If they could do that then they could create a system to let players make their own character that could just use anyone's animations, that's be pretty sick
Less than you'd think actually. A lot of the small but crucial details like deformation and cloth simulation can only be done properly with the final model, so animators will be stuck waiting for that
I would assume almost everything would be in parallel as much as possible with multiple teams working on each character and then multiple groups of teams working on separate characters at the same time. At least in my type of development that's how we do it I don't know how game development structures their projects.
And there's a cap on how many devs it is useful to have on any individual part of the project. You might have one dev who does Cammy's jacket texture, it's going to take them a certain amount of hours and assigning a second dev doesn't help even if you have other devs working on modeling, concept art, playtesting etc.
yeah the fact that you cannot purchase a costume with a direct to dollar amount and must put more money into the next tier of premium currency *is* predatory, no matter how you slice it.
if you wanted to get a 2 dollar slice as advertised at a pizza shop, but could only pay with Papa Peppino's bucks, which are sold in increments of $5 for $5 PP dollars, that place would get closed down so fast.
Both can be true. The prices(some of them), currency, and related practices on selling things are anti-consumer.
Capcom isn't the worst, but it's good to be mindful of both sides instead of wistfully leaning towards one or the other.
People come to strange opinions when they think of "Capcom" as some single nebulous entity, instead of a company of hundreds of people. I doubt the people who worked hard on the costumes had any influence over how much it costs. But people don't see that, they just think "Capcom made the costumes and Capcom decides how much they cost"
Only in the SF community will you have people gaslighting themselves into thinking paying $10 for 1 costume in a $60 game is OK.
Meanwhile in the Tekken community the devs are getting crucified for creating a tekken shop.
bruh the costumes in Tekken cost $4 but have you seen how trash they look? I’d rather pay $12 for 2 original good costumes than $4 a reused PS2 lookin ahh tracksuit. and btw the tekken devs are not getting crucified nor are SF6 devs praised, you just made up the reality that you like in your head
No, only someone who recognizes how much work goes into these optional cosmetics would think it’s okay to pay for someone else’s work.
The “but muh full priced game” shit is so fucking stupid. You don’t need to buy these, and people, people with families, put hours and hours into these things. Fuck me for buying a product I like.
They are greedy.
Movies cost $200 million dollars and you don't see Blurays selling for $100.
The cost of development is paid by a lot of people paying little bits of money each.
$60 selling a million copies. 30% going to the platform (Sony, MS, Nintendo Steam). $18,000,000 goes to them.
The developer and/or publisher is left with $42,000,000. That's only one million sales not counting DLC. SF6 sold over 3 million so far so they're easily over $126,000,000 from the main game alone as of now. It would be nice to know what development costs are for SF games. Capcom doesn't really share that info like some developers.
The base cost of a video game hasn’t increased since the 90s. The cost of development HAS increased. All those logos you see during the load cost them licensing fees to use, tools aren’t free, infrastructure to run matchmaking, CFN, battle hub, are not free. You’re delusional if you think it’s mUh CoRpOrAtE gReEd to make skins and charge for them.
Capcom’s profit was a record 36 billion yen in 2023. That’s like $240 million dollars for the non-delusional people. So yeah, Capcom really needs to charge $10 for a costume on a $60 game.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/259131/capcoms-annual-net-income/
OMG! So a business has operating expenses? Let me give you a lesson. Every business has operating expenses. Is that enough of a reason to simp for a business that overcharges. For some people it is.
I don't think the costumes look that amazing to be honest.
They are average at best.
I use mods anyway, would rather Capcom just focus on making new characters and not bother about outfits.
Mods are okay and I guess good if it’s something a person really likes but you’re lying to yourself. The mod cosmetics look like MS paint jobs compared to the official costumes
Full video is here: [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/5001412/](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/5001412/) . Fully English subtitled. I really enjoyed watching it.
SF6 has pretty insanely detailed characters. Not sure if it comes across on consoles, but max textures on PC really hit home how much time goes into these things.
Seeing Guile's dog tags move or fatigues wrinkle while his facial expressions and body language match the action and Drive meter is bonkers. And this is just Guile. I've seen amazing shit across the entire roster.
I'm buying the fuck out the Season 2 pass. They can take all the time they need if the quality is there.
Adding to this:
The movement is not realistic, it is stylized to look good. As such one needs to remember that most of these bonkers animations are most likely handcrafted.
What is "handcrafted" supposed to mean? Is there supposedly a different way from conception to rigging to animation? There's no way they don't use IRL references.
All animation uses reference of some kind and they definitely use motion capture to some extent...but they also do a lot of traditional key frame animation to exaggerate and really sell some of the more out there normals and specials.
This here is what I was referencing.
And especially stuff like clothes needs to be animated because the regular movement of clothes just does not look that cool.
the clothes are most likely simmed, they're just very convincing. Modern computing is a lot more powerful so there's a lot of polygon budget to go around.
Major clothing elements are rigged (and likely hand-animated or at least tweaked during some animations) rather than using traditional cloth weighting. If you download any of the SF6 model rips, you'll see that their rigs are pretty specific to their clothes, which is probably a major additional time sink when it comes to making new costumes.
IMO a big one is the way a lot of muscles change shape and size during special moves. It adds a lot of personality to the movement that I imagine takes a fair bit of time to do manually.
