Overview
How do you create a modern game with spirit, heart, and originality without relying on a publisher to put millions of dollars and hundreds of people behind it and expect a huge return? That is the question Michel Ancel and a handful of game makers, filmmakers and cartoonists set out to answer by creating the UBIart Framework.
A development platform whose goal is to "limit the repetitive tasks" of making a game, on the technical end it is capable of creating high definition animation and scenery from very little original artwork. On the human end it means less time spent endlessly tweaking tiny variables and minutia and more time creating. As an example the UBIart blog states that "the entire Rayman Origins trailer runs real time at 60fps in full HD (1920*1080) and required the intervention of only a few graphic artists."
Capabilities
So far several unique art styles have been revealed as examples of what is possible with UBIart. All presented from a singular side-scrolling view, their influences couldn't be more different. Graffitti art with spray paint, digitized claymation, colorful child-like doodles, and monotone graphic novel styles have all been shown.
The basis of the animation system is the application of a skeleton and bones to individual assets. Any kind of artwork that can be scanned, photographed or otherwise digitized can be separated into individual pieces in the UBIart Framework. "Then all the animator has to do is design the animation poses, and the tool takes care of the image deformation," reads the UBIart blog.
In more technical terms, the Ubiart blog continues saying that "we use 2D patches to contort sections of the image with a level of complexity that can adapt to the potential needs of the final rendering and the target machine. This technique adapts remarkably well to this type of animation and gives excellent performances in a real-time context."
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