Animation Bootcamp: Establishing an Ecology for NPCs

[Music] all right I mean it started since for about five minutes off now all right so like Tim said I'm Mike Tran Bluth I work as Animax online currently we're finishing up Elder Scrolls online and prior designer max I've really worked at a handful of different studios on an assortment of different games and it seems like at every studio on every game we seem to run into a similar problem which is how can we essentially take all that great awesome stuff that Julia was talking about all that stuff about really studying a performance and figuring out what's unique to the character how can we do that not just on on these main characters that are not featured on the covers but actually to all those secondary and PC characters in the game that never seem to get the right amount of love right of course the big reason why that doesn't seem to happen is is what we always hear right there's not enough time there's not enough resources so unlike the main characters which usually have defined

traits and objectives that everyone on the team is aware of NPC is oftentimes or just named on a page with maybe best a short bio some random abilities assigned to them which of course leads to characters that can feel generic unrelated to the world to each other or to the player right and to top it off everyone on the team may actually have a different idea as to what any of those traits are for a character when they're implementing their aspect of the character into the game right so with so many characters and production time always limited what we really need to do and what we want to do is create a dedicated process for creating an ecology alright so what do I mean when I say ecology well the the textbook definition is it's the study of how organisms interact amongst their environment and one another for our purposes and for the purposes of this

talk when I say ecology what I mean is how a character fits into the world so what follows are some of the approaches I've been a part of on different games to try and do that to crew a process for establishing an ecology because most oftentimes a lot of these problems actually become most glaring mid production they really are created to be adapted into any workflow at any point but of course like anything the sewer you can get these into the pipeline the sooner they're established the more beneficial they'll be all right so the first step to create a process that allows you to find a character's personality as quickly as possible the way to do that is of course with defining that objective every single person in their life operates with some sort of objective right it could be that the objective is enough money to you know to save up enough money to buy a house that could be one or to be liked by someone in

particular or simply just to survive whatever it is without a provable and concrete objective a character has no connection to their world and we're really unable to empathize with them oftentimes the objective of an NPC is really simply defined as as either impeding or helping the player right but we know that's way too broad for animation purposes and honestly it's even to mechanically shallow for designers right but often time this is all we have to go on when we're given the new character so let's start from there right if that's all you have let's get a universal touchstone that we can use to quickly establish a character's specific objective so my purpose is I like to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as it can quickly classify character and give focus direction on how to

brainstorm what each level of the pyramid depicts is the needs that drive the decisions and lifestyle of the person living within it right everything below the level that they're at is already established to them they don't even care about it like they don't have to worry about it anymore so essentially how a character that functions within the esteem block right which is focused primarily on how they react to the world would it be entirely different than someone in the physiological bloc who's driven by the bare essentials to survive all right so let's let's see how this works this is when I used it on Elder Scrolls online so the problem was we started with a graveyard that was full of skeletons and we were trying to figure out some animations we could give them to spice up the scene a little bit but in a way that didn't make them seem like the normal undead zombie creatures you've seen a million times in a million games

right so I went to the hierarchy and and I looked to see where they might fall and it was pretty clear that they don't really have any physiological needs right like they don't need to breathe or eat or drink or anything like that right so then I move up to the next one which is safety and instantly a lot more ideas came into what they could be doing the way I saw it skeletons were essentially guardians right with single focus in their actions which was to protect this graveyard right there were essentially like the the soldiers posted at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Virginia and you know instantly there's their whole purpose became a lot more clear right they didn't seem like zombies anymore which exists really only on that physiological block right the need to eat or being driven by that want to survive you know and and I think that's a big reason why when you don't have

something in place often times since physiological needs are the go-to behavior because they're so basic of what everyone understands when you're not giving time that's where you're instantly going to oftentimes put characters and creatures and probably explains why zombies are so prevalent and easily successful in games right because it they match but to take it even one step further and complete the undead Holy Trinity we can also define ghosts which is important cuz we have a lot of those as well and those are above both safety and physiological needs and operate really only for emotional purposes so they're driven by love and belonging as that's often the unfinished business that keeps them from passing on so by using the hierarchy and simply identifying where all three of these token undead types fell they can feel unique to themselves but still be grounded within the same world but that's only the first step in this process because oftentimes even within

