Pushing Boundaries: Animating Expansion Packs for The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everybody oh it's too loud hi uh I'm so glad to be here I'm bit nervous it's my first GDC first talk so yeah thank you it was definitely on my bucket list it's so glad to see so many nice and friendly faces I'm talking to you Jeremy yeah so this presentation will contain spoilers so if you haven't playing expansion packs you can sometimes cover your ears and eyes but before we go we we get down to the business uh I'd love to um just introduce myself properly so my name is Sebastian CA and I'm animation director at city project red uh I work there on a Witcher free wild Hunt and then both expansion packs right now we are working on uh cyberpunk 2077

um before I worked at a company called plat in Poland in a cinematic Department as a as a lead animator and even before I worked in England for the realtime UK on a few AAA titles like kinal or Disneyland Adventures uh on daily basis I'm animation tutor at I animate uh and we really love it and fun fact is I I used to be a vice champion of Brazilian JJC in Poland so I love motion not only in games but before we move forward I'd love to introduce this great team of animators producers cinematic designers and TDS so pushing boundaries let's talk about them for the wild Hunt we had to deliver around 16,000 Assets in 3 years the game is quite big I don't know if you played that but it's like 200 hours to finish it with side quest and miners

for the expansion packs we had to deliver just 50 hours but we did more animation content I will talk about that in a minute so we had in essence we had like half of that time because that was just a year and we had to deliver even more more animations in less time so I'm now going to show you the show uh it's just 5 minutes hopefully you'll enjoy that it's from expansions [Applause]

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[Music] h [Music] [Applause] all right thank you so here's the agenda mind you I won't talk about our daily work I will talk more about how we took our existing skill set after main game and we just straight jump into the expansion packs we had to upgrade our pipelines and on workflow a little bit because there was a little like too much content we'd be scared of that so we had to pick imped this fundamental like

basics in our workflow so I'm going to talk about improving communication and this helped with speeding up many processes focusing on character motivation which helped us on a quality and reorganizing the animation Department during this one year which help us both time and quality but starting with tech is a tiny background I want to tell you we worked all expansion packs and Main game using the motion Builder 2010 just motion Builder there was no time to make reexport this jumped into the new version of motion Builder so we sometimes uh really been like Geral looking at the roach on the roof getting some crazy bugs um we had really stable Tech and that was good so we felt like geralt in an armor and with two swords but at the same time we get a high high like a high level like message from the production that we shouldn't bother so much the

programmers because they need to focus on a of course cyberpank at the same time I must say that animators as a mo specialist they've been like one month's band we've been like one month band so we didn't have like even the motion capture Department that time wasn't like a independent team uh we had to we have very small Studio we have to like mup Studio I mean we have to manage the mooch up by ourselves so we got idea we got some story we had to mooch up by by by ourselves we had to clean it up by ourselves and then we had to animate by ourselves so it was really sometimes frustrating so first things first communication and this relates to pushing the time boundary and it's not that like we haven't communicated before of course we did a lot but still we could definitely optimize some parts of

the communication so as L mentioned at the beginning I need to start from the kissr so honestly that was the most important thing in expansion packs I knew that we have a year so I wake up every morning went to the bathroom and kissed myself in front of the mirror and I'm not a vain yeah I'm I'm just you know I was telling myself that keep it simple stupid there's no time for crazy iteration process so that was definitely the most important role during the production uction of expansion PS second abandons of cool not but not unnecessary ideas is like yeah you know that it's like having a lot of ideas is as bad as having no ideas at all so this rule like a keep it simple rule and like having very like a really Clarity at the beginning of each process of creating monsters or main main NPCs in the game it was helping us a lot

yeah this is what I'm talking about lack of structure and formalizing the pipeline by templates so we incorporated templates into our production we start communicating even more often with the design team and the story and it was a really infinity loop because you know our games are heavily story-driven everything comes from the story so we had to really make sure that if you really make the question always was like at the beginning if you you want to make your character really grounded in the world you have to make sure that the story Department knows about that and agrees so before as I said we communicate but the process was a little bit messy and it looked like that so for example you see the toad here yeah the first boss on the in the heads of stone expansion pth so that that was the process at the beginning like you know we got the idea you have to make a toad but it's like what toad Prince do so oh

okay another dandelion yeah beautiful handsome guy but yeah is a dark Fantasy game so dark Prince okay but design said hey guys we need to have a ranch attacks they have to have the the toad has to have the tumors on his back his tongue has to be covered with spikes so I'm like oh my God don't tell us yeah so we need to put some blisters on his face because of you know that's exactly what I'm talking about keep it simple stupid we we start narrowing down the basics design and the animation process as soon as possible so the finally the guy in the game look like that hey m'am yeah and in the let me show you other part [Music]

I [Music] [Music] yeah but thought was rather simple this guy was a nightmare because normally in a very small strike teams we spend like three months on each monster each boss fight I'm talking each boss fight and that laugh was a little bit more difficult

you know vampires yeah vampires are Supernatural they are transforming the Mist they can reap apart the human being so quickly so yeah that was the dead love first form but then we knew that this guy is a final boss of all game in the end of expansion pack two blood and wine and we got those Concepts yeah y so okay this guy is transforming into that thing and we have to make him fly we have to make him walk run and then like we didn't even know how to manage this guy from the body mechanics perspective you know we cannot transport the model during the fight fight so many times so that was his first Monster stage as you see we even changed a little bit the communication with the FX

