Hey Guys,
I read something earlier that confused me on this so I thought i would ask you guys.
What is the Criteria or what really makes a Character classified as a Triple AAA Character?
Is is the overall Design or the 4K Texturing? Or what?
I am really confused since I read this article and saw what they where saying is Triple AAA Characters.
Is there a list of attributes or something?
Please, any information on this will be helpful.
Thanks and Regards,
.
What makes a character an AAA character?? Quality. Nothing more than that.
Its not in the number of poly’s used, or the amount of materials, or the number of individual hairs, or 4K textures are being used. Its all about how you can create a character that looks stunning while using as less resources (poly’s, textures, etc) as possible.
Higher usage of resources != AAA
Thanks Martin,
I am new to all of this and learning by the seat of my pants as I go…
Once again, Thanks for letting me know that there is no certain “Check-list” or 4K thingy or “Re-topology Grading” that makes it a Triple AAA.
I was thinking that there had to be some quantifiable measurement and that if the Character did not meet that particular requirement, that it just did not make the Team.
Interesting…
Anyone else? <>()
Regards,
.
AAA is like a way to describe in game industry the amount of investment was given to make a game, going from the time it took for development, amount of money used for marketing, number of devs, so much alike a movie blockbuster would be considered. It also defines the grade for a Studio able to bring such types of investments.
AAA character in theory would fit the type of character used in such AAA titles, but that not always true. An example is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, not made by an AAA studio, not many developers as a game like Rise of the Tomb Raider (considered an AAA title), and in many features the Senua character in Hellblade is more convincing as a close to the real thing than Laura Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Can you consider Senua as a AAA character? Yes. How much money was used on Laura Croft and Senua in their projects? Probably the answer would be Senua. How much money was used on both titles? The answer is Rise of the Tomb Raider.
This is one of the main reasons I don’t like the designation of AAA for characters (or any other feature). The explanation Martin gave above is quite accurate. I would add also that all the pipeline regarding a character in games is what ultimately make it be good, including animation. A beautiful character with bad animations is maybe worst than a OK character with awesome animations.
For game, the character needs to be done with the correct techniques and not be resource intensive.
For film, the requirements are different, because sometimes you will need to show very tiny details on skin, on eyes, close to the camera, so texturing is dramatically a fine art and uses quite large textures, also poly count is high to have smoothed surfaces. Hair will be also important depending on the scene.
If you have doubts about a work, Artstation is filled with professionals of different grades of experience, even people who works on big studios, you can browse there quite a lot and learn a lot from what you will see.
That AAA prefix deflated a lot recently, or rather quality of graphics inflated.
Replace AAA with “professional quality done by professionals”.
Kind of character done perfectly, but it can not be done for every possible game and its technical requirements.
And if you do not have experience with developing game you may be totally unaware of those little things.
If you are author (future or current) of character models, i can give you examples (and reasons behind them) of what helps and what is annoying in characters.
I bought several on marketplace, and almost all of them have some quirks. I understand it is very hard for somebody who did not code animation blueprint,
or material system, or swapping parts to get idea what is needed, and what really annoys coders.
What makes you think Ninja Theory isn’t a AAA studio? Most of their games have been published by major publishers (Capcom, Sony).
They decided to self publish Hellblade because they didn’t need publisher cash to produce it (they had enough themselves).
They have since been acquired by Microsoft.
Incidentally, I met their director Nina in the pub whilst she was celebrating her birthday last year as their studio is local to me. She’s quite the interesting character and I can see why they are so successful. Yes, I shamelessly brought her a bottle of wine and showed her my UE4 portfolio, on her birthday, in the pub hahaha!! (unsurprisingly it didn’t land me a job)
I can quote this article which also explains their acquisition by Microsoft and at the time of Hellblade they were considered too big to be Indie and too small to be AAA, they decided to go with MS to escape from the fate of several studios of its size, which were “almost” AAA aswel, closing doors.
source: Ninja Theory joined Microsoft ‘to be free from the AAA machine’ - Polygon
Hi ,
Wow, Magnificent Response.
So is it safe to say that the 39 Paragon Characters are indeed Triple AAA without question?
I am referring to this link below…
http://https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/paragon
Are those Characters recived by the Community as such?
Is it indeed true that Epic spent 17 Million Dollars on them?
Regards,
.
@anonymous_user_563791c6 Those 39 character correspond to the quality expected in AAA titles (btw it is “triple A” or “AAA”), and you open each one and look at their animations, texture details, you will come to the same conclusion. But they also fit the genre and performance expected for the game.
The amount of investment of 17million goes not only for the characters, but also for the props (ie: ruins, obelisk, materials) also given for free. Taken into consideration the lifetime for Paragon and the amount of characters they come up and the amount of devs involved, that sum is quite accurate.
Wow…
It’s very interesting learning about this sort of thing.
The is the friendliest Community I’ve ever seen…Why can’t everyone treat each other like this?
Once again, thanks for replying with such a Magnificence Attitude…
Regards,
.
Ok, this is something that I found, and I am asking you Guys, if these are AAA Characters? Are these “Quality” Models?
I found a lesson on how to get these Models into the Unreal Engine and was able to…The lesson worked…
Please advise. Should I stay away from using Daz3d Models or not?
Please forgive my not knowing about this at all.
Thanks and Regards,
.
You have few options regarding how to bring characters into you game:
The first two cases all the hard work was made for you, but you might fall into the question: Does this characters will fit my game? Specifically, imagine you want to create a game like Fortnite which has a very specific character style, can Daz3D provide that kind of visual for you? If any of those questions the answer is no, then you will fall into the 3rd and 4th categories.
It all depends also on what you will want to be proficient with or want to focus as career. I do think character modeling and animation great, but you really need to focus on doing this for long to be good enough to produce AAA character quality.
Daz3D depends a lot on your keen eye of tweaking the character and it can still not give exactly what you want, in the end it might be even frustrating. Can it generate AAA characters? It can, but again highly depends on the user and the game where it will be applied. One question: if the character look does not fit the visual for the game, the character might be AAA, but the game will be down rated if the visual doesn’t match.
There are application for characters generated by software like Daz3D, which is for them to replace real persons as a model for advertising, posters, clothing, etc In this case the main requirement is that they end up looking a real person when final rendered.
My questions for you: What you want to do with characters? Which aspect of game development you want to focus?
Hi …
I like how you broke that down to 4 points.
Option 1 - purchase a ready to play (mesh with animations and customization on few pieces of cloth) - similar to the ones given by Epic for free.
Option 2 - purchase a character customizer where you have certain ability to differentiate aspects of one character from another (physically) - Daz3D falls into this category
Option 3 - pay for someone model and animate a character for you
Option 4 - model and animate a character yourself
I think I will see if I can do Option 4…that’s really what I want to do…
I’ve done some work with various programs and I do have some Great Lessons…so we will see.
I just don’t think I will go with the Daz3d Models.
As far as answering these questions:
Main Characters, Gameplay, Cutscene Talking back and fourth in Action Scenes, I’ve played around with The "Sequencer Editor"…
Which aspect of game development you want to focus?
I to Create the Main Character…Even if it’s just the one…
I really enjoy creating Levels and making BluePrints work…also I do enjoy the C ++ I’ve leanred from the Unreal Engine lessons I’ve taken…
I am currently working on a Animation Montage…also some Blend Space stuff…
As I continue to learn and grow, I will keep on sharing my experience with you wonderful people…
Once again, i think every online community should be like this…
I feel as though I have found a bit of “xanadu”…perhaps Rush was right after all…
Warm Regards,
.