Presented By: Aleissia Laidacker Nicolas Barbeau

Living Crowds AI & Animation in : Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood PIPELINE - AI AI TEAM Behavior Fight Core AI Crowd Missions

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood PIPELINE – CORE AI TEAM  Core Mechanics  Spawning  Save System, Replay System

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood PIPELINE – MISSIONS TEAM  Mission Design Tech  Exotic Gameplay

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood PIPELINE – BEHAVIOR TEAM  Physical State and Actions  Main Character – “3C”: (Character, Camera, Controls)  Animation Gameplay

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood PIPELINE – FIGHT TEAM  Fight Behavior  Fight AI  Fight Animators

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood PIPELINE – CROWD TEAM  NPC AI  Gameplay Systems  Navigation

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood AC1 AC2ACB Crowd Flow TechnologyMemorable MomentsReal World Ambiance CROWD PROGRESSION

3X more Crowd Life content than AC2. In 10 Months Time! THE CHALLENGE Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood  More Missions and Reactions +  Day and Night Cycle +  Rome Upgrade System =

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood STARTING POINT  Behaviors = Programmer Centric: Problem for simple needs  Programmer vs Animator Control  Need new tools!  How to create a simple behavior?

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood DATA DRIVEN BEHAVIORS

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood CUSTOM ACTIONS What is it?  Body Part Transferring  Look-at  Transitions  Loops  Variety  Weights

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood CUSTOM ACTIONS Orientation Settings  Idle: Turn to Target  Move: Oriented Move

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood CUSTOM ACTIONS Blended Animations

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood CUSTOM ACTIONS Random Look-At  Systemic  Moods

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood OASIS Reactions Using Oasis and custom actions for sound and NPC reactions.  Mix and match thousands of speech lines with generic or specific animations.  Fast creation based on a template system.  Managing the Data

What is it?  Gameplay Object  No Scripted Scenes for each Character  Drag and Drop – Static Object  It makes creating a unique ambiance fast and easy. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood CROWD LIFE COORDINATOR

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood What it does  Plays Custom Actions  Prop Spawning information  Loads animation data dynamically  Manages character interruptions and reactivity. CROWD LIFE COORDINATOR

BREAKING THE CYCLE Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood  Break the robotic feel  Making walk uneven and asymmetrical  Making characters feel more human

BREAKING THE CYCLE Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Step 1Step 2Step 1Step 2Step 1Step … Step 1Step 2Step 3Step 4Step 5Step 6Step 1Step 2Step 3Step …

NPCG: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood How to make a character with a wait and a walk animation How it was done before… WAITTRANSITION aWALK a GENERIC WALK b UNIQUE WALK TRANSITION bWAIT

We call it… Transblend! NPCG: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood How to make a character with a wait and a walk animation WAITTRANSITIONWALK a WALK b GENERIC UNIQUE WALK

NPCG: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood How to make a character with a wait and a walk animation Fame

ANIMATION BUDGET Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Doing More with Less  NPCG  Reuse Animations  Dividing Rome into distinct areas  Loading Animations dynamically  Memory Limitations!

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood RECAP What a Challenge!

Thank You! Q&A Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Q&A