Animating Dauntless: Slaying AAA Animation on the Indie Scale
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- In this GDC 2017 session, Phoenix Labs' Simon Unger explains the animation best practices they've learned so far to create AAA-grade animation on an indie budget.
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"With a group of 30 to 40 industry veterans"
This is the gaming equivalent to "small loan of a million dollars."
TRUE.."Indie" has been hijacked by non-indie for years, for even longer in music lmao
That is disgusting lol
lmao i wanted to do make my own monster hunter game but I guess that's impossible without a mocap studio
Just get yourself 30-40 experts with decades of AAA industry experience and build your own mocap studio, and then you too can make INDIE games on the "Indie Scale". Like... SERIOUSLY?? Is that all it takes? Cool, let me just set aside a SPARE MILLION DOLLARS. Oh sorry, a million wouldn't cover my TWO locations in Vancouver and San Francisco? I guess I'll throw in an extra two or three mil'. Who can't afford that on the "indie scale", am I right?
He's using the word "indie" like Hollywood movie studios talk about "independent films" - as an example, all of Tarantino's films with budgets in the tens of millions, starring A-list celebrities are classified as "independent films"... TECHNICALLY. This isn't even double-A scale game development he's talking about, this is double-and-a-half-A at least. This is "AAa" scale. This is not INDIE, this is a STUDIO.
It's not that this talk isn't useful or informative, it's that the title is CLICKBAIT to get views from people who are actually working in "indie scale" thinking this is going to help them. Or Simon is just that out-of-touch. Maybe he's been AAA for so many years that he has no idea what an indie studio actually is anymore. Whatever it is, it has turned me off to this whole talk, but then, it's clearly not for me anyway. I'm not interested in how awesome he and his team feel like they are, or how awesome their mocap studio they shelled out tens of thousands of dollars for is.
GDC shouldn't be promoting the Three Dozen AAA Veterans With $$$, Incorporated (sorry, LLC) as "indie" content. There's plenty to learn from STUDIO content, but they should be honest about where they're coming from and what scale they're working at.
I think the ideas are scalable. It's important to extrapolate and determine what applies to you. Technically they are indie. Budget wise? Definitely not "dude in their bedroom" But you can look for publishers for your project to get that kind of budget. It doesn't make it any less indie. The important part is taking away what applies to you. It's really easy to use the fail quicker tip for anyone. Mocap is great and there ARE indie solutions available like renting a rokoko. There are definitely things to take away from this on the indie scale.
old stuff mate but its way faster these days but guess ur right :`D
The idea of "indie" nowadays is all about arm race in marketing. Super good polished games from dozens veterans of the industry and with decent funding is labeled "indie" to take advantages from the title. Your solo project(or with a friend) is also seen "indie", but these are far from under the same category.
not sure this counts as indie
As a indie dev with a team of 3 working on a ambitious project this helped us little to none.. These guys are about as indie as Micheal Jackson making a album with his own money & no label 💯
Good talk BUT these guys aren't really "indie" in the sense that they are just starting out or working without funding. The Optitrack's low end system is over $10,000. Far far far out of the budget of any talented startup indie looking to produce a game that comes close to AAA polish.
Their system is over $34000. Now that's indie
you can rent it too .. but yeah
Not every "Indie" has to be a scrappy up-and-comer. Phoenix Labs are experienced and established, yet separate from big AAA publishers.
You are not indie... trying to sell on that "indie train" is kinda sad when guys of your caliber and experience come around... and claim you are indie studio. You have the budget, you have more experience than all of us "indie devs" combined together. I'm not being butthurt I just find it silly that you market yourself as indie when stuff you do is literally AAA quality.
I'm currently working on "indie scale game" and trust me you have no idea how and what budget animations feel like. Thank God for mixamo else I'd have to sell my fucking soul to get anything going. Not to mention having full time job and trying to focus on development is nuts.
...where you guys clearly have this "indie title" as your full time job.
So clickbait like this to get some free ass market is really silly and pretty much rude.
I can relate to everything you said😅
shout-out to the real indie devs who came here hoping to learn something useful for their low budget productions instead got served: "Just have a couple of million dollars bro"
30 to 40 people, small!? I feel hopeless :( cant even find one friend to help me out.
Fnord Lander what kind of help are you looking for
Anything from coding to graphic design, I just want more people to learn and grow with
Fnord Lander yeah sure, i volunteer let’s do that
I can't be worth much to you in the ways of money but I do audio production full time so I can trade you for some custom music and sounds. What are you strongest at?
Fnord Lander Coding, I’ve only learned it a year ago but I picked up object oriented and its concepts in a week (I’ve got a mind built for it). And I’d say game design. Been studying it for like 4-5 years. Add me on discord {Username Redacted}
When I think if "Indie scale" I think of the guy in his garage, with a 500$ budget, a single laptop and little industry experience.
If comparatively large studios, with financial backing, a lot of AAA experience and a publisher, like the one from the presenter, call their games "indie", it means these above mentioned solo developers or small teams will have to compete with guys like the presenter when someone searches for "indie games".
There should be a better distinction.
