Widescreen Test Pattern (16:9)

Aspect Ratio Test

(Should appear
circular)

4x3

16x9
Play the cut scene:
The Characters of
INTRODUCTION
Abdenour Bachir
Senior Character artist at Crytek
VIDEO
 Two part session
Character art
Technical Art/Animation
Character Art Overview
Look Development
Challenges
New pipelines
Practical example
Facial art Pipeline
RYSE: CHALLENGES
New IP
New Team
New Console
movie Quality
First Day release
18 month production
RYSE:
Character art
Look dev
Character art look
developement
New Tech, New Practices
P.B.R.
Real Time cloth simulation
Hair tech
Cloth
P.B.R.
Physically Base Rendering
1. More realistic
P.B.R.
Physically Base Rendering
1. More realistic
2. One material fits all
P.B.R.
Physically Base Rendering
1. More realistic
2. One material fits all
3. Unified Pipeline
HAIR
No constrained workflows
Based on Artist preference
Model specific
Heavily rely on Ornatrix for 3dsmax
Powerful and versatile
Generate High and game mesh with same setup
VIDEO
VIDEO
VIDEO
CLOTH
New system
Powerful and easy

Simulation drive render mesh

Per character Physics Proxies

Option to use alembic cache

CLOTH

VIDEO
RYSE:
Practical Example
CONCEPT
REFERENCE

LOTS OF REFERENCE
WHITEBOX
BASEMESH
Making the HIGH-REZ
Models are split In parts
Multiple subtool per part

Up to 4 Million polygons per subtool

Can easily reach 130 million polygons per character

Making the HIGH-REZ
Making the HIGH-REZ
Base sculpt
Specific damage

General damage

Surface noise
Getting ready for TEXTURING
Bring Uved basemesh in editor
Set basic materials
TEXTURING THE HIGH-REZ
Textures Authored at 4K
Basic set of 4 Channels (DIFF/GLOSS/SPEC/NORMAL)

Characters can have a total of 144K texture resolution

TEXTURING THE HIGH-REZ
PBR ready Base textures
zbrush masks
Split materials in layers
Apply masks to layers
GAME MESH
Character
based
LOD0 budget varies from 40K tris to 160K tris
GAME MESH
Character based
LOD0 budget varies from 40K tris to 160K tris

Most main character have no further LODs

Use the Basemesh as a starting point

Up to a week to complete
TEXTURE BAKING
Time consuming
Hundreds of Parts per character
Each part contains at least 3 channels
(DIFF/SPEC/GLOSS)

XNJOB was born

XNJOB
INGAME TEXTURES
Authoredat 4K
Game resolutions info in .tiff
CRYTIFF makes reduction easy
3 textures
DIFF/SPEC/DDNA
GLOSS and NORMAL MAP coupled
CHARACTER MATERIALS
ILLUM shader for general use
Can be used for everything
Has a screen space SSS option
HUMANSKIN Shader for high fidelity skin
Has a very realistic SSS
Can have Translucency map
EYE SHADER
Lens distortion
Iris self-shadowing
SSS approximation
Facial Pipeline
A character art POV
Consideredseparate characters
Own shader and pipeline R&D

Photogrammetric base
 RAW NEUTRAL SCAN
UNIFIED MESH ON SCAN
 CLEAN UP
CHARACTERISATION
 Sample Skin tones
color variation

specific details

Skin weathering

Pores and wrinkles

VIDEO
ATLAS MAP
Based on Wrinkle Mask
6 area per channel

Up to 24 areas

Unlimited wrinkle maps

Wrinkles based on multiple scanned poses

WRINKLEMAN

+
WRINKLEMAN

=
VIDEO
THANK YOU.
RYSE:
CHARACTER
TECHNOLOGY
RYSE PILLARS
Play the cutscene
No cutscene rigs
Huge scope
15 Story Characters
120mins (C3: 4 Story Chars, 30mins)
Hand-crafted feel
Characters fit, are consistent
Talented artists arent relegated to
cleaning scan data Oct 2012, Durango Kit

