Call of Duty Modern Warfare: how the photogrammetry technique was used to improve the graphics

The aim of the Call of Duty Modern Warfare creative team was to produce a graphic that somehow recalled the earlier Call of Duty, beginning with Remastered, but at the same moment creating a sense of higher realism and allegiance. The photogrammetry method was used to accomplish these objectives. It is a method that enables a very comprehensive 3D model of settings and personalities to be obtained from distinct photographs taken from distinct perspectives.

This technique dates back to the mid-19th century, making comparative and accurate measurements using photographs, usually to accurately display a place, scene or object. Today it is primarily used to reproduce 3D polygonal models that are loyal to their true counterparts. "Take thousands of separate pictures from distinct angles of a specific space, insert them into magic software and you'll get a mesh that looks genuine," read a post released on Activision's blog and written by Joel Emslie, Art Director of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. "This is a room's 3D variant, right for the micron."

"The first results obtained by applying photogrammetry to the new Modern Warfare graphic engine were so impressive that the team wanted to achieve a goal: to apply photogrammetry to most Modern Warfare environments without altering the typical Call of Duty gameplay." At that point, the technicians of the Infinity Ward were searching for all the objects they could have photographed to insert them. Infinity Ward has developed and trained a team ready for this assignment, equipping it with the required facilities to take the pictures needed.

The artistic team was able to create very realistic environments using all the visual data collected using photogrammetry. Later, in the case of close-up shots, an additional layer of detail was added with a "tiling" technique to improve the quality of the objects. "When you are particularly near to objects, you notice the existence of the' tiling method,'" Emslie wrote. "You're likely used to 16 or 32 pixels per inch density, but we're going to have 64 pixels per inch here."
The engineers were able to activate 160-200 cameras on a single button, ready to photograph from distinct frames at the same time, depending on the situation. Approximately 6 hours of post-processing are required for each shot to get the final picture. Using the method, bodies, walls and houses were recreated. In the first case, in order to reproduce realistic war environments with a multitude of dead people lying on the ground, the same developers as Infinity Ward loaned themselves. The photogrammetry enabled the right skin nuances to be obtained immediately and the gravity of the scene to be rendered without having to dedicate any work.

The Infinity Ward team wished to offer an understanding of the gravity of circumstances and the reproduction of realistic and dirty environments required to do so. He walked to photograph bent metal structures, rusty pipes, heaps of ruined bricks and other picturesque components that might express the concept of destruction for these purposes. Such work was also performed to reproduce the tanks, which were photographed from all angles, even below, so that they could be lifted in some manner to position the cameras. The proportions between objects and characters components are thus loyal.

"With the advancement of the job, the team has become more creative in how to use photogrammetry, and some engineers have began to use drones to take better photos," Emslie continues. "We went to very big settings, we activated a drone and we started to bring home information about trees, coasts, hills and deserts. These data proved to be highly essential because the size of the recent games concentrations is greater than in the past."

"But having a realistic atmosphere and filling it with unrealistic personalities is not a excellent outcome. If we have a true atmosphere like a picture then everything else has to be real. If you insert a fictitious personality in a true setting, you get a powerful jarring."

"This photographed all the operators and characters in the game in a true photo shoot." The characters ' polygonal designs were made using a photographic projection method to make the dressing of armor or other parts of machinery realistic. "While watching another playable operator" (Zane) "we marveled at how he waved his tactical poncho, realistically interacting with the armor," Emslie remarks.

The same will apply to guns and equipment: everything was photographed in Call of Duty from a variety of perspectives to reproduce any item in the game as carefully as possible.