1. Presented By: Aleissia Laidacker Nicolas Barbeau

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. 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 =

11. 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?

12. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood DATA DRIVEN BEHAVIORS

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

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

15. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood CUSTOM ACTIONS Blended Animations

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

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

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

22. 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

23. 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

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

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

26. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood RECAP What a Challenge!

27. Thank You! Q&A Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Q&A aleissia.laidacker@ubisoft.com nicolas.barbeau@ubisoft.com