Technical Art Techniques: State of the Industry

1. Technical Art Techniques:State of the Industry Christopher Evans, Jason Parks, Judd Simantov, Paul Thuriot

2. 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

3. 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!)

4. 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’

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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?

10. 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

11. 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?

12. Show of Hands: Specialty Apps • MotionBuilder 20 • MudBox 70 • ZBrush 80 • FaceRobot 0 • Deep Paint 3 • CAT 5 • Proprietary asset creation tools 3

13. 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 Porn Crytek: Crysis NaughtyDog: Uncharted/Drake Tippett: Hellboy/Abe Sapien

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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)

17. Show of Hands: Animation Data • FBX 25 • COLLADA 10 • BIP 8 • DCC File (MB, MAX, etc) 21 • Proprietary 8

18. Facial Rigging • Bones vs. Shapes: The Great Debate NaughtyDog: 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/maps Crytek: fleshy eyes

19. 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?

20. 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 Hair LucasArts: Cloth Solver x360

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

22. Show of Hands: 10 Min Break • “Sure, I could stretch the legs” • “No, it’s our turn now!”

23. 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

24. But You Said Prizes!? • If you contributed to the session, come on up afterwards • You are speaking for the benefit of the audience!

25. 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.