Rayman Reinvented

hello everyone welcome to our presentation thank you thank you you know animation is a best way to make a videogame alive then we'll be talking about to work on a remand game and more specific specifically all the technology are paid to keep faced with artistic vision for the animation in a game we will see all remin the world come to life I am a suit wha I'm an immature Rayman Origins and non-rem Allegiance I'm gonna talk to you about the technical part of this presentation and I'm Christoph I'm the artistic director of animation and toy designer on Domino a Jean and a lemonade

John I'm the I'm in charge of artistic part so first we will start with the spirit of the Ubisoft new police to do and all that way of life influence the spirit of the game then we're going to travel in time to go back to the origins of Rama and I will see how the artists work with the you be out for mock or technology then we're gonna tell you the story of jananam the you'll be at a framework animation tool and then we're going to finish if we've got the time with a small demonstration about that cool woohoo I'm not stressed allow ratings' fine can you see me okay not small I'm gonna try to meet in you all

of you naked and it's gonna be better so let's talk about the Ubisoft Montpellier Studio spirit we think that the ambience and the atmosphere at minimum prestigio contribute to a creative success so we are walking in a very pleasant context well in sort of France with God the beach it's a sunny place got burritos bikinis and all that stuff we design creative projects like from dust beyond good and evil rabbits go home Rayman Origins from and legends of course we surround yourself with talented and passionate team I to the team by the way Tim is made of really hard worker they're working together in a very good team spirit and they are really involved in the final quality of the product and we also

develop innovative tools and I think that the fact that we are creating innovative tools together make us understand the constraint of the others drop we had to leave our comfort zone and communicate a lot and it's contributed to have a good team synergy for now I invite you to discover the the villa the place that we work with this small video of the team that I've made it's all made [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] really look very ah t you thank you for them the deserve that really really so now let's back to the origins to understand the art and the philosophy of remand although we did the connection with the remand origins and ranan legends let's jump to the bus so who's the character of ramen ramen

sculptor with no arms the legs and a really weird haircuts but yeah but most of all it's a very iconic silhouette but was the best place to speak about Raymond and his creates a missional cell so let's see a small help you about that my name is Alicia said and I'm very fresh with a record on a Ramanujan remember the equation of Raymond was really attack very simple it was something that I did when I was 20 20 years old and it was really the character I want to make to experience the games that was 2011 is a I would say is a very simple and direct character is not talking it's really about action so

which is really made all the animation and the design is made so that you can understand the character just by looking at it it's not just storytelling and things like that it's really a direct connection between between you and the character first it was designed in the pixels and when you don't have a lot of research or frost were very true characteristic in your heart and I think even now in 3d because sometimes the Karaites power you still need a character that you can identify very easily we starting with 2d games because a long time ago it was easier to the games and then we moved freely and the games complex interesting but really different in terms of gaming from what we started coming back into D

is a radio way to go back to the woods whoo that's my boss so the question is why to come back into D since the beginning of the industry and particularly the advent of the 3d games there has been a race to create more and more photorealistic games with more and more complicated controls and cameras so we tried to back to the basic keep simple controls at least able game space to come back to an affordable way to play together we tried to make a game for the hardcore gamer but also for the casual gamers and we try the purpose was to make them play together in a one single rule so the first Rayman the

first one 20 years old we're still the favorite of the franchise and it's top seller and we believe that there's a lot to do with the accessibility of the 2d graphics and gameplay that means more familiarity for everyone and also the promise of old classic gameplay that platformers from adult so we tried to keep the magic and the fantasy of the first Raymond and we mix it with the HD quality and the new technology that we can access with the new tools that we create to follow more contemporary vision of this universe - to all of you the gamers non-gamers everybody at the beginning the team was focused on inventing a more efficient flexible and creative approach to build 2d games so

we start to develop do you be our framework and at the beginning it was an idea of a missional self and it begins with a small T for small team of artists and engineers they work together to create all those tools so it's designed to all small creative team to produce high quality graphics and gameplay rapidly and efficiently we did you are able to animate a large style of animation like cut out paper drawing paintings can I say modeling past yeah modeling past yep thank you sorry I'm French so it's built to fit with the the needs of the artist in 2d all right now no origins and run on legends we wanted to fit perfectly with the vision of the artist so we develop a tool that allows