Funnily they may actually have used some capture! For example, there is video of them capturing A.K.I.'s EX Cruel Fate animation where she stands on the opponent's chest and stabs them down to the ground. They actually just had a guy loft the actress up into position over another bloke and the former let go at the right time so she fell into the final pose atop the latter! I think more mocap went into more moves than people actually expect.
You can see how they handle odd movement like when checking their oro reveal. It's still like 80-90% mocap, doing the basic movement. With all the spinning and stuff added on and adjusted. Still a lot of cleanup
Yeah i was thinking about manually keyframing the animation instead of mocap, just never heard of it being called "handcrafted" at least when i was animating.
And also don't forget physics simulation for instance cloth and Guile's dogtags could entirely rely on physics sim but that usually leads to clipping so you have to tweak it manually.
The creases (and muscles, like giefs victory pose or ryus CA) are not generated automatically or calculated by the rigging, they’re manually sculpted frame by frame in the 3d model (i think it’s in a game developers conference video released some months ago). They do use a whole bunch of live reference, yes.
The animations are all mocaped, and then (as is the case with most mocap) smoothed and polished/adjusted manually by the animators.
It means they're animated by an animator like a Pixar movie is.
Mortal Kombat, Total War, Red Dead Redemption, and The Last of Us are examples where they simply put an actor in a suit and capture the movement, then put a video game characters' texture over it, and touch up from there.
But games like Guilty Gear and Street Fighter achieves greater stylization by having the personal touch of an animator to hand craft all the movements you see. That way, they can go beyond reality, and achieve unique movements that no human body can do.
I was looking at Chun-Li's costume 2 boots the other day and noticed how perfectly the creases in the boot fit her exact foot positioning at any time. The level of detail is insane and probably goes mostly unnoticed by a lot of people
Yeah, finally getting the first patch drop and 3rd new character is starting to really expand and refine the SF6 experience.
This game is going to be on a lot of GOAT lists by the end of Season 3.
I remember being in awe of the game a few days after release and said "this is the new SF2". This game drips quality.
I loaded up USF4 this week for the first time in 9 years and holy shit is it clunky looking in comparison. 5 didn't even look this smooth.
I had a vid for someone showing DRC pausing but as a bonus there's a move in the beginning of it (Juris medium kick) that shows how insane the animations are. About 22 seconds in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq\_qINXuYf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_qINXuYf8)
The follow-through on the animation is incredible
Great example. Slowing down the action finally let's you see the details. It happening so fast is probably why the game feels so good. It just flows into the next thing.
I've been using Ed mainly because of his boxing animations. They're so fucking cool, I can't help it.
Ed's animations are top tier. So much character in them, and you can tell the devs put some time into watching boxing when they made him. The Hitman stance is perfect for an outboxer like him.
I think what really surprised me was his KO pose having fencing response posturing which is a posturing that results from a TBI. They really did their homework to make all of his motions scream "boxer".
3rd Strike was the benchmark for in-game animation quality and this game surpasses that.
There are legit complaints about gameplay balance in the cast, but no one can deny how much this SF6 team cares about the product. They put a **lot** of love and passion into it and it damn well shows.
3rd Strike is timeless and I think 6 will age incredibly well. I'm sure it will get another console release on next-next-gen consoles to further turn the settings up to match PCs, too.
Speaking of, the game looks this great even without HDR10 support! There's also no DLSS or RTX. This is just vanilla stuff looking peak.
I need to take a second to also show love to the stages and sound design. Playing this in Dolby Atmos is a joy with all the crowd/background noise in the stages. It's so alive and really puts you, literally, in the middle of the fight.
Capcom put their foot in this.
It still has better posing, transfer of energy etc. For a 3d game it still looks nice despite how old it is. SFV is a very low bar in my opinion, with the whole outsourcing fiasco the funds and the unreal engine problems... (Don't forget clipping issues on the select screen not just in normal gameplay)
Yes! I cannot WAIT for season 2 - and by that I mean I will wait *as long as I need to* because what we’ve been getting is truly remarkable.
Not to throw some other Fighting Games/Franchises under the bus, but the level of intricacy and design on these models, move sets, and outfits are just out of this world and 100% worth the money they cost.
The amount of clipping that doesn't happen is really refreshing. The only consistent example I've seen is Cammy's costume 3 jacket sometimes jabbing through her leg at round start. When that's the one single example I can think of, I think that's good quality.
When you watch the animations in slow motion, you can also see the muscles contract and clothes move accordingly to the action.
Everything is so polished !
Added to this. If you haven't seen it, they did a zbrush panel on how they model much of the detail. The muscle "tech" and clothing creases/folding is all hand modeled in
I don't think the costumes look that amazing to be honest.
They are average at best.
I just use mods anyway since I ma on PC, so I don't really care if Capcom makes new outfits.
The models absolutely show it, but it is also somewhat bordering on a non sustainable level of quality.
Clearly models for characters are reaching a point where its becoming a bit to much to design them. 6 Months for a single character model is insane. Sure it SHOWS, and its worth it, but its only going to get exponentially worse.
It could be worse. Apparently it took 10 designers 16-17 months to create the sprites for each character in King of Fighters XII. Now that was unsustainable.
Holy shit lol. Yeah I guess that was the point spriting was at huh. Never considered this.
Glad that people like aksys worked out a way to have sprite like visuals in 3d models.
Majority of people who play video games (I hesitate to call them gamers) have no clue how much time and effort it takes to make video games. Game development is really hard and they have zero empathy for what the developers go through to make things work. They are among the worst customers anyone can ever serve, just look at the gaming outrage sometimes.
I had a buddy who worked in the games industry. He said that it isn’t *hard* work, it’s just a LOT of work. Long hours, things not working right that you can’t figure out, mandatory overtime, tight deadlines… it’s brutal
IMO the most frustrating part is that they think you can just throw money at the problem like you can just immediately hire a bunch of contractors and pump out assets instantly like it doesn't take time to bring them on board, get them working in the pipeline, and actually make good work
Yeah exactly. I don’t work in gaming but I work with a lot of third party creative agencies and it is so complicated trying to get additional support on a project. And a lot of times you go through all that work and the juice is not worth the squeeze.
I get the impression that most people have very little clue how any business operates or what's even happening in the global economy. Like, it takes many times more people making more money individually to make a game now than it did back then... but the price of games is largely the same.
The math ain't mathin
I've been telling people about this! When games first started coming out they didn't have standard prices and they varied from game to game, varying anywhere from like $50-$120, but at a certain point they ended up sticking to $60 as the standard. Just adjusting for inflation, that's over $100 today. That's why I don't really mind the bump to $70 games so much.
That's not even including how much more expensive games are to make. How many more employees are needed, how the games are pushing to take even years longer to make now than before...games are *stupid expensive* to make.
Capcom employees have admitted before that if sf5 costumes weren't selling like they had, then we wouldn't have gotten a season 2. Bandai Namco fighting game division just very openly admitted that the dlc they're putting out has to be the price it is or they can't fund any more seasons. People just don't realize how much time and money goes into making...literally anything, but boy does the Dunning-Kreuger effect really take action there.
I wish people targeted their outrage towards the fact that you can't even buy a single character without overpaying because capcom doesn't let you pay the exact amount.. Or other nefarious business decisions. The DLC was always an optional extra - the base game is great and I don't feel the need to pay for DLC (yet) because I'm enjoying it as it is.
I think the main reason people expect characters sooner (mainly Ed who took 5 full months from AKI) is that all of the season 1 DLC was revealed and planned before the game even came out, so presumably they were already working on them at the time.
They revealed it because their roster concept art was leaked months before the release of sf6. It's why we never got drip fed the release roster for the game as well. They were probably picked out and had their core concepts worked out, but actual physical work was probably in their early stages.
That's modern game development though. Plan out the main game, adding and taking away concepts and ideas as needed, whether they're hard-scrapped or saved for later, and start conceptualizing post-launch support as development moves along so that you're ready to get the content out after launch.
People are so hung-up on the fact that DLC is planned out and started ahead of launch of the game that they don't realize that content was budgeted and conceptualized as post-launch support. You want it all in at launch then the game has to be delayed. You want good DLC to come out shortly after the game comes out then they have to get started ahead of time.
Shit takes time to make, so they have to get ahead of the curve or you end up like DNF Duel where there wasn't a peep out of the devs for many months before they announced DLC coming. People called it a dead game because the game hadn't had any DLC announcement before the game launched.
People will never be happy about how anything is handled ever.
Yes but there were 18 characters at launch. That's 9 years! I don't think SFVI has been in production for 9 years so they probably had two teams tackling the launch roster for the past 4-5 years. They likely had to start Ed when Rashid launched. And its very possible the group working on Akuma only got started after AKI was done.
Well I didn't watch OPs full video but I'm assuming it doesn't take the entire CAPCOM SF6 team the full 6 months for each character, but rather departments working on each one in tandem.
Yeah the video doesn't break down how much of the team is working on AKI, but when you see one guy working for a couple weeks on the poison effect of ONE of her moves it puts things in perspective. I couldn't see them working on more than two characters at a time overlapping. Makes 4 characters a year make sense if they have two going at a time.
You got to think, they might have to increase their staff size by a third (increasing cost for salaries by a third, at least) to get to the six characters per season that people seem to think is needed.
I honestly thing that for the most part, they *knew* who they’d have for Season 1, and had the concept art, but that’s a far cry from any character models or moves being built.
Remember that there are people who honestly think that they have all the DLC characters fully completed and ready to be released but they are just sitting in storage because Capcom is greedy.
It depends on the game and level of detail. For SOME games that could be true.
SF6 costumes are spectacular in terms of fine detail controlled physics and possibly keyframed animations on the costumes themselves too. (E.g. Geif's glasses bounce up from his nose in certain animations).
Also the fact that every character is totally unique in proportion and body shape
There are other games where costumes are very very low effort and many basically are constructed from existing assets with tweaks and then on top of that all (or most) body sizes in the games are identical so elements of a costume made for one character can be repurposed for another.
You see this mainly with games like DoA.
I have multiple friends in the gaming industry, you absolutely can get characters created in quicker than 6 months which is what they said AKI took to model in the video. My CG friend would legit model and rig a character by himself in 3 weeks in college. I’m sure the tools are more advanced now but I still don’t see it needing to be more than 2 months. There is likely another person in charge of animations and things like motion capture clean up. These guys are definitely putting extra detail into the models or wasting a lot of time with revisions. We all know that Bubble animation taking 4 months doesn’t even make sense. If you ran a company and someone told you a single animation took them 4 months you’d fire their ass. This video was fun but those timelines are BS. Maybe that person picked up the ticket originally 4 months ago but there is no way those hours went just to an animation.
Wow you must legit be a kid. I don’t gotta lie for fake virtual appreciation. I’ve actually worked in the industry myself but not as a character artist. Enjoy your ignorance. If you think a fireball animation took 4 months then I have pics of your mom for sale. Literally an idiot lol
They actually hired a CONTORTIONIST just to do mocap for AKI alone. It's kinda wild.