Department you see those tiny helpers around him we we we the animator the owner Tian um he actually animate those helpers just to show effects artists how we want to make the effects supporting the whole animation and it definitely like speed up the process of creating effects a lot but yeah that was the first stage and this is exactly where we've iterate ah my God like three months we had all together we had like just six months we should have like honestly like nine months but we had just six months for that guy we have a very small team and what we had we had this guy we knew that we at some point we need to get him down so we need to chop his wings off and what what's then we've been

iterating and talking to story what's then and they said okay guys let's fight with the construct of his blood in illusion of his heart and be like yeah good oh but but how to do that so here you have a few examples of this construct the construct the idea of construct he was brainless he was kind of magic monster like very aggressive and quick and there's the scene when we are chopping his wings off [Music] [Music]

so yeah guys this template saved Our Lives honestly we finished that love in six months and that was a really big challenge to us for us so the second the most important important thing we did during the expansion packs was pushing a little bit the character motivation and how we did that I've already told you that story is the king in our games like no matter what story has to drive everything and we constantly talk to story so we got this template which really speed up the iteration process the iteration proc process was really Dynamic so we communicate a lot

so we get this idea of getting this template and communication sorted out as soon as possible and we we made out of almost every an every animator wasn't like a supervisor of an NPC or Monster so they've been not even just actors they've been even co-directing each monster on the mockup session um and and that that really helped us a lot because with that template on the first day of the mukup shoot we we had a brief we knew everything about the character so directing the characters was really like much easier not easy but way more easier so we had this dedicated teams for every monster that every Department like had his own like this artist specialist in every single Monster department so say eight always like 60 eight people uh in one one Strike

Team and as I said the because of that because of having those people around the one monster the process of iteration was really Dynamic they've been communicating all the time on daily basis so this is a good example of olur is a first boss fight um in the first expansion pack hers of stone so what's cool about olard olard is a human being and we've been like okay geralt is killing monsters every day so how to make a human being a demanding enemy to gald but yeah we got this message from the story that this guy is actually Immortal so yeah so if he is Immortal how to show it through the gameplay animation through the combat mean like would be cool to to show that he's because he's a noble guy he he signed a P with the devil and he's he doesn't care he he he has everything he wants so we wanted to show that he's really cocky

that his even his Idol position in a in a fight is really open he's like even inviting you to kill him because he doesn't care he even you know he even doesn't doesn't uh like check where you are it's like he's just you know constantly um like very cocky and uh um and aggressive guy but we've been like thinking about what kind of combat style we should we should develop we should work on and finally we found that in 17 century in in Poland actually the combat like the the cross Sabers Masters they the saber Masters they developed this this combat style very deadly style called crosss saber they called him like the Polish suar let's say The Stance was very open they they that that's the that's the let's say idle position for them the position was very open the

Sabers were very light so they could deliver so many attacks in a seconds they've been like twirling around an enemy the really and and and the style was very cheaty and and dirty so they really been killing enemies very quickly the sword Masters didn't have like any chance to even fight with them so really we've been studying that and finally this is a part of the mockup session is one of the first days of the training sessions with um maik katosi I love the stunt man is is amazing I call him his nickname is uh washing machine uh because you can program him and next day you just press the button and it works it's crazy muscle memory is it's just unbelievable so this is how the the olar looked like in Maya uh um in in motion builder of course

um as a like a final polished game Loops as you see very open position no they they he didn't even use the hard blocks yeah the crosss saber Masters they just pared they pared just to kill you very offensive style so it fit perfectly into his character we did the same thing with uh cinematics and dialogues we have our own like a dialogue system and let's talk about rges and Henrietta now so Henrietta she was a queen of blood and wine yeah of of the booker in Blood and wine so we developed like just custom poses to her just to make her more queen look like yeah and but she's not a typical Queen yeah of

course we made a lot of custom acting choices and just to make her more queen-like and feminine but at the same time she had a really high temper so we need to somehow connect those two worlds this High temper and being very Noble and queen like Regal so here's the part of the cut scene when she is like you know probably this advert from MOS so as you see here she just got hry and she even doesn't want to wait for girl she gets on the horse she needs to hug her people mind it doesn't get wrinkled all right hey that is silk be

careful give it to me poor guy and RIS yeah he's a vampire so you might think that we could copy dead LA's move set or whatever but he's a completely different guy and you could even tell that if they knew physics there he could be a physic teacher like check his this guy he's very like static post uh he's a scientist SL biologist vampire even his facial expression is is very calm and of course there's still his first most important nature so until he smells blood and you piss him off he like this but still

[Music] need to hang on a little longer but'll dry in a few hours scent won't bother you anymore yeah and the third thing they're organizing the animation department so is a quality at time boundary what we used during the main game and the first

expansion packs we used the old Opti track system and as I said before the animator was one man's band so in the middle of creating expansion packs we bought new vicans we extend our area of shoot and we made Mo up as an independent team we've fired the motion capture specialist who helped us a lot because animators could really focus only on animation then so we've get been at is getting the clean data from shoots from from shootings so to sum it up uh we did like 50% of the main game animation was wise in a better quality in half the time with deeper and More Story focused characters more refined monster designs and better overall animation quality and uh like oh [ __ ] uh and uh I would like to just say

one one more thing that it's in my opinion just to really sum it up I must say that the the most important thing is always to just try to at least once per week take a step back and no matter what if you are in the middle event of the production it's good to try at least check the like a big picture where you are because people like at least me uh I tend to really skip the basics sometimes and in my opinion like stepping back in a before creating the expansion packs and and really improving the the the most important The crucial the those the fundamental steps at the beginning help us a lot in creating the expansion packs and that's it thank you

thank you guys