Immortals FENYX Rising Q&A

Join us for this very special Q&A article with Thierry, Vincent, Olivier, Caroline, Dimitri, Louis and Claude from the talented team at Ubisoft Quebec as we pick their brains about their work on Immortals Fenyx Rising. From pre-production, through development/production, all the way to post production, we cover all bases in this information-packed Q&A. This is not one to be missed!

Creating the Style and Pre-Production

What is the structure of the Art Team who worked on Immortals Fenyx Rising?

Thierry - The team is composed of mostly the same core team and art teams as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Ubisoft Quebec was leading this project and working with other internal partners, including Ubisoft Chengdu, Singapore, Bucharest, Montpellier, Kiev and Odessa.

Vincent - Inside the Art department we had the Biome team composed by artists and tech artists working on textures, terrain recipes, vegetation and rock assets. Then we had the Asset Team, including the material team, working on every asset from architecture to props. We were 8 Materials Artists in house and around 3 at Technicolor.

How did you pick the style of Immortals Fenyx Rising? Was it a lot of back and forth concepting and or modelling?

Thierry - Working on Immortals Fenyx Rising was a breath of fresh air for our team. By developing a new IP, we were able to freely explore fantasy and mythological elements and design, in new creative, and exciting ways. Coming out from years of working on realistic looking games we've decided to challenge ourselves and to go out of our comfort zone.

We've jumped on this unique occasion hoping the create one of the most beautiful surprises in the Ubisoft catalogue. Our goal was to create a colourful world, that would speak to both young and old. Based on the Greek mythology that we learned on Assassin's Creed Odyssey it was important for us to look as different as possible from our previous game. That’s when the stylized and painterly discussion began. But how to approach it when painterly is more a feeling than a style? All we knew was that we wanted something vibrant, colourful, and inviting.

One of our main sources of inspiration came from Studio Ghibli movies along with our own unique artistic sensibility and influence. It was really challenging for us and exciting as we were trying to match a style and create original stuff at the same time. It’s taken a lot of iteration and we’ve tweaked the visuals of the game until the very end.

When starting the project how did you define the material art direction?

Vincent - During the conception phase, when the painterly art style was set as the Artistic Direction, we started gathering a lot of screens, image references, and paint books to get used to this aesthetic. We also looked a lot into how Studio Ghibli backgrounds are made, with a specific paint such as poster colour that slightly influenced the process and aesthetic. Then it was important to quickly jump into benchmarks to see how the 3d medium would need to be adapted to fit that aesthetic. The first materials were not much but consolidated the idea that it was a refreshing and promising aesthetic. That’s how we start our explorations.

Where and how did you and the team apply colour theory and the moods they represent in relation to the game and story?

Vincent - Colour Theory is a classic common knowledge for every artist. I made sure to add those basic concepts in the material documentation and illustrated it with actual data. The relation of colours with each other and colour palette arrangement can really be daunting if not understand well.

Something that stands out on the references we had such as Ghibli backgrounds is that the colour palettes are rich, and colours are used to dissociate elements in a very readable manner. It was then important to propose materials that have strong but reduced colour palettes.

Olivier - Each region has a theme that corresponds to a god and each god has a colour chart. I worked on one of the first explorable areas which is The Valley of Eternal Springs of the goddess Aphrodite. The colours that represent the femininity associated with this goddess are pink, white, yellow and green. The patterns used are more flowers seashell and mainly shapes with beautiful curves.

How did you create the best practices and ensure the team was able to follow them?

Vincent - For material creation there are a lot of best practices such as how to use shapes language , rhythm, or even how to build a grounded and yet stylized material. I used the data from the benchmarks or early production to illustrate those concepts with actual data and enrich the material documentation. That document was then shared with everyone all along the production.

How did you create the visual Pillars for the materials? Were they created per area or material type (Such as this is the Tartarus material pillar aim for this quality)?

Vincent - The visual Pillars are the common elements and approaches on which materials must be built.