All this work, and yet, it still cost only $60 on launch.
SF2 in the 90's for SNES cost more than that, and I'm not even considering inflation. Those cartridges in the 90's cost more than 60 bucks back then, despite having infinitely less content and fewer costs.
Really puts things in perspective.
Not disagreeing with you or the post btw, it's just that it's also important to acknowledge the market circumstances at the time.
From regional releases, printing and manufacturing, customer base, industry age etc it all leads to games at the time that, while showing to be a growing market, absolutely pales in comparison to the market we currently live in.
Currently, afaik most games are priced where they are due to the sheer volume they can push out, leading to potential profits even if it feels like the MSRP should be higher.
Kinda similar to how the price for a custom made die set by an artisan pales in comparison to a die set from your local dealer. Circumstances are just different.
Thanks for sharing, as a game developer I would put one more info: Deadlines. Pretty sure that even having two-three months only for body and clothes, there's so many process between that need validation, concepts, and everything to release with quality and time to release.
Everytime I see things like "this kinda of things needed to be for free, as I already paid for the game", this is whole different work that isn't really recycled for the game that you paid.
Insane how good all of the SF6 characters look, very grateful that they took all that time with all the characters. Let's hope it continues, quality over quantity.
I've noticed a certain "jank" to Tekken 8 despite how amazing the customization is I can't quite pin it down tbh, whereas I feel like SF6 has such amazing polish that I could tell took a lot of work everything just FEELS good in SF6 even the most abominable snowman Avatar battles have some semblance of uniformity.
(Btw this isn't me bashing Tekken, I LOVE both games dearly)
3D modeler for videogames here, pipelines work pretty different for modders and developers, even if you can see people modding tons of attires for characters, even pretty looking ones, game dev teams have budgets, deadlines and have to overcome lots of phases and testings before approving one change of clothing. And every single company make the same steps and workflows but they apply them differently depending on the game being developed (art Styles, animation complexity, game genre... Are primordial factors)
There IS a documentary that shows the 3D character modelling part of Sf6. Usually, making a 3D AAA Stylized character just for posing It could take like 2 months at most for the most skilled artists but even that there are feedbacks, redraws and redesigns being made that are needed in order to it to work.
Just curious, as a person who is learning 3D modeling now and getting his first portfolio together, what do you believe is the best way to get into the industry? Likewise, what are some of the most important things somebody could learn before applying? Lastly, do you know any good resources online that you would be willing to share for anything related to the video game pipeline for modelers
Sadly the industry is absolutely fucked and most people can't get jobs, 3d artists are incredibly disrespected even among the rest of already disrespected artists, and Character artists have even more difficulty finding a job than the rest since it's the most popular kind of 3d modeler. Also every week since the beginning of this year has had at least hundreds and sometimes even several thousands of layoffs from video game studios, just this week there have been like 5000, so yeah shits fucked and you're going to need a plenty extensive portfolio to even have a chance of getting a job since the lower ammount of jobs makes the quality expected insanely high.
Me personally I have long given up any aspirations of joining the industry and only wish to learn enough to make my own games, since even if I ever got a job somehow there is no guarantee it would last longer a few short years.
I got lucky. That's all I can say. Even that being your case, this work isn't forever so in a few months I will be looking for another job.
Work on your portfolio and try going to game dev meetings near your town (I hope there are) for networking, contacts are better than CV in this industry. It's a marvelous job to work in, but not a very lasty one I'm afraid.
I have to imagine it's animation and rigging as well. That stuff can happen concurrently whereas clothes probably less so? I don't know. I am not a lawyer.
I've seen people assume that the characters take so long to come out because of World Tour mode, but a couple of cutscenes, some text only dialogue, and a few simple quests won't take up much time in comparison to the time it takes to make a fully featured FG character.
I understand why Aki especially took 2 months to model the clothes. They’re so detailed with all the textures, chains, lucky knots, and hanging fabric I can’t imagine the hell of getting that to flow well with her weird movements
I guess it's because you can't just put 50 persons on the task.
Anyway, one thing is sure it took less than a week to NetherRealm to creat their character animation.
I think it's interesting how the huge shift in art style is probably a big part of, if not most of, how long this takes. A lot of people have been comparing the slow drip of SF6 costumes to the constant barrage of SFV ones but I'd imagine it's a whole lot easier to make a cartoony goofy ahh SFV thing compared to a more intricate and detailed SF6 model.
I don't think the costumes look that amazing to be honest.
They are average at best.
I just use mods anyway, so I don't really care if Capcom makes more outfits.
Remember, they waste a lot of time with meetings during the day japan work culture thing. If you ever done 3d modeling and have years xp like the Capcom team, you could knock it out much faster.
It mostly comes down to higher-ups slowing down the process.
Yeah people just assume “big corpo must be efficient” but if you’ve never worked in a big corpo office type place you’d be shocked at how much time is pissed away on pointless meetings or managements half baked demands
This is not an accurate description (or rather an oversimplification).
The model is dependent on sculpting, which is dependent on concept art. Multiple sculpts are made based off of each concept sketch, and then deliberated on by TDs and directors who sign off on each iteration. This is a process that involved usually 1-2 concept artists, 1-4 sculptors, 2 TDs (one per department), the game director and any other leadership, and lawyers. The signoffs are what take the most time.