us to put directly the drawing of the artist the concept art into the game so we don't lose the essence of the primary art concept and we keep the energy on the artistic part just a focus on the creation as we modified the classic pipe to fit with all 2d concerns we save a lot of time and energy to project a great variety of universe great variety of assets to do backgrounds platforms create different world life elements characters that give to the game its own personality so to to be more clear I'm going to show you a small video but the artistic pipeline all the artists worked with with those tools

decision resurfaced reject artistic religions require graphics intelligence c'mon study a tripod Artois smothers the cookie considered unsweetened has magnet elevation director creative if us for some days of calamity positive and further positive a little more soulful you don't have either the fashion as organic walk new premises immediately traces to devalue facilities from battle and is a scary song state with a more secure solution set of economic intrusion the panel's water on tech and

production equal terminology to correct here you come in penalties to maximum took acidic easy not only keep his animation we're available a design web design concept artists to take assaulted by create on dominant sauce I like to take a look at the concept art that's made for the world's for the game from the artists themselves before actually building something in the level because I think when I make something for the game I want it to be visually coherent with the actual overall vision for the final product and so even if I'm making something that's purely gameplay oriented I like to know that it's going to fit with the direction that the artists have for the final product and also what I end up doing when I'm looking at the concept art is I have a tendency to be inspired by even small things like a fallen tree that the players walking through in the picture and it makes me want to use kind of geometry in my level so that I

do that and sometimes it leads to the creation of interesting gameplay elements or terrain properties that we wouldn't normally have and so I like to be inspired by the art before actually proceeding in my area of expertise but I also like to make sure that my work is just consistent with the vision what's interesting is that we have a template freeze so it had no perfect content just basic markup so we can build a very using this mock-up Friesen yeah this is already at the constraint for these things but the bottom side doesn't have particularly jewelry so they can be using any circumstance but they already have the constraint for the career and everything so we don't build things like likely one we already have constraint to work with and we already know that when the artist will find a visual for the

freeze and visual for every element it will fit with the collision we put so will not have to work on top of that but when the data is build when we can per element the situation of them will make a new review will the artist we say what intention we have was what was the idea of the river and with that they will be able to build the word landscape easily normally they don't have to fish a walk to a new constraint to their work and so they can build the river on top of that perfectly speaking own I avoid it she mizzle faster cheaper Mia was at his assembly planted among Africans in so texture it really exact tamale mesh all it is not amount to be it wali absolutely is a maximal salami OC

ultimate enemy sister Jaya it couldn't offer some time to dedicate so I have a lot of fun with trying to bring a lot of life and things happening on screen lots of loud moments and I think that the tools that we have but also the concept and the game and the gameplay mechanics really mesh well together with this kind of philosophy of creating levels that are alive with lots of things happening and it makes for some very exciting results and it's always fun to see people playing these levels and reacting to such animated worlds and just the fact that they enjoy them so much when stuff surprises them you know it's not predictable which data file and amazing and they always want to come back and experience something new so that's really cool for me thank you so now

let's approach this ricotta design and oh it inflames the style of animation and how we made the transition between remand to the Great Escape Ramon Terry would move out and the new Raymond in 2d Misha no cell is a fan of transfer genre naaku that kind of French book style so we decided to adapt the character design from a comic book named Oscar ooh at the beginning of the project we didn't know what gen machine tool was capable of but we knew that we wanted for animation something easy to do a sample process something cool to look at

something country and not just a sample kata booted animation and we asked the engineer to implement scale stretch and squash then the carrot design methods step into us captain styler to make the animation more efficient give more opportunity to team as action line with strong and clear posing and more step snappy timing and we we wanted the game looks to look like an animated cartoon that mean sophisticated Pantera style for the background celluloid look for the characters more extreme poses and some have some wacky situation - ok it's

