STEEP

Ubisoft Annecy is part of the Ubisoft group. The Annecy studio is known for working alongside Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai on the multiplayer of the Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed franchises. In 2016 they shipped their first game as lead studio: Steep, an open-world extreme sports game set in the Alps and the Alaskan Rockies, released on 2 December 2016.

The challenge of cinematics that can spawn anywhere on the map

On this project I was responsible for the technical and artistic setup of the various cinematics in Steep. From real-time scenes such as the helicopter drops to the cinematics introducing the game’s legendary descents, each of these scenes had its own challenge.

The biggest one was the helicopter drop scenes. In the game, the player can call in their helicopter to teleport anywhere in the world: onto flat ground or a very steep slope, onto pristine snow or a field of fir trees. Obviously we couldn’t build a cinematic for every square metre of the map. We needed a solution that would work anywhere.

Good spawn rules, and hiding the flaws

Working with the development team, we defined spawn rules. We had to avoid any interpenetration with the environment. If the player teleports somewhere with too many rocks or trees, or where the slope is too steep, no cinematic plays. Better to favour quality over quantity. In the same spirit, to avoid a scene showing up too often, a rule prevents it from playing again before a given number of teleports.

On the animation side, we needed an answer for the ground contacts, which were never going to be the same twice, which is awkward when you’re landing a whole helicopter with a character on board. The trick came from the camera angle: it never shows the character’s feet touching the ground, and the helicopter stays hovering. That turned out to be a bonus, since a low-angle shot adds an action movie edge to the scenes. As the saying goes, constraint breeds creativity.

Motion editing the animations

Another big challenge, because of course there was no helicopter on the mocap stage. Working with MocapLab, the motion capture studio that often supports Ubisoft projects, we built a whole rig to simulate the contacts with the helicopter: rear seats, contact points on the door, opening the ski box, cabin height, and so on. We’d thought of everything, and we could play with the rig to try different ways of stepping out of a hovering helicopter.

With all the resulting data, I could play jigsaw and rebuild entire scenes out of small actions such as jumping off the helicopter or drinking from a can. The door opening is keyframed, since we hadn’t pushed the helicopter rig quite that far.

In total, three helicopter drop cinematics are reachable in the game. They play at random, following the rules we set up to avoid repetition, and they can play on any terrain as long as it isn’t covered with too many rocks or trees. A nice saving in production time, for the widest possible use.

In short

Versatility was essential here, because the work touched every front. Collaborating with the other teams was key: development, game design, the motion capture studio. A solid command of the game editor and a clear understanding of the problem helped a lot. Not to mention managing the project and its schedule, meeting deadlines, and finding solutions without compromising the quality of the game.