BAF14 - Watch_Dogs

I made really little notes on this talk, but because I really enjoyed it (until I fell asleep from exhaustion) I want to talk at least a bit about it. What really touched me was the enthusiasm of the guy, Colin Graham, talking. He spoke in such a manner that he wanted to keep doing this for ever and ever, in the meantime grabbing each and everyone of us by our collars to go on this wonderful journey with him.

He spoke about this new game Watch_Dogs, which uses a slightly different approach to gaming than usual. The games asks you to use a smart phone for real life hacking in the game, which is a 3rd person shooter set in Chicago. This "NewGen" in gaming asked a lot of stuff from animation, so what does it mean? Over the years, game consoles progressed a shit ton on the area of memory. Even between the two latest models there's a significant difference. While the PS3 and XBOX 360 both had about 20-40 MB of animation render memory, the PS4 and XBOX ONE have 150-200 MB of memory. This huge difference in memory made it possible to add whole lot of new features to improve on the animation in the game. (Since animation compressing equals "poopoo filter", MEMORY MATTERS PEOPLE!)

Why does memory matter?
More memory means more space for variety in animation and less compression which requires better animation. Is your pipeline ready to double, triple or quadruple?

For Watch_Dogs they used a lot of real life footage through Motion Capture for the animation. Because of the better memory it's possible to use more different movements, differentiating styles and personalities. Even though MoCap still has its limitations (no minor movements like fingers and subtle details), it's a nifty piece of technology which helps out a lot animating simple movements like walking, running, jumping etc.

I like gaming and I absolutely adore games created by Ubisoft. Not because I love playing their games, but because their games look really gorgeous. Especially nowadays because of the growing technology and the growth in memory they are able to make it all look so beautiful and realistic. Of course the animation quality will look different in the gameplay than in the promotional posters, but it's still incredible how we are able nowadays to make it look like this when ten years ago we tried to use as less polygons as possible otherwise the game would crash.

Watch_Dogs 2014

Assassin's Creed 2013

Half-life 2 2004

Another comparison: Tomb Raider

Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 3 for Playstation 1998

Lara Croft in Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris 2014

While the picture used for the Temple of osiris is a conceptual render and not the version used in the game itself, it still shows a lot of progression made on the field of creating characters in 3D.

 Going back to Watch_Dogs, I want to share a funny thing he shared with us about animating the character. The main in the game, when walking leisurely, has his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. To have his hands in the pockets without them sticking through the fabric, they scaled down his fingers, leaving the hand like a stump. To quote Colin: ICONIC!