IAA : Non Player Character

These screenshots shows our Non Player Character System. Sadly i don't have more pictures of that era.

We developed characters based on their socio-professional class. One body per socio-professional class than we could replace only the head, and move the skin from caucasian, to afro american via the shader system.

We got 3 body template M, L, XL that shared the same skeleton and the same skin with FaceFx (Unreal Facial Animation Integrated System).

Back in 2007, I was in charge of improving the character pipeline, and character quality of "I AM ALIVE" [Darkworks version].

What did i do ? :

-Hiring a new lead.
-Making Zbrush adopted by the team. [Yeah at that time Zbrush wasn't a standard yet].
-Set the production character workflow (Including 3 genre caucasian, asian, and afro american, and 3 corpulences M, L, XL that will share the same skeleton and the same skin with FaceFx (facial animation integrated system).
-Set the outsourcing workflow for characters including Modeling, Sculpting, Baking, Skining. (Outsourced in Ubisoft Shanghai).
-For that purpose Benoit Martinez [Art Director], Regis Capotosto [New Lead Character] and myself [Technical Art Director] built proxys meshes already skinned, that will allow artist to Skin faster. [With Skinwrap - transfer skin from mesh to meshes].
-I did basic character that will be used as proof of concept.
-Set Textures and memory budgets.
-Proove that we can achieve better result with less polygons and textures.
-Worked with Lead Animator Ingrid Sanasse to improve retargeting and skeltons.
-Wrote technical docs than once everything was "On track" i moved to Environment topic.

Model on this picture were made by the character team Jocelyn Zeller, David Bole, Yann Legal and Regis Capotosto [Lead]. Some parts were outsourced in Ubisoft Shanghai, the only contact i had with, was "Lee King". [Shanghai Lead].

My challenge was to make the outsourcing possible, with as much quality as the one made in House.
Even the producing didn't thrust it was. Until Regis and i proved it :-)