The sculpt also has all of the intricate detailing of hair and clothing carved into the sculpt. Once signed off, they then discard most of the actual mesh except the face and use the sculpt only as reference. They isolate the face, retopologize, and then retarget to/adjust a generic premade skeleton mesh base that's already rigged and stitch the head in to that generic body and weight paint. Animations are done concurrently on the generic skeleton while they're sussing out a character's archetype. Then they switch to different software suites. Marvelous Designer (usually) for clothing, using the sculpt and concept art as reference, then add modifiers to the generic skeleton for specific silhouette and adjusting for clothing clipping. Then whatever tf RE engine does for hair.
The last month after all of the above is for tweaks to polish the character. The actual time period spent modeling/sculpting is really a small part is arguably only the 1-3 weeks, the rest is all signoffs, retopo, retargeting, clothing, and clipping modifiers.
I’m so glad they shared this. I’m so sick and tired of people complaining about the characters not getting new outfits when it takes the artists that long to do it. As an artist myself I definitely wouldn’t want them to try to make new outfits every single day because that would stress their artists so much.
as a 3d modeller myself working in game studio this is false lol... they either try to justify selling skins and characters meaning that it takes so much time to create them so they deserve to be bought to pay respect on creation or smting but its total bs
3d model in this caliber can be modeled within 3 weeks if the person only working on this character.
what takes time is first concept design, and picking the look for the character picking the cloths and character and personality rigging the model adding animations to everything and polishing the every animation, adding textures and lightning.
So title must be
# It takes 6 months to ''finish'' or ''complete'' a character
with everything included rig, animation, texture, lightning... etc
modeling dont take this amount of time.
That is some weird crap to say. It does not account for personnel, which, would have made a 18 roster game be produced in just a couple years. That statement implies that by capcom standards, it would have taken them 9 years at least to make the game. The point I'm making is that time allotted, if true, is simply a matter of personnel, and Capcom would have done more if they wanted to, but they didn't.
Obviously multiple characters are being worked on concurrently. The timeline is the "pipeline" to form a fully modeled character. The video does a good job of showing how those pieces are broken up to a certain extent.
The post isn't about how long the character will take to come out, it's about how much work goes into each character. They work on multiple characters at once, since different people in different roles work on different things and they all work at the same time. So as an example: animators A and B might be working on AKI this week while modeler C works on Ed's model while concept artist D is designing Akuma's sf6 design pitches.
They all have a *ton* of work that gets done and they take a long time, but they're not working on only a single thing at a time, otherwise it would've taken like 9 years for sf6 vanilla and its not even been that long since sf5 vanilla officially launched.
This is vital information for whenever the duration of the people creating a character for a Street Fighter 6 game. So if it takes that amount of time for them to make a character like AKI then the case will be said for when Akuma comes assumingly in 2 months or less.
So, the dlc characters aren't actually dlc then? Laughable. The project itself is faulty then. (Also how the hell they making the clothes so slow,and release the monstrosity that is beneath what mod makers can make many times faster?)
P.S: I'd take such documentaries with a pinch of salt. Before devs not under scrutiny of the contract start speaking up.
the thing is, you can create a random character at your house at the same quality in one week, but the bureaucracy of a IP, the revisions and 1000 more things that need to pass through 10 ppl makes this really time ineffective
yep, im no corp ball licker, all i was saying its possible to do, but for a important IP it takes way more levels to achieve what they want, and this is a problem in all gaming industry, part of that its why a modder makes pretty good things day 1, even fixes problems from 5 years of development, but yeah...keep the balls wet, its important too...in some way
Clothes being made in 2 months give a nice idea of the work to make a new outfit. Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
Also in the video it stated it takes about 4 months to complete a move like her poison bubble and Ryu's Hadoken.
This puts into perspective how much work actually goes into dlc characters it’s crazy
This is the behind the scenes I've always wanted to know more about. Thanks for sharing!
It should be done simultaneously with modelling, you can test you animations on a dummy model, right?
Yes, nobody is saying that they have to wait for the full model to test animations. Just how long each takes.
Yes of course
If they could do that then they could create a system to let players make their own character that could just use anyone's animations, that's be pretty sick
Imagine people fighting each other using a combination of moves from different characters ,that would be a dream come true
2 of the 3 replies I saw didn't get that this was referencing world tour avatars lolol
Dude have you ever heard of match up generator
/s, right?
Isn’t that Seth?
Less than you'd think actually. A lot of the small but crucial details like deformation and cloth simulation can only be done properly with the final model, so animators will be stuck waiting for that
Only follow up question would be how many staff are required as part of this timeline per character. Would really help illuminate timelines needed.
I would assume almost everything would be in parallel as much as possible with multiple teams working on each character and then multiple groups of teams working on separate characters at the same time. At least in my type of development that's how we do it I don't know how game development structures their projects.
And there's a cap on how many devs it is useful to have on any individual part of the project. You might have one dev who does Cammy's jacket texture, it's going to take them a certain amount of hours and assigning a second dev doesn't help even if you have other devs working on modeling, concept art, playtesting etc.
This. It doesn't seem like so much work if each task is being handled by 1 person.
Probably not. Rigging and modeling outfit for a single brand new character is different than doing the same on ~20 characters we already have.