clear that the style of the car design unpacked the style of the animation the more your design is realistic and the more you need drawings to make the animation Sceptile and more it's difficult to step to reality that process could be long especially for cutout animation but most design is tyrosine graphic or cartoony and more it will be easy to adapt the animation to get outside and a reference article Richards a Chuck Jones and Bob crumpets of course but we were more influenced ed by some more recent cartoon like cats don't dance or Ren and Stimpy and cartoon cartoon

snappy style is very fun to draw and to animate too but it's very practical practical for all kind of game now let's talk about the pipeline of question in order to create a strong character design there is one very important rule form follows function that's mean the player got to notify the nature-nurture business of an enemy as a function of gameplay element in one single look that's got to help him to stay reactive and to keep the flow that means we got constraints that we we got to take care when we are designing complain amounts

and in me or any characters let's confront our give of course by second design the revell design or the environments an example about the design of a gameplay element in the food world the constraint for design and implement well that it's depressing in the kitchen it was a very environment the American strength included the fact that you can pull an amount through those things it was a true measure hi need to move right and left and the player-character died if he touch it

so ok let's find some ideas like the Dodgers things could be a fireball but what kind of enemy for example could throw a fireball could be a dragon and but a dragon in the exchange yes why not but if we dress him with a Chiefs at a nap run even I look like a coach and I need a weapon for than your attack so no problem is going to have a forge and it's done and that's that's the easy part in any man or any that's any crazy world almost everything is it a rope you know so now the the character designer

can start to work he make some sketches one is approved and on that size of process the the character stage the tractor stays a rough sketch it could be curved or stained black and white a very simple color after that different parts of his body are split apart gianni mota omics set up at the same time the technical dr. Mexican imagine three since the first animation are made with the Rafah set and as a gameplay programmer I'll use it to improve artificial antigens the timing in to testers prototype that's the same for LD the level design now we can test this map with with the Rafah set the same and

after some iteration when the map is a prophet we can clean the character up the character designer make contreras on photoshop we replace verify said but bicycling one jerking on the TGA texture no need to change the name on any asset or animation no need to modify the set up the new clean character works in the game directly to stretch superfine process that second is our example with a playable character Salton Sea we had already created the animation for Raymond and Globox and we want to reuse

the animation tree tool to create the agency I said before when we are designing attack they are the way in which it will be animated is always kept in mind we must be able to separate each part of the body of the cutter for example a mouse legs body etc this metal doesn't impact the cutter is designed for sure well design character means a minimum of number of assets like you consider for maximum of a month of animations with the Tingy with only one texture we created like three three hundred and fifty animations and on

Rayman Origins the animator in charge of the of this character with about 250 animations in like two weeks so it's really is really fast to to produce animations and it was very smart but the way that he used the few elements that is God's eerie use element like like different arms or different all the knows to be if you if you want to to take the TV and put it like in the front view it just deformed the news to to pretend that it's a it's on your side but it's not so we've got few example in this video so it's only done with a 1 or 1 squared

texture and with no no new assets so it's a it's an important part of the work of the animators you know we are not God creating the life we are kind of cheetah nice like magician something like that and if we succeed to do a great animation it's like you take parts into into the magic that we create so it's cool to work on characterization it's probably the funnest part between knows

Emma's character designer me as an animator well to work very close together and it's really really cool and it's very good for the game - one thing well one thing make prediction very efficient especially at the at the beginning when the team was very very small is a multi-talented profile profile of the Colorado and the animators to make the EDL crew we thought it would be smart to recruit any matters from French and math animation school in fact in school they learn a lot of different school they learn traditional animation tricky and they learn to use a lot of different software so or animators are very multi-talented

that's right most of them are character designer of two they can cash out Katya make the setup some are also artists we have a [Music]

[Music] [Music] shadow with the face for anybody we can see Fujifilm blue book situated on the Canadian resource office difficult as would derive this is what wasting frequency only felt by local so the emotional mass to attack Korea specifically for final domestic spirit entities are imposing instantly in America the positive way