The Reduce Colour Palette is the idea to create materials with restricted colours to propose something rich, easy to read and pleasant.

The Painterly Vibe is the feeling and touch of the surface, including, base colour, gloss and normal.

The non-continuous shapes represent the idea to avoid form that are going across the surfaces without break ups such as highlight or valleys.

The shapes redraw is the pass you do when you paint everything and want to refine few forms, it exists in Ghibli background with coloured or black lines.

The idea of Opaque modelling on an aquatic underlayer was tremendous for the aesthetic. It refers to the way Ghibli background are painted with a coating or underlaying flowing across the paper. Then on top of that shapes are refined with more opaque strokes.

The Low painterly normal is the fact that we stylized not only the base colour but the normal which was crucial to break the perfect 3d feeling.

The matte glossiness is the idea to avoid shiny surfaces everywhere that would break the feeling of mat painting and aged environment.

When reviewing a material what did you check to ensure it remained in the style and rules of the game?

Vincent - During the reviews I mostly checked the aesthetic and context. With all this colour theory knowledge it’s easy to spot if a surface can be more vibrant, the context will concur if it’s a good idea. The visual Pillars also helped a lot to create a common knowledge and vocabulary for everyone and understand how far we needed to go in term of colours, paint touch and so on.

Of course, it is Art we talk about and not Mathematic, so we had a lot of back and forth on many materials. Most of the time we worked materials in a row such as kits, nailing one would ensure that the complete set of this material would be easier to produce.

When creating a material how did you break down a reference and extract the details/feeling of it for the style of a game? For example, the stone compared to actual stone.

Olivier - Many references taken from Japanese animation were needed to create materials. Some textures were harder to find than others, I remember the hay in Howl's moving Castle was too abstract and difficult to recreate in 3d. We created a mix between defined forms and abstract ones.

Caroline - I like to search on the web for some beautiful watercolours paintings (for the vegetal assets). I usually analyze multiple watercolours by species and, by comparing them. I try to figure out what makes, for example, a fir looks like a fir even with so little details as on a watercolour painting. It inspires me while helping me to understand what is important for the players to be able to read instantaneously the silhouette of a vegetal asset – to get to the essence of the vegetal asset I need to create - and have it driving my work.

How did you plan the material production? How were tasks and goals set for individuals and the team?

Olivier - We were a senior team with a total of 8 texture artists at Ubisoft Quebec, like on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

 Vincent knows us all very well and he was able to assign us tasks based on our strengths and taste. Me, for example, I had more experience in props due to my work on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and others Assassin Creed games. At my request I also was able to do some architecture. I still made accessories with sculpture, modelling and of course texture. I also took care of the Gameplay Elements, it was the first time we've had so many in a game.

Vincent - Material Production is easier to track than complex navigable assets. I mostly tracked everything using block plan to visualize the overall workload without being too granular and being lost in micromanagement. It allowed me to dispatch the workload not per material but per material kit or family, giving more room to react when something new arrived or must be removed. Artists were given time and memory budget, artistic direction for a group of material and then had the freedom to tackle it the way they wanted.

After finalizing the style did you create an art test based on an asset(s)? If so how did you choose the asset(s)?What did you focus on when reviewing an art test?

Vincent - We did have an Art test, a simple floor from a Pinocchio movie background, it allowed us to see how the candidate would approach painterly surfaces without mentioning our game references that were mostly Japanese. Still it allowed me to see how close the artist would go to the references and if he/she adopted a more painterly approach instead of the usual realistic approach of material creation.

Compared to working on Assassin's Creed, how did you go about creating a world with more complex traversal systems, were there any challenges calling out things the player can do with the environment?

Specifically working with systems like the fly, dash etc were there any difficulties making the player aware of possible routes or means of approach for different tasks?

Thierry - Compared with the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey production we did rethink the way to make and create our game.

