Technical Art Techniques:State of the Industry

Christopher Evans, Jason Parks, Judd Simantov, Paul Thuriot

Inserted Slide

• Data added to the original presentation is in yellow

• 290 people were in attendance, data is as accurate as time allowed

• We will add videos as our respective companies ok them for release.– Check back at: www.ChrisEvans3D.com

Overview

• High level discussion of technical art techniques used in everyday situations

• Overview of current ideas from different perspectives

• Designed to be driven by your interaction and feedback– The second half of the session will not work without

your participation– Because of this; we have organized incentives (read:

prizes!)

This Panel Is Not…

• A ‘normal’ panel presentation

• A group of post mortems or making-of’s

• Or even how-to’s and tutorials

• Packed full of images or videos

• Us dictating ‘how it should be done’

Who We Are..

• Christopher Evans– Technical Art Lead, Crytek

• Jason Parks– Such and Such, SCEA

• Judd Simantov– Art Technical Lead, Naughty Dog

• Paul Thuriot– Senior Technical Artist, Advanced Tech, LucasArts

Why We Are Doing This…

• Developers have roughly similar goals

• Everyone stumbles towards those goals in their own way

• No incentive for sharing knowledge.

• This panel is about Tech Artists sharing ideas and seeing how others dealt with their same problems

Show of Hands: Tech Artists

• How many current Technical Artists/Animators/Directors do we have in the audience? 145

• Aspiring Tech Artimators? 5

• How many working on a title? 217

• Work in R&D? 90

Show of Hands: Tech Artists

• How many feel you focus more on art? 100

• More on programming? 100

• Anyone feel like they are increasingly becoming a tools programmer? joke

Trends

• What has had the most recent impact on our field?

• What do you think will have the most impact in the next 5 years?

Next Gen Pipelines

• Challenges due to increase in quality and magnitude of work needed for next gen

• How automated is your pipeline?– How do you rollout DCC tools updates?

NaughtyDog: Animation Tools

• Getting DCC apps to work together– Math as a common language

Driven relationship example: barycentric blending

Show of Hands: DCC Apps

• Maya 145• 3DS Max 145• XSI 12• Modo 1• Lightwave 5• C4D 0• Blender 0• Mario Paint joke• Did we miss anything?

Show of Hands: Specialty Apps

• MotionBuilder 20

• MudBox 70

• ZBrush 80

• FaceRobot 0

• Deep Paint 3

• CAT 5

• Proprietary asset creation tools 3

Character Rigging

• Animation rigs and 'deforming' rigs– Game characters can deform in realtime, so do you

even separate?– Special non-game 'cinematic' rigs

• Do you lock down rigs?• Syncing DCC functionalities (constraints, etc)

– DCC SDK tools programmer bottleneck?

• Rig PornCrytek: CrysisNaughtyDog: Uncharted/DrakeTippett: Hellboy/Abe Sapien

Deformation

• Helper Joints– Driven at runtime or baked into animations?

• New skinning algorithms– Engine support requires DCC app support!

• Baking arbitrary deformation to bones– Poor man’s solution video– Ideal solution

• Auto-generation of n weighted, pose-driven joints

Animation

• State Machines– animGraph, morpheme, etc

• Blending to simulation– Hit reactions, Fall & play– Runtime IK (HumanIK)Crytek: fall & play

• Interaction with a physical world– Authoring in-game canned anims in a DCC

app

Show of Hands: Animation

• Keyframe only 35

• Primarily mocap 30

• Steady mix of both 30

• Used facial mocap in a shipped title? 1(Heavenly Sword Dev)

Show of Hands: Animation Data

• FBX 25

• COLLADA 10

• BIP 8

• DCC File (MB, MAX, etc) 21

• Proprietary 8

Facial Rigging

• Bones vs. Shapes: The Great DebateNaughtyDog: Bone-Driven Facial Rig, video

LucasArts: Hag’s Head ILM, Hag’s Head x360

Crytek: Crysis shape set (98)

• How do you create your shapes?LucasArts: CloneCam

• Driven facial bones/shapes/mapsCrytek: fleshy eyes

Facial Animation

• Motion capture vs. Hand keyed– Direct control vs. Sliders and Joysticks

Crytek: image-based mocap, video

– Vertex animation (Universal Capture) EA: Fight Night Round 3

• Where do you create/edit animation data?

Physics and Simulation

• Experiences with Havok, Endorphin, etc– How to author behavior through controllers

LucasArts: Endorphin_crate, Endorphin_slope

• Asset creation in a physical world– Proxy detail– Authoring/testing can be tedious

Crytek: rope bridge break, rope bridge ai pathfind

• Cloth and HairLucasArts: Cloth Solver x360

Aesthetic Overkill

• In your experience, what visual technologies have really paid off, and which have been overkill?

Show of Hands: 10 Min Break

• “Sure, I could stretch the legs”

• “No, it’s our turn now!”

Your Turn - You Can:

• Comment on one of the topics pulling examples from industry experience– How did you deal with a similar issue

• Steer the conversation to a new topic

• Ask us a questions– Ask for an image or video to be brought back

• Get your mic privileges revoked by the moderator

But You Said Prizes!?

• If you contributed to the session, come on up afterwards

• You are speaking for the benefit of the audience!

Rate Our Talk!

• Especially if:– You want more technical art sessions at GDC– You thought you (audience) did a good job– You liked the session

• Things to remember:– We gave you prizes

• Show of hands numbers and slides are online at GDC site.