those hierarchies you're gonna have overlap in specific defining traits so to drill down even a bit further but not lose their driving objective rather than create that typical character lineup we've seen a million times we had an idea why not try to line up the groups and the way this came about was to fix an issue we kept running into well while doing R&D on on shadows of Mordor at monolith see how intelligent enemies were in regards to one another got really muddy and we were kinda in the weeds about about how it should work a sticking point that we kept getting hung up on was that while cave trolls are rather dumb we wanted a version that was more intelligent one that might have been able to be trained and educated to actually command an army not just be a wrecking ball that runs through it and while we wanted that we still wanted to make sure that they maintain that core feeling of a troll right so that they still had their objective so when we tried to do a traditional lineup that

you've seen where we thought everyone would belong our opinions were all over the map so the idea of you know why not try lining up the group's so the way that works is I started with enemies that were animals and those were you know obviously easily grouped by their nature as well as being primarily physiologically driven on the hierarchy which is signified by their their red bar on one end of the line up with spiders right they're not very intelligent but on the other end was wargs which are apparently quite intelligent creatures then as more creatures needed to be added to the lineup we can easily do so while still staying true to the needs of their hierarchy so if great Eagles became enemies they would go to the end of the block and push the wargs towards the middle then you bring in the next group in this case the root of our problems which was the trolls again you do the same as last time but this time also line up the group in relation to the animals group here we

can see that award would scoff at taking orders from a cave troll but would certainly respect the commands of a more intelligent captain on it goes so we bring in the next group which is goblins they're much more communal as you can see by being Yellin and driven by some basic sociological needs on the hierarchy so while they are higher on it there are clearly not much smarter than trolls making it clear that they could be commanded by a trained troll bring in new orcs who are driven by needs of respect the theme and achievement yet intelligent wise grunts could still be dumber than a troll or a goblin and then as a reference point the elves who just are way beyond everything else are those brutal creatures right so while a standard lineup of characters can give you a lot of the same animation or the same information by grouping them you can quickly identify and modify the relation to key traits while maintaining

the consistency of their objective and needs and if a new character is created for the game it can quickly be added into the group without throwing the other groups and characters out of whack so there there was that's what we're missing kind of a big picture that we could establish and maintain quite easily like everything that's not enough and we needed to drill down even further specifically we wanted to be able to quickly compare individual characters against one another but the answer to this one wasn't creative or a methodical actually was very methodical and it comes from math right it's a coordinate graph so this one we didn't come up with on our own I found this in Jessie cell shells the art of game design who owns this book awesome everyone in here should own it without a doubt this is one of those game design books that every animator should have on their shelf right next to the illusional life alright so the way this works you start by creating an axis with two sets of

binary traits on each end for our purposes we needed to define how characters applied or modified the and telogen s-- within what we used in the groups to one another so we used sly to inept wild to civil and then on the second graph dominant to submissive and evil to good as those often seem to come up as well then create a key with the characters you want again use the colors of the hierarchy right it helps to keep the needs and individual language consistent across all this stuff we also added the player character as a reference point so start place a dot within the spectrum that represents each character on the game so the worg is is certainly wild right yet slightly sly it's also rather evil and slightly dominant and then on it goes with each character and quickly you'll find how similar or unique your

characters are if you find a few characters are plotting almost identically then either move one to an open area of the chart or if you need to cut it likewise when a new character is being created you can easily see where an opening exists for that specifically needed personality so we needed somebody in like civil and inept right maybe that would be a good buddy copper I don't know Lord of the Rings had buddy cops right I know the Lord but in cases where characters are inherently rather similar to others in some ways such as was the case with York's they kind of were close to some others you can quickly compare one against the rest using coordinate graphs as well simply place the characters dot in the center of the graph like the orc in this instance then plot the other characters dots in relation to the specific traits of the orc instantly you'll see how they would

behave if one another wasn't a scene with each other and how the social hierarchies would be established and actually play out alright so by this point you'll know what their objective is and how they would go about their life within the world to try and achieve it right you've got that base knowledge kind of figured out the last provisional chart I like to use then is a pastor and what this does is this will show how a character is Dement to path throughout the world so when you deliver the animations to designers and world builders and audio people there pathing is going to be consistent with the personality of the animations you created so let's return to the skeletons and zombies of Elder Scrolls to show this in practice so the skeleton which we established was like those militant esque robot Guardians right they would travel and like straight uninterrupted lines like you've seen in another game right and when they need to turn right they wouldn't just

turn like this you know they're gonna they're gonna stop turn and then walk right that needs to be consistent with with how they're actually moving in the animation contrast this with how the zombies would move right and they they stumble and lurch I mean it's it's you know it's like they're sensing that next bit of food that they want or they've even forgotten where it is they're going and then when it turns you know it's not going to turn like that that same robot skeleton it's gonna you know it's gonna weigh out make it Masek right I mean these are these are obviously the behaviors you're building already into the animation right but if the zombies given a path like a skeleton no matter how successful your animation I mean you got if you got this that just

it feels at odds and it's it's it's not gonna it's not gonna feel as good as if you actually paid attention to that passing all right so now that you've established and defined all these charts right for your purposes you want to create a one sheet with all of these charts together that you can have to quickly remind yourself when you're coming back to a character or or as you're working throughout it not just for yourself though but so that you can hand this off to other people working on it because remember that's that's half the problem is everyone might have a different opinion on how the character should work in the game and that's the beauty of these charts right once everyone working on the characters knows the the visual language that's established you can quickly refer to the one sheet and get all the information that it's needed without reading or let's be honest skimming right a giant lengthy bio think of this as a visual you know TLDR so in the case of the goblins by looking at their one sheet we

know they are highly communal we can see how intelligent submissive and cruel they are in relation to one another we can also see how they would move through spaces often stopping to inspect the world and others around them and and they're also aware or scared enough of other things in their ecosystem to always be looking ahead and turning or getting out of the way of others long before the the movements actually required that should be enough to get everyone on onto the same page in a flash and if they really want more info they can go back to that giant lower bio or whatever if they really need it okay so that's the first half of ecology right how they interact with one another but the second half is equally important and that's how they interact with their environment and for this we refer to everyone's favorite principal staging it's one of those 12 principles that always is cited as being lost to game

animation right but we know it really isn't lost its it's simply in the hands of other disciplines oftentimes so level designers world builders content designers oftentimes they're the ones in control of staging the character using your animations and they might even just have a giant large database that they're pulling animations from right that you don't necessarily have control over so it's important to empower them to give them a pair of glasses that will allow them to see the world in the same way as your trained animator I recommending books writing Docs all that's fine first step and honestly they're pretty helpful for you because they allow you to get incredibly specific with the principles and explanations and put all your thoughts in the paper in long form but just like when we were defining the character's personality and when we're given a bio a wall of text isn't the end goal and even if it is read it's not really probably going to be returned to after that first viewing so how can we

make a more visual and quickly digested approach when when we're talking to designers and other creators early on when I started at Cinemax a part of the group I was on was to help define and improve staging of areas within the game to get away from a wall of text I took a screenshot so this is a few years ago and it was of the mages guild and I asked the questions that I thought most important to the scene in the player who looks to be the most important person within the building if I was going to ask someone here about joining the guild their names the Magister who would that be which characters look to be trainers and which character is the vendor so in the big picture I don't know if you can tell any of that stuff all right so these are the answers right and there's a few issues here first off everyone's really far away from you the moment you walk into the door right this is supposed to be a big lived in place but

everyone's in the back worst of all is is the Magister who is you know the admissions officer for all intents and purposes and there's a front facing person of the guild why are they back there the vendor is appropriately behind the counter but they're lost within the pillar and missing a perfect opportunity to be framed within the environment and the trainers aren't in places or postures that would be associated with such a role so using my quick and dirty photoshop skills I restaged it so that they could see quickly how the scene could look better so make it so that the moment to play on there's the space you break the room into three planes of foreground middle-ground and background we thought given to which characters the player would most often be interacting with when they're coming into this space the Magisters brought up front to greet visitors and then talk to new prospects the trainers are moved to the middle ground and given actions that are appropriate their title and the vendor is moved to be framed within the archway of the