Traversal in Immortals Fenyx Rising is an incredibly varied, exciting, and challenging experience. Players will sprint across open fields, climb enormous mountains, and glide through the skies as they explore the world of the Golden Isle. All the while, they are challenged by the terrain and mastering their Stamina to discover every hidden location and secret the island has to offer.

Our world was built on the same philosophies as a theme park: strong iconic thematizations per region and biome. Each region is inspired by a Greek god and everything in that region is specifically built to support the mythology of that Greek god.  The players definitely encounter a huge and detailed world to explore. The land of the gods is full of varied terrains, monsters, and challenges. Each enemy encounter, puzzle, and quest location is tailored to bring a unique aspect of the story, a myth, and a gameplay feature to light. Some terrain is more acclimated to gliding or focused on climbing, while other areas are larger and more open, perfect for a mount – so players never get tire of traversing the world.

Team and Leadership

How did you acclimate new members into production? When adding new members what do you find to be best practices?

Vincent - For the onboarding, the benchmarks, materials and region documentations came in handy. It was a good starting point to understand the art direction. Then people usually start practice by trying to create materials with that aesthetic, playing with our home-made tools. In my opinion the best way to get a hand on a specific style is to practice it, so I let people play for a few days before jumping on actual data.

How did you ensure that each material that your team created was able to be used in multiple scenarios and for different pieces of architecture?

Dimitri - By collaborating directly with the architecture and props teams, we ensure that we were doing the right thing from their feedback. By the end of the project we had roughly standardized our tileable so that it worked in multiple scenarios and regions.

What are some of the difficulties you had while working remotely? How did you keep a remote team on task and consistent with quality and style?

Dimitri - We’re proud to see how the team has adapted to this new set-up. There are obviously challenges with remote work, but for me in the material team is a small team that is always sharing and asking for feedback inside its own people. Remote was somewhat easy but it did affect the way we communicate outside our group, and by that I mean the frequency of discussion we have with other teams since it can be more difficult to manage phone call then real talk from desk to desk.

When each new area was introduced how did your team plan and divvy up the work for the materials needed?

Dimitri - From the start we needed to find what are the basic needs, like wall, grounds and trim. It all extended from the need of the architecture from there, mostly by adding new trim or creating variations of pre-existing textures like the number of tiles from a ground to the level of erosion of a wall.

When working on an open world game how did your team and the environment team work together to make sure each area felt natural and interesting while still guiding the player to points of interest? Did you use certain materials or colours to guide the player to their objectives?

Vincent - In term of environment creation, colour and lighting are the biggest leverages. Dispatching strong colours on structures, props and vegetations really helped to frame each area and environment, keeping bold materials like fully gold structure for interactive objects or puzzles. Of course, FX, camera, breadcrumbs and so on are as many leverages also used in production to fulfil those needs.

How do you ensure that your team maintains the pipelines and art direction when working on a project?

Dimitri - We tried to always go back to the essence of the project, looking our references again to ensure that we always tried to reach one goal, one kind of visual. From the inspiration we got from the concept art, the main idea behind our material was always the same, which, I think, helped our team to create a bunch of consistent textures even though we had all our own ways of achieving it.

Production

When considering each area how did you and the team use materials to make them feel unique yet still part of the same world? Such as the stark contrast in mood of the Tartarus versus Hephaestus. How did you blend the shifting in areas mood and style?

Vincent - Again colour palette was tremendous to give different flavours to each area. We didn’t try to blend that much the regions into each other though. It was an early decision to keep strong colour difference even at the borders between two regions.

How did the material pipeline improve and change as the game moved through production?

Dimitri - Mostly we tried to add more detail in it over the time. At first textures were maybe a bit blurry, in a way, more naïve, which was not always good for our environment. Lot of colour tweaks were done regarding the art direction.

What was the dialogue like between the environment teams and material teams? Would the environment team request specific materials for objects or areas? 

Dimitri - We were proactive for the texture needs or assets visual designs even if everyone could come and give us idea or ask something. We didn’t end up with a lot of specific requests, so we adapted.

