Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

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Manticor
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Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by Manticor » 21 Dec 2012, 18:51

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/far-cry-3-digital-survivors/

I read this and saw that they developed their own gator like tools for max and maya.
Almost everything could have been accomplished easily with SI .
I'm just wondering ,why didn't they use si .surely it would have saved a lot of development time .I can't imagine Ubi not knowing the capabilities of SI.
but it also shows how far ahead SI is over the big 2 if ubi have to develop tools that have been standard in soft for over half a decade .
Makes me cry to see the best tool being left on the wayside and forgotten about.
I wish someone like pixologic would just buy soft .they probably would get a good deal seeing as how autodesk has been faring of late.

Bullit
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by Bullit » 21 Dec 2012, 19:51

Here we go again.

Only knowing both tools a reliable opinion can be said.

EricTRocks
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by EricTRocks » 21 Dec 2012, 21:56

It's not the first or last time someone has done this. Resemb ger when the softimage team had a 3dsmax plugin that did similar stuff.
Eric Thivierge
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Clagman
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by Clagman » 21 Dec 2012, 22:07

It's possible that the vast majority of the work needed to be kept in a Maya pipeline for various reasons. Ended up being less work to develop a tool in Maya than to try to incorporate a new software into the pipeline to gain one feature (no matter how cool).

Manticor
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by Manticor » 22 Dec 2012, 10:51

I was thinking the same thing .Maybe its also having few people who know softimage anyway.Takes time to get to know the ins and outs of a tool.
But even so I think the article does highlight the fact that softimage is a lot more robust than the others. :-bd

Bellsey
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by Bellsey » 22 Dec 2012, 19:02

Clagman wrote:It's possible that the vast majority of the work needed to be kept in a Maya pipeline for various reasons. Ended up being less work to develop a tool in Maya than to try to incorporate a new software into the pipeline to gain one feature (no matter how cool).
I think this is a very good point and typical for games studios. Many have long and established pipelines and tools around a particular 3D package, so it sometimes isn't easy to throw another one in the mix. Some do though and it depends on many factors.
I know that Ubisoft have used Max as their 3D package for alot of their game dev work for sometime, long before Softimage became part of Autodesk. Although Hybride uses Softimage, and they're now owned by Ubisoft.

mirkoj
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by mirkoj » 25 Dec 2012, 23:04

Modeling and Rigging summary

Start with motion capture from an actor who has a predetermined face structure.
From motion capture the next stage is Motion Builder, but that needs an asset.
There is a tool from importing the facial rig, skeleton and skinning, it transfers skin weights from another character 1:1 vertex matching.
Use FBX to move that file to Maya to use Maya’s skin weight tools, and then transfer that back (in-house format) to DCC tools (Max or Maya).
Then send the whole model to Motion Builder for rigging and animation in Motion Builder, and via some custom code then export the facial rig from Max and also inport that facial rig into Motion Builder.
Now it is time to add motion capture data. The body motion is transferred directly and the facial animation is transferred via the in-house Mocam tool again into Motion Builder.
Then an animator reviews and starts polishing.


Anyone that saw even basic character rig and animation tutorial for SI can only laugh at this kind of workflow... I mean c'mon :)
GATOR, MOTOR, Facerobot and great reference files workflow and you can do all of those in single package with amazing non-linear workflow.
Not to mention that Maya skin weight painting is huge pain compared to SI enveloping.. or I'm only one crazy enough to claim that?

It is really sad feeling being pushed aside all the time and with some of the latest very grim info we can only cry feeling so helpless seeing what is going on.
No not another flame starting thread but facts are facts..

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csaez
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by csaez » 25 Dec 2012, 23:31

They are just using Motion Builder for MOCAP and some in-house tools to import/export rigs through the pipeline.

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McNistor
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by McNistor » 27 Dec 2012, 00:14

@mirkoj

Yes, it's pretty sad to see so many studios running in circles because of their pipeline, not that I lose much sleep over that to be honest.
What I care about a lot more and am very eager to see is what XSI2014 has in store because with that we can get a pretty accurate idea about the direction XSI will be going in the near and mid future.
Should we see more tools like CrowdFX I think it will read very clear that AD intends to steer XSI towards a pipeline "helper" rather than a core app that could very easily stand at the core.
Not necessarily a bad thing as long as it's kept alive, but not a very bright future either, especially for the "little dudes".
The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.
-Thucydides

Bellsey
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Re: Double face palm ,ubi and far cry 3 character development

Post by Bellsey » 27 Dec 2012, 20:37

csaez wrote:They are just using Motion Builder for MOCAP and some in-house tools to import/export rigs through the pipeline.
Enhancing Performance Capture on Ubisoft Far Cry 3 using Autodesk Motionbuilder

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