by the way, I already answered to a lot of questions in my AC2 thread but i’m gonna reply for him on this one as i don’t know if he’s gonna check the thread often. The timeframe by character was btw 1 and 2 weeks during the production.
Nice job.
Since you probably worked in the same building, do you know the name of the artists that did the NEW characters for Splintercell Conviction ?
Such character in all of these! Just completely blown away by all of the variety and level of detail with so few polygons!
I do have a few questions for ya.
1.For characters such as the Barbagio family, the NPC woman below them the guy with the sword and the pope, did you wind up modeling the interior side of objects such as the kilt/dress/robes/arm sleeves or did you wind up using a double sided texture instead? If you did model them, how much of an issue was it to prevent clipping/what was done on the modeling side to help the rigging/weighting work properly?
2.Were there ever any alpha/depth sorting issues with the hair? If so, what were some of the workarounds used to bypass them?
3.Typically how many bones were in the rig for characters that have multiple overlapping objects (ex. the Pope or the barbagio family members)
4.How was the fur accomplished on the Pazzi guys robes???
5.It has been my experience that to get metal to look good in 3d productions for film/commercials it is highly dependant on the reflection. The diffuse element only comes into play when you want to have a tinted metal. In game production how do you create a metal that looks good in both sunlit areas as well as in shaded areas since there isn’t really any bounce light in shaded areas? Are omni lights used selectively to push the normal/specular elements so that the assets look good both in and out of the sunlit areas?? Any tips on creating believable metal like Azio’s blade would be greatly appreciated!
6.I’m sure everyone is dying to see the wireframes! Is there any way we could see those for these awesome characters?!
7.In game production what seems to be the best topological methodology for addresing areas of extreme deformation such as the shoulders?
8.You have very limited texture sizes so am wondering how you were able to achieve such fidelity in the texture work. (especially for things like the embroidery) Are you using tileable textures for these in many instances???
9.Lastly, these are fantastic renders for sure but is there any way we can see screen grabs from the game engine to provide a more realistic expectation as to what can be achieved with today’s game engine tech rather than just renders from max/mray? I know there are images on the web of gameplay but was hoping for something like what we are shown here, just in the engine instead of pre-rendered shots.
Thank you VERY MUCH to Ubisoft for allowing the artists to showcase their phenomenal work and for all the love and detail put into crafting such a high quality game and experience.
Thank you.
I’m not really a public relation kind of guy, I mean I appreciate all the sharing, and feedback and stuff, but you won’t heard a lot of me, I’m pretty quiet, just doing my job the best I can. You can check my linkedin page if you like, but there’s nothing fancy to be found, and I’ve got an old portfolio website (I really need to update it)…
nope, sorry… 2000+ people, in two différents buidings, can’t be friend with everybody!
That’s a lot of questions! Let’s try to be quick and precise…
- Some characters use double sided faces, some have a modeled thickness; no particular trick to avoid flicking, just enough space betwenn those, and a good rigger.
- Most of the hair stuff is done with punch-through alphas, black or white opacity map, when it’s possible, in order to avoid sorting issues; if not, when we have to use 8 bits alpha, the engine is responding to them just as Max do, so you have to create and rearrange them to look good, and trust me it can take hours!
- We start with about 140+ bones for a naked character, including the facial rig, you can add 20+ on top of that for overlapping clothes, and 10+ more if the character has realtime softbody such as a cape or a large dress…
- I’ve tried many techniques, including hair and fur, and splines, etc… but the old technique using pictures of animal fur and painting the alpha is still the best for me.
- We have a very good technical director, he may be able to puke a rainbow if someone would ask him… No kidding!
Truth is I create metal for ingame asset exactly the same way you could make it for a render: the specular map do pretty all the job! The normal map is quite useful to influence it too… - and 9. I’ll try to do some screen grabs of Zbrush, engine, and wireframes.
- usual stuff: quads, loops, more polys in the deformable area, nothing out of reach.
8.I use a lot of tileable texture for all the pattern work, and all the duplicate elements are using only one bit of it, for exemple the laces, or the trims… everything that looks pretty the same is actually the same, and then you can add variety with vertex color, or stuff like that.
Thank you for the good feedback, I hope my answers will provide you good intel!
ahahah
( 5. We have a very good technical director, he may be able to puke a rainbow if someone would ask him… No kidding! )
true … so true.
congrat.
these images are awesome! what can you tell about your workflow. especialy creating of the normal maps. what kind of soft you are using?
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You must try Hairfarm for doing hyper realistic hair, it’s amazingly fast compared to hair and fur and it’s 1000x time faster to do a detailed air cut, you are actually modeling your hair cut, so it’s as funny as modeling is 
Wow, possibly the best low-poly characters I’ve ever seen.
you guys have an incredible output :eek: . how much time did you spend on a head/body?
Great stuff
thanks everyone
Cral: about 1 or 2 days for a head, depending on the complexity of the haircut, and about 8 to 10 days for a whole body.
EricShawn: even maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen. period. This thread is legend, wait for it…, dary!
Big guns: I tried it, and it’s good stuff, but since you cannot render to texture and you have to cheat max to get a map of it, it’s useless for me.
Uber: pretty standard workflow, hi poly shapes in max, details in zbrush, retopologising to a low-poly version, bake in max, or zbrush using zmapper, or xnormal, or whatever, and texturing, using Ambient Occlusion, and Crazybump stuff. For the jewels, or fine détails, I use mental Ray to render the object, with a bit of reflection, something nice to look at, and using the same setup I render a normal map, and a little bit of photoshop tweakings later, I’ve got some nice diffuse, specular, normal and opacity map; i’ll show you an exemple of that if I can take some screenshot out of Ubisoft.
You can convert your haircut in poly so maybe use it. but for sur for the cinematic it’s good! I think they use XSI for the cinematic right?
Wow…another great set of inspirations!
Thanks very much for the reply! Really looking forward to the zb/engine/wireframes as you have time!
beautifull work! the faces are very impressive
hey, great job! nice work on portraying the costume design to 3d. 
Awesome work man. could you give a little detail about your process for modeling and sculpting clothes?
great work!!! i would love to see more …please post what you can
Awesome artistic stuffs!There r Lots of life in the characters.
As u have mentioned u used scan head for some character, how much work these scan data reduce for an artist? What r d major parts to tweek of a scan head to make it more lively?
Absolutely great !!! Awesome small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond