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…
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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
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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
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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 Porn
Crytek: Crysis
NaughtyDog: Uncharted/Drake
Tippett: 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
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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
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FBX 25
COLLADA 10
BIP 8
DCC File (MB, MAX, etc) 21
Proprietary 8
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
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 Hair
LucasArts: 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.