What are some of the best practices for the artists to make a material for widespread use?

Vincent - It’s always a matter of context but for big environments, tileable and trim sheets with material blend are a versatile solution in my opinion. It doesn’t mean that everything as to be made that way, but it will help flesh out things quickly with visual consistency. Then you can identify element than can have a more specific attention like specific sculpts, ornaments, destruction version, decal pass and so on.

Did your team use any software specialities to assist or improve the pipeline? For example, exporting Substance Designer Materials to be imported into Substance Painter for texturing unique assets?

Vincent - We did have assets with specific texturing done in Painter such as the Aphrodite tree, the Hephaistos anvil adornments, the gods thrones, statues and so on. We relied a lot on Substance Designer for our material creation as it was versatile to iterate but also share recipes across material kits. It was like what you can achieve with Smart Mat in Painter, but we mostly stick to Designer to be able to take info’s every all along the material building. 

We didn’t force anyone using specific tools though. The mindset we have is more that only the result is important so whatever software or tool help you to achieve it is allowed.

How did your team handle details?

Louis - We used a set of operation in the shader to remove detail based on the distance from the camera.  We basically convert albedo to HSV and then reduce the value of the texture, resulting in a more uniform surface, with less detail.

For Trees and bushes, we used the same approach to remove details but we also used a 3 stages alpha mask to remove detail leaves at a distance, result in a less dense looking foliage

We are also using Look Up Table in ours diffuse lighting to create step effect in the shading.  LUT are created using a 2 channels texture R = To define stepping effect up close, and G = to define stepping effect farther.  Different LUT were created to Architecture, vegetation and terrain, Character, etc.

This approach, removing detail at a distance, is applied to pretty much all assets in the environment.

Claude - Because ground materials are almost always seen from the same point of view by the player, it was easier to trick the normal map to mimic the painterly 2D style of our references. In Substance Designer, flat normal colours corresponding to different sun directions was splattered around the material shapes, like rocks, using paint brush stroke alphas. The result was pretty close to the targeted references: the flat surfaces created by the uniform normal colours reacted well with the lighting of the sun, adding nice flat colour spots with the shape of a brush stroke.

How did your team leverage shaders to improve production?

Caroline - There was also a texture artist dedicated to the ground materials, and since the texture is so linked to the shape and silhouette of the vegetal assets, we also had a vegetation artist who did both modelling and materials.

How did your team coordinate creating assets for foliage and their colours?

Caroline - Biomes palettes were chosen before the production of the assets, so it was easy to create foliage colours to fit in each of them. Although, some biomes colours evolved throughout the production of the game some colour shifting were necessary. But since we used the Substance suite to make most of the textures, it was quickly done.

What are the main things to consider that are specific to creating materials for foliage?

Caroline - The main thing to consider when creating foliage is the placement of vegetal elements on the texture – the size of the branch/leaves, the balance between full shapes and alpha, nice composition, etc. It has to allow the bush or the tree canopy to look both delicate when close and full when far away, revealing an interesting and readable silhouette as well as being versatile for the various uses of the foliage texture (many different sizes of trees or sometimes the same texture is used for a bush as well as a tree). Each species of a vegetal asset is different and, therefore, needs a particular «recipe» - it’s not one size fits all – quite the contrary.

When concept or area changes happened mid pipeline how did the material team adjust?

Vincent - It was crucial all along the production to keep time buffers, so we didn’t have to cut assets or put pressure on the material artists. Changes and new ideas are usual in production. Being able to absorb that friction is important. It still implied to rework some material kits several times to change colours or adjust material response, but it went smoothly. The time buffers we didn’t use were used to polish other materials or help other teams to create assets. Theses kinds of updates were easier because we work in Designer and Painter which allow us to scale up data processing in a non-destructive way.

What changes from an entry level texture/material artist, to mid level, to senior and finally to lead?