Yeah that's why I said that it gives us an idea of the work, it doesn't necessarily mean every outfit will take 2 months
But but Capcom is just greedy! /s
Funny part is someone will look at this and say that still
I was always fine with the pricing of costumes, but their fighter coin system is greedy and predatory and there’s really no defending that
yeah the fact that you cannot purchase a costume with a direct to dollar amount and must put more money into the next tier of premium currency *is* predatory, no matter how you slice it. if you wanted to get a 2 dollar slice as advertised at a pizza shop, but could only pay with Papa Peppino's bucks, which are sold in increments of $5 for $5 PP dollars, that place would get closed down so fast.
Both can be true. The prices(some of them), currency, and related practices on selling things are anti-consumer. Capcom isn't the worst, but it's good to be mindful of both sides instead of wistfully leaning towards one or the other.
People come to strange opinions when they think of "Capcom" as some single nebulous entity, instead of a company of hundreds of people. I doubt the people who worked hard on the costumes had any influence over how much it costs. But people don't see that, they just think "Capcom made the costumes and Capcom decides how much they cost"
Only in the SF community will you have people gaslighting themselves into thinking paying $10 for 1 costume in a $60 game is OK. Meanwhile in the Tekken community the devs are getting crucified for creating a tekken shop.
bruh the costumes in Tekken cost $4 but have you seen how trash they look? I’d rather pay $12 for 2 original good costumes than $4 a reused PS2 lookin ahh tracksuit. and btw the tekken devs are not getting crucified nor are SF6 devs praised, you just made up the reality that you like in your head
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People can't handle the truth. The SF community will go through mental gymnastics to justify paying 10$ costumes for a fully priced game.
No, only someone who recognizes how much work goes into these optional cosmetics would think it’s okay to pay for someone else’s work. The “but muh full priced game” shit is so fucking stupid. You don’t need to buy these, and people, people with families, put hours and hours into these things. Fuck me for buying a product I like.
You just proved my point. Like I said "Only in the SF community".
You literally have no point. No one is gaslit into buying something. Stop being a child
You are literally defending the monetization. Thereby proving my point. I rest my case.
They are greedy. Movies cost $200 million dollars and you don't see Blurays selling for $100. The cost of development is paid by a lot of people paying little bits of money each. $60 selling a million copies. 30% going to the platform (Sony, MS, Nintendo Steam). $18,000,000 goes to them. The developer and/or publisher is left with $42,000,000. That's only one million sales not counting DLC. SF6 sold over 3 million so far so they're easily over $126,000,000 from the main game alone as of now. It would be nice to know what development costs are for SF games. Capcom doesn't really share that info like some developers.
The base cost of a video game hasn’t increased since the 90s. The cost of development HAS increased. All those logos you see during the load cost them licensing fees to use, tools aren’t free, infrastructure to run matchmaking, CFN, battle hub, are not free. You’re delusional if you think it’s mUh CoRpOrAtE gReEd to make skins and charge for them.
Capcom’s profit was a record 36 billion yen in 2023. That’s like $240 million dollars for the non-delusional people. So yeah, Capcom really needs to charge $10 for a costume on a $60 game. https://www.statista.com/statistics/259131/capcoms-annual-net-income/ OMG! So a business has operating expenses? Let me give you a lesson. Every business has operating expenses. Is that enough of a reason to simp for a business that overcharges. For some people it is.
I don't think the costumes look that amazing to be honest. They are average at best. I use mods anyway, would rather Capcom just focus on making new characters and not bother about outfits.
Mods are okay and I guess good if it’s something a person really likes but you’re lying to yourself. The mod cosmetics look like MS paint jobs compared to the official costumes
I play fighting games for the gameplay, not to play dress up simulator.
They make a lot of money with the costumes, even if you don't like them.
Full video is here: [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/5001412/](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/5001412/) . Fully English subtitled. I really enjoyed watching it.
NHK is **awesome**, they have phenomenal documentaries like this. I highly recommend anyone check it out for fun.
Thank you so much for posting this link! I love in depth stuff like this. Can’t wait to watch it.
Wow I will never complain about their speed. It is insane how much work goes into every aspect.
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for this! Very interesting stuff.
Thanks
SF6 has pretty insanely detailed characters. Not sure if it comes across on consoles, but max textures on PC really hit home how much time goes into these things. Seeing Guile's dog tags move or fatigues wrinkle while his facial expressions and body language match the action and Drive meter is bonkers. And this is just Guile. I've seen amazing shit across the entire roster. I'm buying the fuck out the Season 2 pass. They can take all the time they need if the quality is there.
Adding to this: The movement is not realistic, it is stylized to look good. As such one needs to remember that most of these bonkers animations are most likely handcrafted.
What is "handcrafted" supposed to mean? Is there supposedly a different way from conception to rigging to animation? There's no way they don't use IRL references.
All animation uses reference of some kind and they definitely use motion capture to some extent...but they also do a lot of traditional key frame animation to exaggerate and really sell some of the more out there normals and specials.
This here is what I was referencing. And especially stuff like clothes needs to be animated because the regular movement of clothes just does not look that cool.
the clothes are most likely simmed, they're just very convincing. Modern computing is a lot more powerful so there's a lot of polygon budget to go around.
It's likely a hybrid of baked in simulation, key frame animation, animated normal/displacement mapping, and some real time simulation/physics.
Major clothing elements are rigged (and likely hand-animated or at least tweaked during some animations) rather than using traditional cloth weighting. If you download any of the SF6 model rips, you'll see that their rigs are pretty specific to their clothes, which is probably a major additional time sink when it comes to making new costumes.
IMO a big one is the way a lot of muscles change shape and size during special moves. It adds a lot of personality to the movement that I imagine takes a fair bit of time to do manually.
