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Gaming n n n n re-creating the period of each game as authentically as pos- sible while they re-imagined the era depicted in the story lines. While the characters are drawn from history (liter- ally and figuratively), the team at times took poetic license with timelines and the nature of the historical figures’ deaths to suit their plots. Nevertheless, this did not deter the Ubisoft artists in their quest for historical accuracy as they built ancient landscapes and architecture, and crafted period clothing and weaponry that are as realistic as they are breathtaking and beautiful. Lay of the Land Tree times the size of Assassin’s Creed II ’s Venice, Brother- hood ’s Rome is a diverse landscape, from the splendor of Vatican City to the ancient Roman ruins, from the sun- drenched countryside to the flowing Tiber River. “Assassin’s Creed has always been a game where attention to detail is re- ally important,” says Bruce Low, environmental modeler. To this end, the crew actually modeled the city of Rome based on an old map from the 16th century. “We needed to be meticulous with our landmarks, such as the Pantheon and the Castel San Angelo, and re-create them as closely as possible from what they would have been like back then,” Low adds. Te crew built a production pipeline which ensured that all the game objects—whether new for Brotherhood or repur- posed from the previous version of the game—worked cor- rectly on all levels. “Tey had to work for everyone, from technical, to design, to graphics,” says Low. “What was most challenging was making sure that everyone on the team un- derstood we needed to get the most from every 3D element, and that sometimes we needed to make cuts or limit the number of variations to achieve our goals while remaining within memory and performance budgets.” According to Low, creating Rome itself presented the biggest model- ing hurdles due to the sheer size of the environment. “We needed to render massive amounts of polygons in a greater distance than we ever did on any Assassin’s Creed,” he says. Tis obstacle eventually was over- come by, among other things, a great deal of code optimization. Te game’s architecture, as well as the people, animals, and objects, were built using mainly Autodesk’s 3ds Max and then textured using Pixologic’s ZBrush, Maxon’s BodyPaint, and Adobe’s Photoshop. Te artists used a number of other software programs to refine the images, including Ryan Clark’s CrazyBump and xNormal freeware, as well as Headus’ UVLayout and Carl-Mikael Lagnecrantz’s PolyBoost. In addition, Francois Levesque, Ubisoft’s technical director, scripted numerous in-house tools, such as the AC Utilities set, for generating the imagery. Character Assassination Like its predecessors, Brotherhood’s gameplay mechanics center around parkour movements, crowd-blending stealth, assassinations on foot and on horseback, and a faster, more dynamic combat system that allowed for single- as well as multi-player action. As lead animator Mike Menillo explains, in Assassin’s Creed II, Ezio was not a trained assassin, so his moves were brutal but not very fancy. In Brotherhood, though, he is old- er and a master assassin, so his moves are more visceral and quick—as you would expect from a person of his present level. “We couldn’t have Ezio flying through the air doing martial-arts kicks, because it doesn’t fit the style we wanted to achieve,” he adds. The animation for Ezio and the other characters was achieved Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood sets a high bar in graphic quality and animation. using a combination of keyframing (within 3ds Max’s Character Studio tool set) and motion capture (with the data processed through Autodesk’s MotionBuilder). Autodesk’s HumanIK middleware was also integrated into Ubisoft’s proprietary game engine to help pro- duce more realistic in-game animation for the title’s human charac- ters as well as the horses. As a result, all the game characters move realistically through the vast city of Rome, whether walking on un- even terrain, scaling towering walls, riding on horseback, or jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Lighting, compositing, and rendering were done in Ubisoft’s real- time, in-house Anvil engine. Meanwhile, some cloth simulations were accomplished with 3ds Max, while others were “faked” during modeling, sculpted by hand with ZBrush, or computed in the engine. “Thanks to our experience with Assassin’s Creed II, we were able to confront the challenges more directly [in terms of the modeling], and put an emphasis on building strong and rich characters accord- ing to the historical details and references, without worrying about the technical difficulties related to the heavily crowded city (which is a timeframe killer),” says Laurant Sauvage, senior character artist. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood has elevated the brand further than ever, once again luring players with its intriguing story, inventive gameplay, com- plex AI, and breathtaking graphics. Combined, the franchise has sold more than 20 million copies, mak- ing it one of the best-selling for this generation. No doubt the developer’s imagination and imagery have played a major role in that achievement. n Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of Computer Graphics World. Use your smart- phone to read an in-depth story on the making of Brotherhood. January/February 2011 41 Images courtesy Ubisoft.