Vincent - The same things than every job, it’s a matter of skills and autonomy. We don’t expect the same amount of work from an entry and senior level. To put it simply it starts from having basic knowledge and needing help, to becoming an expert in your field and helping others. It’s not just a question of number of years though. Soft and Hard skill come with practice but also dedication and empathy, that’s why we always put a lot of focus on sharing, communication and practice.

Custom Tools To Improve The Pipeline

Would you be able to share how your team created these or how the principals could be applied to other projects?

Claude - We have developed a bridge allowing texture artists to export from Substance Designer or Substance Painter directly to the engine editor. That helped to save a lot of time, especially when came the time to tweak our materials.

Vincent - We built few tools for designers such as specific grunges, alphas, a watercolour filter and a painterly one. All of those were not miracle recipes that stylized in one click but helped in the process.

Those were mainly filters or shape spawners that were really helpful to layer colour and build masks.

Post Production

What did the art team and leads learn in the process of creating Immortals Fenyx Rising?

Vincent - It’s a project that helped me to grow many of my soft skill to be more alert to people needs, mood or emotions which are also essential to create art.

Working on a stylized production is also something very rewarding for artists as it requires a lot of traditional art knowledge. Knowledge we also use on realistic production but sometimes at a lower intensity or without such a deep understanding. It was an amazing project to grow as an artist.

Vincent, as this was your first project as Lead Material Artist, what were some ideas you had in pre-production or early production that didn’t pan out and needed to be changed? Likewise what were some parts of production or plans that worked better than you expected and what are your thoughts on leading this project’s material pipeline?

Vincent - It was a great pleasure and honour. Spending my days helping people to achieve that look and studying those Studio Ghibli references all day long is simply a dream job that I can’t complain about. People trusted me on this project to push the Material Art further and I’m thankful for that. 

Everyone was really inspired by the challenge of creating painterly materials, iteration and feedbacks were facilitated by the fact that people in the team only wanted to push things further.

When the team struggled or had problems how did you pull them back in and push through production?

Vincent - It’s a broad subject but on projects there is always struggles, frictions, conflicts or frustrations especially when people are passionate about creation. No matter what it is, trying to take a step back, analyze the situation and how we could overcome it as a team is often helpful.

Never underestimate the pain or fatigue of people and always propose to change things is mandatory to go through production without breaking people. The important thing is to keep an eye on the morale of people as no amount of work or production is worth your mental health.

What was your  favourite mythological area to create and why it was your favourite?

Caroline - The Hermes region as I was able to sculpt some trees and the Aphrodite one for the bucolic feeling and the colours.

Dimitri - My favourite part was to incorporate the painterly aesthetic in our materials.

Olivier - I had the pleasure of working on Aphrodite’s region and to make textures for the architecture which challenged me compared to my previous mandates working mainly on props. It’s a very colourful area with warm and saturated colours.

Vincent - For me it is the Hall of the Gods, it’s a key landmark in the game with a lot of tillable materials and figurative ones that I loved working on. It’s the first place we worked on to set the mood and it was a huge team effort with many cool challenges. When I look at it, I have a lot of fond memories and it brings me joy.

Outro

Would you be able to break down any section of the game and show the different material used on it similar to Vincent’s Artstation post however with explaining how you planned and chose reference for the materials?

Vincent - Sure here is a little glimpse at some material our team created for the different regions of the world.

Any additional tips or advice you would like to share with our readers?

Vincent - It’s almost impossible to recreate a 2d shot in 3d but it doesn’t mean that you can’t try and enjoy the process!

Closing Words

Thanks for reading, we all hope that you will find interesting info here and that you appreciate meeting some members of our team!

For more info or images of the teamwork you can look at our Art Blast Article on Artstation.

Interview Answered By:

Olivier Tréhet, Texture Artist

Caroline Couture, Texture Artist

Claude Gosselin, Texture Artist

Dimitri Alexis, Texture Artist

Louis Lemieux, Technical Director

Thierry Dansereau, Art Director

Vincent Dérozier, Lead Material Artist