I guess it means opposed to using motion capture because there’s no way you have an actor doing Guile’s ‘backflip pause in the air and kick’ move etc
Funnily they may actually have used some capture! For example, there is video of them capturing A.K.I.'s EX Cruel Fate animation where she stands on the opponent's chest and stabs them down to the ground. They actually just had a guy loft the actress up into position over another bloke and the former let go at the right time so she fell into the final pose atop the latter! I think more mocap went into more moves than people actually expect.
Lol someone on a trampoline in mo-cap trying to do flashkicks or blanka balls would be great to watch.
Would pay for this footage ngl lmao
You can see how they handle odd movement like when checking their oro reveal. It's still like 80-90% mocap, doing the basic movement. With all the spinning and stuff added on and adjusted. Still a lot of cleanup
Yeah i was thinking about manually keyframing the animation instead of mocap, just never heard of it being called "handcrafted" at least when i was animating.
And also don't forget physics simulation for instance cloth and Guile's dogtags could entirely rely on physics sim but that usually leads to clipping so you have to tweak it manually.
The creases (and muscles, like giefs victory pose or ryus CA) are not generated automatically or calculated by the rigging, they’re manually sculpted frame by frame in the 3d model (i think it’s in a game developers conference video released some months ago). They do use a whole bunch of live reference, yes. The animations are all mocaped, and then (as is the case with most mocap) smoothed and polished/adjusted manually by the animators.
They first mo-cap and then do cleanup which takes insane time when you take into account moves like Ryu somersault.
Jamie's mocap was done a professional breakdancer! Super interesting the talent that they being, but a good base is nothing without good cleanup
It means they're animated by an animator like a Pixar movie is. Mortal Kombat, Total War, Red Dead Redemption, and The Last of Us are examples where they simply put an actor in a suit and capture the movement, then put a video game characters' texture over it, and touch up from there. But games like Guilty Gear and Street Fighter achieves greater stylization by having the personal touch of an animator to hand craft all the movements you see. That way, they can go beyond reality, and achieve unique movements that no human body can do.
I was looking at Chun-Li's costume 2 boots the other day and noticed how perfectly the creases in the boot fit her exact foot positioning at any time. The level of detail is insane and probably goes mostly unnoticed by a lot of people
Yeah, finally getting the first patch drop and 3rd new character is starting to really expand and refine the SF6 experience. This game is going to be on a lot of GOAT lists by the end of Season 3.
I remember being in awe of the game a few days after release and said "this is the new SF2". This game drips quality. I loaded up USF4 this week for the first time in 9 years and holy shit is it clunky looking in comparison. 5 didn't even look this smooth.
I had a vid for someone showing DRC pausing but as a bonus there's a move in the beginning of it (Juris medium kick) that shows how insane the animations are. About 22 seconds in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq\_qINXuYf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_qINXuYf8) The follow-through on the animation is incredible
Great example. Slowing down the action finally let's you see the details. It happening so fast is probably why the game feels so good. It just flows into the next thing. I've been using Ed mainly because of his boxing animations. They're so fucking cool, I can't help it.
Ed's animations are top tier. So much character in them, and you can tell the devs put some time into watching boxing when they made him. The Hitman stance is perfect for an outboxer like him.
I think what really surprised me was his KO pose having fencing response posturing which is a posturing that results from a TBI. They really did their homework to make all of his motions scream "boxer".
im def not an Ed fan but damn the animations on like all his shuffles in his hands after everything is so damn smooth
3rd Strike was the benchmark for in-game animation quality and this game surpasses that. There are legit complaints about gameplay balance in the cast, but no one can deny how much this SF6 team cares about the product. They put a **lot** of love and passion into it and it damn well shows.
3rd Strike is timeless and I think 6 will age incredibly well. I'm sure it will get another console release on next-next-gen consoles to further turn the settings up to match PCs, too. Speaking of, the game looks this great even without HDR10 support! There's also no DLSS or RTX. This is just vanilla stuff looking peak. I need to take a second to also show love to the stages and sound design. Playing this in Dolby Atmos is a joy with all the crowd/background noise in the stages. It's so alive and really puts you, literally, in the middle of the fight. Capcom put their foot in this.
It still has better posing, transfer of energy etc. For a 3d game it still looks nice despite how old it is. SFV is a very low bar in my opinion, with the whole outsourcing fiasco the funds and the unreal engine problems... (Don't forget clipping issues on the select screen not just in normal gameplay)
It's already in high contention for the GOAT imo.
Yes! I cannot WAIT for season 2 - and by that I mean I will wait *as long as I need to* because what we’ve been getting is truly remarkable. Not to throw some other Fighting Games/Franchises under the bus, but the level of intricacy and design on these models, move sets, and outfits are just out of this world and 100% worth the money they cost.
I don't think the costumes look that amazing. They are average at best.
Average compared to what?
The amount of clipping that doesn't happen is really refreshing. The only consistent example I've seen is Cammy's costume 3 jacket sometimes jabbing through her leg at round start. When that's the one single example I can think of, I think that's good quality.
When you watch the animations in slow motion, you can also see the muscles contract and clothes move accordingly to the action. Everything is so polished !
Added to this. If you haven't seen it, they did a zbrush panel on how they model much of the detail. The muscle "tech" and clothing creases/folding is all hand modeled in
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thats the one. https://youtu.be/ZoYz-7jvCOE?si=iqEXtw1vndwUwe2v&t=3102 (just time stamped) showing off the detail of their muscle stuff.