There used to be the AA scene. Things like Hellblande Senua's sacrifice or Dauntless.
indiAAA 🤣
It would be awesome to know how to make animation on $500
@@GagsAnimation Blender and a lot of time. Everytime you go low budget or no budget you compensate with time.
@@asandax6 wow really? Sweet. What about $500 2d animation?
"indie" "mocap"
Talks about going ''indie'' to make games faster and brags like "Phoenix Labs can do with 40 people, what would normally take 100 people"
Launches a crap, unoptimized clone with next to no content, slowly releases small updates over a year that aren't even worth playing.
Yeah, go tell Capcom about how your team is so much more efficient and quick than their teams working on Monster Hunter games.
@2:02: how to say "Monster Hunter like game" in as many words as possible lol
Soooo much people ranting about the talk being called "indie scale"'. To put that into perspective, if they all come from studios mentionned in the beginning, chances are they worked in projects where teams count several hundreds of people, sometime reaching a thousand if you consider marketing, localization, etc...
So for them, 40 people IS an indie scale, it's just a matter of perception
They have 40 experts with decades of AAA industry experience, their own mocap studio, and a budged.
The only advantage an actual indie game developer toiling away at their game has, is the title indie developer itself, and the benefits it brings in terms of peoples expectations.
Calling everything indie hurts the actual indie developers because it renders the term meaningless.
@@TackerTacker Well they are an independent studio, that's a fact, wether or not the term "indie" needs to be reserved for teams of 5 or less, that's another debate.
However several games that are happily labeled indie like Ori or Inside, are often made by teams that exceed 20 people but they don't make quite the ruckus.
@@francoisalligier8856 Except, in fact, they are literally not.
From their website: "In January 2020, we officially joined forces with Garena, a digital entertainment company and one of the largest forces for gaming in Southeast Asia", and their game Dauntless has Epic Games listed as a Publisher.
They also very much kept their AAA spirit and made it a F2P live service game with loot boxes.
They don't care about the indie scene one bit, they just use what ever popular terminology is around at the time. If it had been poopy mc poopface they would've slapped that on the title and proudly declared that they are poopy faces too.
@@francoisalligier8856 You're right in that sense, however more often than not majority of indie game title are being developed with shoestring budget (and no, I mean less than $1 million), and bedroom coders and less than dozen collaborators having no senior experience in the large part of the industry. Not to mention some of them come from developing 3rd world countries thriving with passion, but I guess those people might as well non existent.
Calling AAA/vets indie is much of a stretch.
First: ISN´T INDIE
Second: ISN´T INDIE
Third but not least: ISN´T INDIE
"Indie budget" lmao, calling this Indie has got to be one of the boldest lies I've seen in a while.
it was a good video to listen to, and I find it interesting
however I have trouble taking serious the 'first original IP' when part of the team worked at Capcom and the game looks and plays basically like an unholy fusion of Fortnite and Monster Hunter
but still interesting video
This game was in the works long before fortnite was a thing... I presume the visual style comes from the people on their team with a background in Riot Games.
Fortnite is just another game that uses that terrible artstyle. Sadly.
I'm really interested to know how the Monster Hunter team animate their monsters, especially since they're all handkeyed.
This, especially since the monsters in MH are much more expressively animated than in any other game I know of.
Dan from Extra credit has made an analysis of Monster Hunter animations, using his knowledge as video game animator to comment the monster animation : ruclips.net/video/xHz3xh2cfTM/видео.html Not really what you're after, but I felt it was interesting in its own right.
It would probably be disappointing, hi i've been animating Street Fighter and Capcom action games for 30 plus years, i'm insanely talented and skilled in both editing motion capture and hand drawn animations, also given that it's something of a pre-requisite for game-dev in Japan i have a rock solid understanding of Linux programming, bye!
Did they get John Travolta to do the mocap at 9:28?
a team of 40! that is massive. The orginal doom was done with a much smaller group. Funny what indie scale is now called.
This is an AA game
The original Doom was an NES game. Those games did not require large groups of people. They were much smaller and had super simple animations. That is not a fair comparison AT ALL.
@Hilmi Yafi Indie means independent. They are an independent development team. If I wanted to make a game and I got my whole class of 40 to help me, we would still be indie.
@@HumBug_05 you're delusional
@@arthurgianini387 Elaborate.
I see a trend, many people from AAA are going full small indie or AA indie. I feel like AAA environment for devs is quite toxic where they are pushed by publishers to do stuff they would not do themselves.
AAA constantly bleeds talent due to burnout, the deal is that they are quite easy to replace. As he stated at the start about the "dynamics"
This dude shared tonns of useful information and overall I am impressed with his competency level. Specially that retargetting to that creature part, me as an animator I feel there is so much I learned from this talk. Thank you for sharing.
Also, it's funny to see so many comments about indie thing which is justifiable too 😅.
