It seems like the next big thing in the computer science of games is Automated Art Generation (a term I made up). While most companies know that generating art is one of the most costly part of making a game (typically significantly more than paying for any programming), recently a few big names have realized that there is, in fact, something that we can do about it.

Epic plans to release an AAG for outdoor maps with their Unreal 3 engine (source: Maximum PC Magazine). A 3D modeller will simply have to sculpt the landscape, deciding what the elevation of different points are, and the AAG will automatically recognize the "signatures" of various terrain types, and apply textures and vegetation automatically. Create a gently slopping surface, and the AAG will recognize this to be a hill, and add a grassy texture. Create a surface that sharply drops off, and the AAG will say "Hey, this is a cliff!" and add rocky textures. Obviously, the AAG will have a set of grass textures which it will apply randomly to create a sense of variation, as opposed to tiling the same grass texture over and over again, making the tiling points obvious.

Microsoft has patented an AAG which presumably will be released with the development kit for the XBox 2 console. "The example given of this in the patent is setting a processor to work on generating a realistic tree using geometry data for a leaf and physics data for the world around the tree - technology which would relieve much of the huge burden which generating art resources for next-generation games presents to developers." A spokesperson for Microsoft said: "Art is the highest cost component of game development, and so much of the art is really repetitive and really intensive, and then doesn't come out to be very realistic. You know, bricks in a wall - very repeated textures. Let's go write the brick program and run the brick program to make a room full of bricks, lose the art expense and gain a more realistic looking room, because now we can focus on having the bricks there in a really realistic way."