This document summarizes Rich Diamant's presentation on using Autodesk Mudbox for modeling characters in Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya. It discusses modeling methods for matching high resolution detail to arbitrary meshes. It also describes the character modeling pipeline used for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, including the goals of realistic characters that emote well and look good close up for both cinematics and games. Key parts of the pipeline included using arbitrary meshes with blend shapes, creating wrinkle maps in Mudbox, and ensuring models met budget and quality goals for the PlayStation 3.

1. GDC 2008
Autodesk Mudbox:
Integration and Use with Autodesk
3ds Max and Autodesk Maya
By Rich Diamant
Lead Character Artist
rich@rd3d.com
Naughty Dog http://www.rd3d.com

2. Overview
• Modeling Methods and Matching High Resolution Detail
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Pipeline
• Postmortem

3. Matching High Resolution Detail

4. From a random model
Model by Ricardo Ariza

5. Pre-built Mesh

6. Equal divisions

7. Comparison
Arbitrary Mesh Pre-built Mesh

8. Throw your crap in and hit render!

9. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Pipeline:
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune’s Goals
– Realistic Human Characters
• Must emote with wrinkle map technology
• Must look good from close up for both cinematics and in game
• Must be used for promotional material
• Must be efficient and in budget for in game assets

10. Possible pipelines:
• Arbitrary Mesh vs Base Mesh
– Same base model for every character?
– Blend Shapes vs Joints for facial deformation?

11. Pre E3 2006:
• Base Mesh

12. E3 2006

13. E3 2006 Off Topology

14. Post E3 2006 Arbitrary Mesh

15. Post E3 2006 Fitting Topology

16. Comparison

17. Where to go from there:
• Identify new problems and solutions with arbitrary
meshes
– Problems
• Keeping models in sync
• Blend Shapes?

18. Solutions:
• How to keep arbitrary mesh and high mesh in sync
– Organization was key
• Blend Shapes?
• Created custom tools

19. History Tool: Shirt with skinCluster and history

20. History Tool: Shirt with History Node and information stored

21. History Tool: Shirt with original history reapplied

22. RD Browser and Shirt retopology vs Base level
RD File Browser movie

23. Back to the Goals:
• Realistic Human Characters
– Must emote with wrinkle map technology
– Must look good from close up for both cinematics and in game
– Must be used for promotional material
– Must be efficient and in budget for in game assets

24. Wrinkle Map off Wrinkle Map on

25. Wrinkle Map off Wrinkle Map on

26. How we created wrinkle maps:
• Lowest level from Mudbox was Wrap deformed to the in
game Arbitrary mesh
– When the in game mesh deformed with joints, it moved the
Mudbox mesh accordingly

28. • Sculpted a new pose with new wrinkles

29. • Sculpted a new pose with new wrinkles

31. • Generated a new normal map from the in game posed
mesh to the new sculpted pose

32. • Defined normal map regions on in game mesh
– Custom tool written to define regions and export to game engine

33. Wrinkle Map Expressions

34. Back to the Goals:
• Must look good from close up for both cinematics and in
game

36. Back to the Goals:
• Must be used for promotional material

43. Back to the Goals:
• Must be efficient and in budget for in game assets
– The Playstation 3 and our engine allowed us to really push the
envelope in regards to texture budgets and polygon budgets
• 10 – 15 megs per main character of compressed texture memory
• 20 – 30 thousand polygons per main character

44. Postmortem:
• Happy with our decision to use arbitrary meshes
• Tools were important
• Not happy with keeping models in sync