Wait a sec, building a mocap studio is indie?
nope, not really, it's kinda bollocks
so, indie means building your own mo-cap studio now... 'Slaying AAA with an AAA budget'
'we were pro-active with a fast turnaround in a quick loop because we're agile...' (paraphrasing) sounds like buzzwords
2:50 it's impossible to not think of Kratos's intro in God of War when the character looks at the tree
12:57: "This isn't a paid endoresement of Optritrac™, although if anybody is here from Optitrac™, I wouldn't mind some more cameras"
Great delivery
"How to Reskin as Many Animations as Possible"
Excuse me for saying so, but this is not an Indie Scale. I would like to have seen the total manhours, I suspect it's massive. Other than that, interesting talk. There is a few points here which can be scaled down to lower level (and budget).
"indie scale"
>40 people very skilled with 10 of experience in the AAA industry with network with said industries
Plus they outsourced to another studio with probably about the same number of people. This isn't indie. It's people like this that make indie developer's lives much harder as consumers then see this and expect other developers, who actually are Indie, to create similar quality and scale of game/work. When true Indie developers are usually a single person or teams of 4-6 people, this scale is just not possible, at least within the window of time they developed this game.
These guys damage the name "Indie."
m a 40 people, that's a full blown company right there
because of this guy "Ah" is now my new ","
So, I'd thought you guys make the animations, but for what I just saw, you guys just copy paste from other animation that were no even animated by animator.
Okay so this video ends @3:40?
Ah, so from 3:40 to 3:48 it just refuses loading,
it's just that spot in the video that doesn't work... wtf youtube?
Oh glad I'm not the only one, thanks! :D
Thanks!
OMG YOU'RE RIGHT! IT'S NOT LOADING! I WANNA SEE THE BEAST....
why are so many GDC videos low quality??? Some great content and uploaded in 360 or 720p???
I wonder how they are going to update their game now that Apple bought iKinema and is neglecting support for previous customers.
Since the game is built on Unreal Engine I assume they don't have iKinema's source code.
Nice talk, thanks for it!
I see more and more middle sized indie teams use motion capture because it's becoming easy, cheap and approachable tech. Would love to see it in the future being available for even smaller projects as well. I work alone with no explicit budget whatsoever so I started working on my own solution with HTC Vive controllers, Unity, a lot of IK-ing and merging multiple recordings of the same action together. Might not be the best solution but it's what I have right now (without paying a dime for any more tech) and it'll be good enough for prototyping and gamejams. The animations will definitely need a lot of cleanup or a complete redoing when going into production but I'm just starting out so it's enough for now :)
Also speaking of prototyping I see that a lot of studios do it like they create a short film about the game they want to make to show the game feel and the art style and go off from that (XCOM, Hellblade, Dauntless etc.)...interesting approach, might try that out too...right after I have my vrmocap set up because I'm not hand-keying all that. I'm a programmer, not an animator :P
oh so if i gathered a team of industry veterans and called it an "indie dev team" and had about a million dollars to spend, I too can achieve my goals to reach AAA quality? It's so simple!
This game looks like shit. Sea of thieves characters with monster hunter world items fighting owlbear from witcher.
I struggle to consider naming indie anything that is not "zero budget, work force only", imagine a 40 people team with spare budget for motion capture.
dont want to be mean cuz you all apperently worked on great titles b4 , but what the fuck are thinking guys !? how can u throw away you carreers for that crappy looking cel shader stuff !? i dont get it.. but thanks for your presentation :D
Really, very interesting to see the Mo-Cap process. Great to see the price has dropped to a level where smaller developers can do this in house..... and get that man an IV. He needs fluids.
having internal mocap studio is very cool and also allows to make something fun and not worry about booking spots etc wanding mocap space is so funny tho :P
I'd suggest setting your keys to splined before giving to designers, that would probably be helpful for them to visualize.
a fucking flying owlbear
kinefx didn't exist back then, interesting to see if you'v implimented it in your pipeline already! As an animator, I love the output you getting, seems like a balance between capture + automation + artists final input! quite inspiring!
Thid guy looks like he is 20
I feel like at this point they're using the label "indie" as an excuse for criticism of the quality of their game.
This guy is full of lies.
That title is a joke
12:39 find the fun in the gameplay without being a slave to labor intensive content creation and long iteration time. I decided early lucky me.
dumb question but are their player animations key framed or motion tracked?
RPG 4 coop to slay the greater evil? So, it's D&D the video game? Okay, jokes aside, looks amazing.
The animation for this game doesn't really stand out
this is AAA like mass effect andromeda
~watches bit about the tail animation~
Well, this is beyond my understanding, d'oh
This guy is exceptional!
Well this is one of my favorites now.
could turn that animation transfer locator thing into a basic tool with a for loop so easily. As long as everything is named properly.
Fortnite Hunter
It looks perfect, for that much work!
>league of legends
How do I make animation without motion captures? I am poor
If you got the time, rotoscope it; that is, if you don't got the talent to just freehand it.
Or if you're crafty, you might be able to get some reasonable results using Blender, attaching multiple pingpong balls to each limb section rigidly, tracking each part using object tracking, and using those as IK targets or something.
cant wait for the open beta
This game looks awful
False
Inspiring stuff. I haven't been a huge fan of mocap but I find I'm very excited about it as a productivity tool. I'll work from a mocap base on a future character and see how well it suits. Thanks for the talk!
Nice talk, well explained concepts and good ideas throughout!
I so hate the "weapons bigger than humans" style.