Ubisoft has been battling plenty of criticism for its initial handling of the resolution and frame rate of Assassin’s Creed: Unity on PS4 and Xbox One, which will be at 900p and 30 FPS. Character and FX production manager Jeffrey Spicer spoke to Develop about something else though, namely about the major break-throughs in clothing detailing, facial scanning and effects.
“It’s the 1790s – it was a dirty time and it was important that we were able to portray that within the city. On the effects side, it just allowed us to make much richer effects because of the memory that was allowed us and the performance capabilities of the consoles.
“We’ve made breakthroughs in facial scanning, skin shaders, eye wetness – all of that comes together to really make much more believable and realistic characters that help draw you into the storyline and make them feel like real people and real characters with a real story to help keep you immersed in the game world.”
Spicer also talked about how character artists need to be more “like fashion designers” in terms of details. “Instead of just modelling a single 3D unit, they model actual patterns (like how a shirt would be made with a front and a back), then they stitch that fabric together and each aspect of it has weight. Every seam and every fold has a different weight. We’ve been able to do a lot with what we call ‘soft cloth’, where we give cloth real physics to make it feel like it’s living and breathing and it reacts to the game world.”
Assassin’s Creed: Unity is out in November for PS4, Xbox One and PC. What are your thoughts on all the details that have gone into the game? Let us know in the comments.