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we take a picture and we expect from it - but mesh that we can deform to make

the movement so we can take an arm and put points on that so very easily we can deform we move really the picture to create animations every time limited special feature we discuss it with our DT curriculum consists if I will is a minimum point FET facilitate weighted matter will be TZ the motion in our country the tomato majority more functional so we jump into the technical part of this presentation what is Jenna Jenna name is you be out

for a more animation - it's a customizable tool created cubes of Nopalea for I manage it and we reuse and upgrade it for reminiscence it's on principally by Filipino and us Restless it's to tour some tool programmers that they work very close to us it's a it's really cool if we need to improve some tools as animator we just had to ask them to to improve the one particularly tool and they just do it and in like one week we've got the the the new the new tool or disposition so it's made as all the technology it's made to fit to fit with those specific needs in 2d so we can put directly as within before the drawing of the artist and here is the drawing of the character artist into the

animation software so we can keep the essence of the other drawing and there is no long skinning or rigging to do and we save a lot of time to work on the characterization of the of the characters and this add a lot of fun into the game it's a it's an intuitive to use a tool the animator like me I can quickly transform any drawings to an animated character I can do my own Aptos setup I can upgrade it with new drawings if I start an animation and I need some new assets I just had to ask to Christophe to draw them and then it sends it to me and I can implement that into my actual animation into my actual setup with a know long time no long technical stuff

through to manage it so it's pretty easy to use the animation are done faster so we can product many original characters in a very tiny time of production and that's why remin is a rich and immersive 2d platformer use with a lot of funny characters it's a simple to use tool but it's powerful we have additive animation for the gameplay needs we have inverse kinematics to facilitate the animators walk I've got polyline collision 2 foot with the gameplay collision with the pants to it and a lot stuff we cannot even Tom the time night to trigger a fix sounds separate the animation between transition and loop to what gameplay programmer and the optimizations while tilting to we can practice when you

create a character got several different textures different assets different arms different legs different bodies and we create like one two three a lot of textures and we are we have a tool that just bring all the assets in the textures and bring them into one single texture with the space optimized so it's it's really cool we don't have to to take care really about that at the the first time when we were doing animations we just just take care of that later and the optimization is really good that allows us to put a lot of assets to into the game because we've got the space to do it we can also reuse the animation of a character by

changing his skinny it's great so I can make if I want different look Freeman or some bosses that we've made Jabari they have a shape and I can just talk too much about that because it's not it's not really pretty alone you know rayman legends is not is not out so you'll see when you'll buy it okay [Music] and the easiness to use jananam it's means that we can produce faster and a lot and and to make move things it's a better way to to make a to make it alive and rich and of course we we have a

character like playable enemies bus is various different costumes like you said or skins for the same characters for example the fairies and Ramanujan was one once correct and different costume we got we can animate platforms breakables groups backgrounds UI an interface across the plant mechanics with with a different system of animation vision for gameplay animation and for a cutscene in game videos everything need to be so we're gonna see

so we're going to see few examples of oh we bring life into the remans world really easily and it's a it's a low-cost character as we call life elements and we can put on the foreground all on the background to bring new life to the game so if we work with us amplify the some prettified version of o'toole we just we don't keep the the information of the bones we only keep the information of the of the team team IDs third ring and so we can make a lot a lot a lot of those things we can put them into a level and we we still at 60 frames per

second it's great then we can animate fx2 and this technique is really different kind of is just like a sprite animation but we put it in Jenna names so we can add deformation to that sprite animation and with that one single text - it looks like you're drawing your fashion side that's it so whew now it's done for the for the demonstration I'm gonna walk a bit on a genin and see how it works together

so we prepare cutter Christophe throws this smooth cut looks like a testicle it's okay it's okay I'm gonna animate it it's fine whoo we can make anything alive in our minority even a testicle um maybe you're gonna skip some parts because we bit late I'm gonna try to do

animation animation very quickly so first when you open a gene and in you've got nothing inside of it fits up sends me the drawings and then I I cut it out in few parts and I just had to drag and drop the tg8 textures that I created to start the setup of the optical top so I was talking about cheating obviously I'm gonna cheat here I'm just gonna show you how we create easily a bone that we can rename and this boat is not ever attached to

