How long does it take to do a leader animation?

[Stringer1313]

Just curious. Trying to get a sense for how long it takes to create a new Civ leader or even a new Civ. It seems to me that the only time consuming aspect is the leader graphics and their animation. The rest is just flavor test + playing with XML(?) files / numbers, it seems.

 

[Furycrab]

From scratch, probably a reasonable amount of time, but I imagine they have teams working basically just on that while other parts of the team work on the design aspect and future expansions on the mechanics. They can likely streamline a lot of the process.

 

[Big J Money]

The balancing phase is probably the longest when designing a civ.

Wait for new build to have code implementation of the features. Time enough to play with most recent changes. Make some small tweaks. Wait for new build. More days playing on the new build.... etc.

But when only changing leaders and not changing the civ, I imagine the art side takes the longest since there is only 1 ability change to have to balance and implement.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Don't forget about finding a willing voice actor. That ended up being a huge hang-up with the unused Pueblo civ.

 

[gunnergoz]

Don't know the time factors involved but with an organization like Firaxis, I'd assume the first decision would be what civ, then what leaders, then what various civ & leader traits you'd want. Then would come coding and playtesting. All this would be easier once the game code was already done, which by now is a certainty (bug fixes excepted.) The leader animations would come sometime after the leader decisions were made, or so you would think, but prioritized in order of their expected release dates to the public. Firaxis could plan out a tentative schedule of civs and leader releases for months, even a year or two in advance. They'd do some planning for DLC's & expansions with allowance for reviews to take advantage of lessons learned or perhaps to evaluate user feedback and suggestions from forums like this. That's how I'd expect them to do it, but how it is actually done is nothing I know for certain.

 

[Stringer1313]

Making the question simpler, especially for computer animation gurus: If your ONLY task was to draw up the leader on the screen and program all the animations, and this was your full time job, how many hours would it take for you to do it?

Also curious because in terms of modding, being able to do this easily would open up tons of possibilities. But I'm not a computer animator

 

[Dustbrother]

The character work for the leaders is outstanding, even if I don't like the aesthetic. There's almost definitely a pipeline there. Great design and modelling, texturing and material work is crazy good, then you have to rig it and THEN it gets to the hands of the animator. If that is done by one guy, he's an exceptionally gifted and talented individual in many fields.

So your question really depends on what their pipeline looks like, unable to answer definitively. It really looks like they ponied up for some AAA talent though so it gives you hope for fast turnarounds.

 

[ToothedBomb]

I remember an interview where it was said that doing the leader screens took a lot of work in Civ V, and that they got much better at it as time went on. I can't find it anymore, but there is this interview that touches upon it a bit. Seems like it's quite a process.

Although the leader screens are a bit different from Civ V, I assume it still takes a lot of time. Seeing how some of Civ VI's leaders were improved even after their reveal, it's quite possible they're still working on them right now.

 

[Dustbrother]

I remember an interview where it was said that doing the leader screens took a lot of work in Civ V, and that they got much better at it as time went on. I can't find it anymore, but there is this interview that touches upon it a bit. Seems like it's quite a process.

Although the leader screens are a bit different from Civ V, I assume it still takes a lot of time. Seeing how some of Civ VI's leaders were improved even after their reveal, it's quite possible they're still working on them right now.

Even without the 3d backdrops Civ6 leaders are a huge jump in quality. The anatomy and design are so well done and they are riddled with so many nuances and details. The facial expressions are also way better than in Civ5, that takes a LOT of work.

 

[demidyad]

I work in computer animation, not exactly like Firaxis' set up but near enough, with experience in high end VFX and post-production houses. If you went to the Firaxis art team, picked a leader from the history books and told them to make them into a new leader scene, I would guess it would take 2 weeks of production for them to get back to you with a finished Civ 6 leader scene - assuming they had a voice actor ready to go and no other jobs to work on.

 

[Dustbrother]

I work in computer animation, not exactly like Firaxis' set up but near enough, with experience in high end VFX and post-production houses. If you went to the Firaxis art team, picked a leader from the history books and told them to make them into a new leader scene, I would guess it would take 2 weeks of production for them to get back to you with a finished Civ 6 leader scene - assuming they had a voice actor ready to go and no other jobs to work on.

I'm from the same background, having supervised a few films and also worked on creature characters myself from start to finish I'd say 2 weeks is living in a highly optimistic world lol. But again it highly depends on their pipeline..

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm from the same background, having supervised a few films and also worked on creature characters myself from start to finish I'd say 2 weeks is living in a highly optimistic world lol. But again it highly depends on their pipeline..

Also, whether they use motion capture or not.
EDIT: I'm not from the same background, just very small theoretical knowledge.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

In addition to what has been said, i would like to add that doing caricatural leader heads like those in Civ6 is actually a lot harder these days than a quasi photorealistic model. There are plenty of pre-made models to be used as bases, some with great built-in morphing systems to allow a variety of bodies/heads, and at least 2 are free and open source. However, doing a caricatural leader than still looks human, complete with exaggerated expressions is a lot of work that must be done manually.

 

[demidyad]

I'm from the same background, having supervised a few films and also worked on creature characters myself from start to finish I'd say 2 weeks is living in a highly optimistic world lol. But again it highly depends on their pipeline..

Yeah I was kind of assuming by this point they'd be pretty comfortable with their workflow and could crank em out.

If you were making just one of these leaderheads, from scratch, with an outside company, it'd take much longer, but when you've already made 20 of them and can dedicate the whole team to adding just 1 more...

 

[Lord Yanaek]

The rest is just flavor test + playing with XML(?) files / numbers, it seems.

And then, this also isn't true. It was back when civilizations merely had +production/culture or gold and one unique unit. CiV had more complex unique abilities that often required new code (either Lua scripts or totally new C++ code). 6 has twice as many (one civilization ability + one leader ability) and most of those are way more creative. Coding then debugging and then balancing those unique abilities takes time. Fortunately, this is something another department does while art is working on the portraits so it might not add time, but it's longer and more complicated than you think.

 

[Olleus]

Nobody's given an actual estimate of the number of man hours to do the art work...

I would guess in the low 100s? But I've never done any real graphical work so that's a pretty wild stab in the dark, would be interested to know if people think its more or less.

 

[Deadstarre]

there is this interview that touches upon it

very interesting part of that article -

"Beach says that if there's anything left over that he might have wanted to include in Civ V, after a full game and two expansions, it would be... the ability to terraform. The original design for the Dutch civ called for them to be able to reclaim land from the sea, but this proved to be impossible within Civ V's existing game engine."

probly safe to say thats coming to Civ VI at some point.

 

[shaglio]

You might want to ask the people in this thread. Especially sukiritact who, in post #40, has a Ramkhamhaeng leader screen with animation.

 

[Jabulani]

Assuming the dev is a pro with a full set of tools, I would say a week is necessary to produce 2-3 leaders animations. Anyway rarely such a task is done by one dev only working full time on it.

 

[leif erikson]

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