Performance matters
Actors cast for voice/body/face
TECH CHALLENGES
Play the cutscene
Universal rigs
New Pipeline
FirstMaya project
Virtual Production

Story-driven game
Lots of hero chars
RYSE: CHARACTER PIPELINE
Modular rigging/encapsulation
Character,
Character Part, Rig Part
Python-generated

Outsourcing!
How to innovate?
Scene description file format
Virtual production data wrangling
MARIUS ON XBOX ONE
~85k Triangles
> 815 Joints
~585 deforming (260 facial)
250 Corrective Facial Blendshapes
Culled by priority and distance

BLEND IN / OUT
CHARACTER PHYSICS
Physicalized Joints [~70]
Hinge, cone, prismatic, plane
Cloth, Leather, Armor, Muscle, Fat

Cloth
Sim mesh drives render mesh
Runtime wrap deformer
Targets
animation [evade]
[Examples] [Editor]
CRYTEK GEOMCACHE PIPELINE
Imports Alembic
No engine-specific markup

Average filesize ~10% of the original ABC size

Renders as efficiently as static geometry

Lossy-to-Lossless

Supports instancing, streaming, buffered playback

[MAYA PIPELINE VIDEO], [EXAMPLES]

FACIAL PIPELINE
 FACES
FACS-based rigs
Scan reliant
art can deviate ~20%

Oct 2012, Durango Kit

 FACES: TO RIG OR NOT TO RIG?
Why not use 4D scanning?
Seated capture
Not editable
Inconsistent
Doesnt support LOD / doesnt scale
No dynamic playback
Lips and eyes
Low resolution
Memory intensive
Drive 4D Data with Puppets
Hable/Debevec - Next-Gen Characters: From Facial Scans to Facial Animation
Researched but not used on in final Ryse pipeline
FACS:
What the hell is an
Action Coding System?
AU 15 AU 17 AU 15+17

AU 15+17+10
AU 12 + AU 6 AU 12
Robotic to genuine: A few millimeters
 ACQUISITION
Photogrammetry (AgiSoft)
Record skin sliding and
neck
5 Hour specialized FACS
scan session
 FACES
FACS-based rigs
Scan reliant
art can deviate ~20%
260 Joints
SKEL LOD: 260,70,10
~250 driven blendshapes
Keeps rig on model Oct 2012, Durango Kit
~85 firing at any given time
Up to 200,000 vtx deltas/frame computed
FACIAL TECH
8 Skinning Influences
Tangent update
FACIAL TECH
8 Skinning Influences
Tangent update
Levels of detail
260 joints 230 shapes
260 joints (8inf)
70 joints (4inf)
<10 joints
Marius has no LODs
PREPRO VIDEO
FEB BTS
FINAL FACE MRUS
JOINTS

*UNLIT TEST ASSET

JOINTS
JOINTS
CORRECTIVES
CORRECTIVES
[VIDEO]
TANGENT UPDATE
[PHYS JOINTS]
COL TRAN
 STUFF DOES GO
HORRIBLY WRONG
MAKING OF BTS PCAP CINEBOX BTS
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY [ORAC]
ORAC BTS
GLOTT BTS
All characters
share the same
basic rig modules.
Same fidelity.
[COMBAT]
THANK YOU.
SPECIAL THANKS!
TECHNICAL ART PROGRAMMING CHARACTER ART
Frederic Lierman
Riham Toulan Nicolas Schulz Lars Martinsson
Sascha Herfort Axel Gneiting Hanno Hagedorn
Florian Reschenhofer
Harald Zlattinger Bogdan Coroi
Rock Lee Wang
Alex Raab Ivo Herzeg Hyejin Moon
Franco Bresciani Andy Rayson Chris Goodswin