that to the visual so I had to create a mesh that's it create measure on each elements create bonds to control them era I've got some templates and create a want to play it parallel immense and cheating okay and we just do all the elements like that you've got yeah the the template names that we can rename to to find yourself easily in the animation process now with those bones I'm gonna copy them

and put that into the scholar addition to to connect the different parts of the body like ok the arms to the body the mast the body to the testicle I'm gonna copy that it's really not fast fun it's really not it's easy to do to do the setup I've done it yesterday night it takes me like alpha now watch you just doing the setup and and then creating the one animation I think we gonna have no time if you want to have some questions to ask you at the end so stop speaking and starts working

okay so I copied the bone of the body there is no visual attached here we are in the India additional mouth is attach them with you can see that with the blue line connected I'm going to do that for all the bones yeah faster be scary to an image just in front of you it's a

encouragement [Applause] some kind of old version of china name so is not really an interface or something like that all I'm doing is

just connect a different part of the bodies together so now when I moved the body bones all the things come with it and I connect them to the root okay I have my bones down with the only influences I can start to animate something ooh my favorite part so I'm just gonna call the visual on the bones so I call the jump lights okay I forgot

the eyes can I bring all these elements in the animation okay so like that for now I need to reiterate to the drawings of of Christophe just I'm gonna mix them together so I can control the Z function to put an element in front or in the

back now the mouth is in the France text the same same visual fold your right arm and left arm I'm gonna just symmetrize them so I'd bring some less space and you thought about something for the food the feet fit it we've got the pair right so

now all I had to do is just put let's make a jump okay so I can deform the scale in different axes I said X Y and it's still 10 minutes so I have to do that's really fast okay so I'm gonna scale axes in X & Y with the deformation to do something like that yeah I use a special special but

something that allows me to deform all in the same time that makes me gonna win sometimes with that look at me when I walk and that's for sure maybe I'm gonna be fired at the end of these presentations to do the best that I can

okay so I can copy past different keys it's not gonna be a subtitle animation but it's just gonna show you the power of the tool okay so I can play but it's gonna be very fast so I can reduce the speed just to see if it works seems pretty cool for too many television and I'm gonna do the transition so answer frames between the low key frames almost

done wing wing' got no overlap you better it's a star system we're not gonna develop that so much because uh maybe if you've got some questions so that's okay I'm gonna just do

a few resume me a few summary about what we've said in that that conference so if I can like you give you a give you advice just communicate a lot with your team members and leave your comfort zone to be more efficient it's very cool for my part I work a lot with the gameplay programmers and apps to put a lot of life in into the game because they're they've got the conscience of what I need and I've got the conscience of what they need if you reinvent an iconic character be sure to remember where it comes from and where you want to where you want him to go use tools that allow you to to fit the best with your visions of your game and if you want to create any Carter's just remember that form

follows function in the video game it's very really important to not losing the player and if you want to do a good characterization keep your silhouette very recognizable don't lose the fact that it had to stay eligible in the game space and focus on the strong puzzles that's it so thank you for coming so if you have any questions I need someone to translate my English is not so I call Gabrielle struggles she's the writer on women origins I'm just trying to help

these guys if you have any questions so please ask away and I'll translate hey first of all big fan well done it was an amazing job so but then also you have this amazing game on console and you move to an amazing game on iOS can you talk a little bit about the iOS game was it the same team do you guys use the same engine at all when you made the the iPad iPhone tablet it was in China but for for all the also console for PC that same Chinese sentence and from our

directing work on the iOS game the tablet game jungle one where you are directing it or was it outsource that another team they were using all the assets obviously that that were created for the reuse they keep a lot of the same animations fantastic thank you guys buddy else don't be shy a child sure I got a run but I just want to say you guys are like Rayman is the reason I'm in the industry I've hopped around to a lot of really stylized studios so um keep doing this rad stuff this latest game is amazing you guys are fantastic so thanks for inspiring a veteran as cuz

that you see this that this technique poses a their families effect particularly if a special Lucita to that downloading the question as translating the English is whether or not we're particular tools to create the special effects in the animation or whether it's the same tools as we're using for all the other all the effects and the particle draw or if it's someone in a specific job on that using other tools or technical artists thank you for translating for yourself we have to for the ethics we to a fix of artist when

