

 Las Vegas

Seating – approx 20,000
Some of the fights in this venue….
o    The largest crowd at Thomas & Mack Center was 19,566, for Julio Cesar Chavez vs Hector Camacho, September 12, 1992.
o    Other famous fights include Evander Holyfield vs Lennox Lewis, November 13, 1999,
o    Manny Pacquiao vs Erik Morales III, November 18, 2006

 MGM Grand

Las Vegas

Seating – approx. 17,000
Some of the fights in this venue….
o    April 7th , 2001 - Naseem Hamed vs. Marco Antonio Barrera,
o    September 18th , 2004 - Oscar De La Hoya vs. Bernard Hopkins
o    May 2nd, 2009 – Ricky Hatton vs. Manny Pacquiao

Here are some shots of what we call our ‘generic’ venues:

Royal London Theatre

 Metro Manila

Lighting design

If you look at a lot of broadcast footage, and photos, the crowd is lit really bright. We looked at possibly lighting the game like this but found that the boxers tended to get lost in the background, the crowd became too busy looking and took the focus away from the boxers. After all, if you are playing the game it needs to be really clear that you are throwing a punch and you need to see where your opponent is and when they are going to throw a punch. We needed to keep the crowd and the venue dark, so the boxers pop, but we also needed to see the venue itself. No one wants to be playing in a black void. We created a lighting set-up where there were bright pools of light on the crowd, the exits and the identifying parts of the venue. The brightest parts of the crowd were right at the front near the boxer’s feet and the darker parts were around their arms and heads – By using this technique, the most important parts of the boxers looked clearer when you were playing the game.

Authentic venues

We did a lot of reference gathering and  research to make sure each venue was accurate, including trips out to gyms and also one to Vegas. On our Vegas trip, producer Mike Mahar, me and our lead environment artist Stephen Rowe, went to Thomas and Mack and the MGM Grand. We were allowed into T&M for a boxing event last year and were able to take photos of the venues before the boxers got in the ring and the crowd started to fill it up.

Here are some shots of Stephen, Mike and I taking texture and structural reference material. Stephen was then able to take these photos to model the geometry and apply the textures onto that geometry.