bookshelf while still being behind the counter and a role that I thought was missing that of a headmaster or person in charge was put up on the walkway above using the verticality to imply higher social standing so with a few pictures essentially eliminates a lot of a Doc's need right but even that they're gonna see that they go okay how do I I didn't know that stuff how do I think about this stuff how do I keep it in mind all the time so what I wanted to do is give a cheat sheet that they can stick up at their desk for reference right you've gotten post-it notes and all that stuff posted yours they need something somewhere so for our purposes I broke that picture into into a few sections first up was finding the character's objective right what do they want what actions reflect that and what emotions are they feeling and to answer that last question I included visuals of the Seven Universal emotions not to mention having the faces on there adds

some life to the page as well as suddenly influencing the person reading it to always be more aware of the mood of the scene that's really important to keep that in mind like Julia was saying you need to think of what happened before and after and what they're actually feeling next how do these characters fit together what are the relationships and social hierarchies who's the star of the scene where do they expect help or danger to come from in all of these right it's that one sheet becomes important again because a lot of that's defined for them already but the characters the NPC's aren't the only ones in the scene and their reaction to the player of course needs to be taken into account as that's often either a direct help or hindrance and completing their objective so are they expecting the player to arrive what were they doing before the player shows up and what do they want to do after the player leaves and then finally a reminder of the shot elements that were used within the example where's the

primary entrance or exit of the scene define the three planes and make use of framing devices within the environment in all of these little cheat sheets I was conscious not to have in three bullet points because honestly at that point people are just gonna stop reading and you want something they can quickly glance and and hopefully internalize right and then of course the most important thing when in doubt backed it out right so once you've got a doc and a one-sheet and all that good stuff you need to get it out there to people as many ways as possible email put it up on an internal directory print it out and give it to the people in each department you know we'll evangelize it and really glom onto it hold a workshop that that covers it and allows for Q&A sit down with people one on one to help put it into practice relying on only one or two of these methods isn't going to cut it I've tried and it fails every time okay interactions between characters check their environment check

the the final piece of the puzzle and how this all informs their personality is specifically how they engage with the player yet maintain their established ecology here's a story I imagine sounds like one that you may have experienced yourself on singularity while many of the creatures had defined personality traits within their animations all their gameplay and abilities seemed to boil down to really the same thing they had a melee attack if you got close a ranged projectile attack if you stood far and usually some sort of scream when they became aware of you making their combat match the personalities we put within the animation was honestly something we were really struggling with but when armed with what makes characters tick there's actually a great tool inherent to the medium that we can use to help define and connect their gameplay with the personality remember when in doubt acted out all right let's go

our solution came from the game's multiplayer which to give it a more unique spin had creatures as playable on one team and soldiers on the other while originally we were worried it would force us to change the personalities we had established within our animations actually once we took control of them it was the gameplay weaknesses that came about because the animations had the personality forcing ourselves to actually roleplay to step into their shoes within the game we knew what they wanted to do in a way that just acting them out at our desk actually couldn't so in the instance of the river which was that dreaded zombie affliction again we we didn't know what to do for a long time and while we had the personality would have like a wounded animal that would have this interesting contrast of agony versus adrenaline emotionally playing it actually helped us figure out how it should actually attack and fight we want to see we needed to make it actually a bit slower and pack a harder punch with the high tolerance for pain right like a wounded animal they don't they don't necessarily feel that because they've got Renel in going and we realized that

we had this charge and rush attack that just wasn't appropriate honestly they should force you to come to them so we gave it a proximity mine like a mucus thing so it could Corral soldiers into a desired location it was given a medium range vomit to to blur their their vision so they couldn't escape and then a sonar like ability to see through walls and planer ambush and just like that the idea of a wounded animal really started to match the personality and the gameplay and the animation alright and that's and that's really what it's about right like role-playing acting you know we want to sit and we want to focus on that cool craft stuff that Julia was talking about we want to sit there and think about these little tics and moments but oftentimes we're not setting ourselves up to a point or given enough information to be able to spend the time to think that because we're having to define the space layer the quicker you can come up with a system like this use this one create your own whatever the quicker you're going to be able to get those core things of knowing who that character is out of the way so then you can really take the time to figure out what makes

them unique within themselves so thank you I don't think there's I don't think we have time for questions but that's my contact information on Twitter and email I'd love to talk to you guys about this I think we're also going to have overflow Q&A today after 6:00 in an overflow room we can figure that out