Tell us a bit about Criterion.

Criterion Games was formed in 1993 and is based in Guildford, UK. We develop world class video games for console games systems and have just shipped Burnout 3 for Playstation 2 and X-box which is receiving rave reviews. Our sister company Criterion software develops the middleware solution 'Renderware' which is used across the games industry. Previously owned by Canon, with the recent acquisition we will shortly become part of Electronic Arts.

Tell us a bit about yourself too

Well. My name is Pete Lake, I've got a passion for drinking vodka and usually end up dancing a little too crazily at parties, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

Back in the good old days of rubber keys and tape loaders I got my first taste of CG creating graphics for my home coded games. Although I soon realised that pixel art was much more fun than typing code and I've never been the same. Somewhere along the line I got fairly obsessed with animation, I think it was Rolf's Cartoon Club that did it. So when my PC came along and I discovered POV-ray I headed off, with graph paper in hand, to create 3D animations!

A few years later, at the ripe age of 16, I left school and managed to land a job getting paid to do 3D! I initially worked at a graphics company in South Wales producing models along with some multimedia kiosk systems. In 1996 Criterion Games took a chance on the kid from the country and I was put to work on their PC title 'Redline Racer' creating tracks, characters and vehicles (teams were small back then). From there I worked on numerous projects in various roles, primarily in animation and cinematics.

Fast forward to 2004 and I'm heading up the pre-visualisation department for Criterion. We've just finished work on Burnout 3, which was a blast - crashing cars all day never really gets boring.

When did you see LightWave 3D for the first time?

Back in '95 I think, does that sound right? One of my colleagues at the graphics firm, Jas, introduced me to it. I fell in love with the modeller, sub-patch work is just fun.

When did you first start using it?

I took a break from LightWave when I moved to Guildford in 1996 to start work at Criterion, although I did spread the word to a few of the artists. When Burnout 1 entered production back at the turn of the millennium, LightWave was chosen as the package of choice and is still here today.

What do you like about the package?

The accessibility it gives you to the mesh, games work requires you to get down into each polygon, tweaking each vertex and UV until they are just right. LightWave 3D makes that simple. The way Layout references all the scene objects is great for us, it means you can easily use multiple assets to set-up a scene. In fact, we use Layout as our game editing tool across the Burnout projects. Tracks are built in Modeler layers and then objects are placed inside Layout. The designers then add traffic flow and AI parameters before the track is exported straight into the game. With this pipeline we have a quick turnaround without the need to engineer separate editors for each area of development.

Personally, my work has moved away from the real-time into the world of pre-visualisation so I love the fact that LightWave is like an VFX house in a box. I can turn around shots quickly as everything I need is there in front of me. The way vertex maps and endomorphs are handled separately from the mesh is great, being able to go back and tweak your model without re-doing all that work saves days. The newly integrated hard FX are nice, quick feedback and great results - if only they had been there for my Burnout 3 work!