come from the traditional machine and user is technical and we use pasta to our hospice is possible for specific for positive harvest for the particles particles on a stretcher but they were all hand-drawn thanks for coming great talk that Jenna named tool looks really amazing I was wondering if you guys had any plans to distribute or sell the tool to other companies so the question is if we're gonna sell the tool or share the tool I think where we want to share the tool but I'm not sure about the position a

few pieces at the point it's over but it could be great to share that tool we had to do a small modification to make it a lot more user friendly it could be great but I'm gonna ask my bosses and for something on the Facebook page or a man or something like that to answer your questions because I really don't know what the strategy great thank you very much sorry I just found out that we actually have nothing in here next session so if you wanted to queue a few more questions you're more than welcome to all right I was just curious how you

handled the lighting on the characters because it seems to bend and not just wash over the flat 2d so how did you the Crouch it's just like traditional cartoon light up hi yeah I was wondering um as an animator was there like a learning curve to using the the actual like polygons yourself like does that make sense did you say a learning curve I'm sorry yeah - to defining the polygons when animating as opposed to it just being a square it's not just square didn't show

you that because I've got no time but you can deform the mesh to adapt it to the shape of objects and when you do an articulation - as you as you can see as you have seen in the in the video of the animators you can de place move you can move the points - to be close to the shape of the arm and you can also move those points like to make a greater fold if you want to create a full more stronger almost moves you can you can

how long did it take you to develop the tool or from creating the animation system and and developing the 2d background you know layering so actually we we work on on the development of jananam in the same time that in the than the development of the game so we've got very basic tools at the beginning and we improve them little by little exactly all along the production of the and we are continuing to develop it so when when did it become functional was it a two-month window three-month window there it was very

very quick I mean I work with a very small team of artists and engineers to do that and it it took about six months to get it up and running basically I compliment you on how intuitive the jananam tool seemed and also you showed a video with the level editor appearing to be just as intuitive as the genom tool is it all part of Jenin him and maybe if you guys soft sells it but the level editor and how intuitive that framework it's part of Jenna Jenna Nima is part of the

framework engine so it's included in the package and and yes the the level design tools are incredibly intuitive and the level designers love to work with them so yes easy tools hi it's a question about our direction can I can I ask it about animation I was wondering if you had an artist that unify all the style of the different levels since all are painted or if each artist managed to keep the style consistent through the game like Estancia exclusive an artist he Kiesha opportunity through Steve to too long the second dimension of Superman

you Asian artistic concept artists who shall live it's on a bottle can you about two can move as we say Michelle on cell as the artistic director of the project obviously does the make sure that there's the coherency throughout the world and every one of our artists are capable of working on any of the levels and adapting their style to whatever his creative and artistic vision is you know this compressor is that they have a clog and each dude whole Priscilla - just give me tired mechanic it's a tailcoat not only that - comes on me as we said of course artists have a sometimes they work more easily with organic material with life living organisms and others have a preference for working with more metallic and structured architectural elements but so

so they can choose also which universe works the best for them obviously great team and great games hi this is also about the artistic direction of the levels actually so one thing that struck me was that D levels of Rayman Origins were really imaginative when they felt they really popped in a way so I was curious about what how do you go about creating the particular style of each level was it like somebody wrote a story for it or was it to be imagination that's part of the creative process of working with Michelle who will come in every day with a great story detail about which are all sort of micro stories so little stories of what happens in the food world and then and then together the team bounces off his ideas and makes character designs and and backgrounds and and then iterate every day every day every day there is new stuff that pops that appears and

disappears depending on what Michelle what pops into his brain and and how much the the rest of the team embraces each at the levels so that's yeah that's why there there's so many unbelievable variety like 70 70 levels with I don't know how many completely different environments yeah and that's that's part of the fun and that's what makes right man and it's because we're in this completely iterative process constantly that's so much stuff so much creativity it just goes out and probably as much as you guys have seen on screen also gets lost in the process because we can't keep everything [Applause]