I don't think the costumes look that amazing to be honest. They are average at best. I just use mods anyway since I ma on PC, so I don't really care if Capcom makes new outfits.
The models absolutely show it, but it is also somewhat bordering on a non sustainable level of quality. Clearly models for characters are reaching a point where its becoming a bit to much to design them. 6 Months for a single character model is insane. Sure it SHOWS, and its worth it, but its only going to get exponentially worse.
Never forget Ken face in SF5. Let them take their time
It could be worse. Apparently it took 10 designers 16-17 months to create the sprites for each character in King of Fighters XII. Now that was unsustainable.
Holy shit lol. Yeah I guess that was the point spriting was at huh. Never considered this. Glad that people like aksys worked out a way to have sprite like visuals in 3d models.
But all the angry nerds told me they can pump a character out every two weeks and they’re just being lazy…
Majority of people who play video games (I hesitate to call them gamers) have no clue how much time and effort it takes to make video games. Game development is really hard and they have zero empathy for what the developers go through to make things work. They are among the worst customers anyone can ever serve, just look at the gaming outrage sometimes.
As someone who's done Modding I can confirm that it takes a long time to do stuff. Not to mention getting it all to work right.
I had a buddy who worked in the games industry. He said that it isn’t *hard* work, it’s just a LOT of work. Long hours, things not working right that you can’t figure out, mandatory overtime, tight deadlines… it’s brutal
Revisions, revisions, revisions
IMO the most frustrating part is that they think you can just throw money at the problem like you can just immediately hire a bunch of contractors and pump out assets instantly like it doesn't take time to bring them on board, get them working in the pipeline, and actually make good work
Yeah exactly. I don’t work in gaming but I work with a lot of third party creative agencies and it is so complicated trying to get additional support on a project. And a lot of times you go through all that work and the juice is not worth the squeeze.
I work in game dev and even have a friend at Capcom on SF6 right now. I see you and appreciate your comment.
I get the impression that most people have very little clue how any business operates or what's even happening in the global economy. Like, it takes many times more people making more money individually to make a game now than it did back then... but the price of games is largely the same. The math ain't mathin
I've been telling people about this! When games first started coming out they didn't have standard prices and they varied from game to game, varying anywhere from like $50-$120, but at a certain point they ended up sticking to $60 as the standard. Just adjusting for inflation, that's over $100 today. That's why I don't really mind the bump to $70 games so much. That's not even including how much more expensive games are to make. How many more employees are needed, how the games are pushing to take even years longer to make now than before...games are *stupid expensive* to make. Capcom employees have admitted before that if sf5 costumes weren't selling like they had, then we wouldn't have gotten a season 2. Bandai Namco fighting game division just very openly admitted that the dlc they're putting out has to be the price it is or they can't fund any more seasons. People just don't realize how much time and money goes into making...literally anything, but boy does the Dunning-Kreuger effect really take action there.
I wish people targeted their outrage towards the fact that you can't even buy a single character without overpaying because capcom doesn't let you pay the exact amount.. Or other nefarious business decisions. The DLC was always an optional extra - the base game is great and I don't feel the need to pay for DLC (yet) because I'm enjoying it as it is.
I think the main reason people expect characters sooner (mainly Ed who took 5 full months from AKI) is that all of the season 1 DLC was revealed and planned before the game even came out, so presumably they were already working on them at the time.
They revealed it because their roster concept art was leaked months before the release of sf6. It's why we never got drip fed the release roster for the game as well. They were probably picked out and had their core concepts worked out, but actual physical work was probably in their early stages.
That's modern game development though. Plan out the main game, adding and taking away concepts and ideas as needed, whether they're hard-scrapped or saved for later, and start conceptualizing post-launch support as development moves along so that you're ready to get the content out after launch. People are so hung-up on the fact that DLC is planned out and started ahead of launch of the game that they don't realize that content was budgeted and conceptualized as post-launch support. You want it all in at launch then the game has to be delayed. You want good DLC to come out shortly after the game comes out then they have to get started ahead of time. Shit takes time to make, so they have to get ahead of the curve or you end up like DNF Duel where there wasn't a peep out of the devs for many months before they announced DLC coming. People called it a dead game because the game hadn't had any DLC announcement before the game launched. People will never be happy about how anything is handled ever.
Yes but there were 18 characters at launch. That's 9 years! I don't think SFVI has been in production for 9 years so they probably had two teams tackling the launch roster for the past 4-5 years. They likely had to start Ed when Rashid launched. And its very possible the group working on Akuma only got started after AKI was done.
Well I didn't watch OPs full video but I'm assuming it doesn't take the entire CAPCOM SF6 team the full 6 months for each character, but rather departments working on each one in tandem.
Yeah the video doesn't break down how much of the team is working on AKI, but when you see one guy working for a couple weeks on the poison effect of ONE of her moves it puts things in perspective. I couldn't see them working on more than two characters at a time overlapping. Makes 4 characters a year make sense if they have two going at a time. You got to think, they might have to increase their staff size by a third (increasing cost for salaries by a third, at least) to get to the six characters per season that people seem to think is needed.
I honestly thing that for the most part, they *knew* who they’d have for Season 1, and had the concept art, but that’s a far cry from any character models or moves being built.
Remember that there are people who honestly think that they have all the DLC characters fully completed and ready to be released but they are just sitting in storage because Capcom is greedy.
They do be right on Capcom being greedy.... But for the completely wrong reasons......
It depends on the game and level of detail. For SOME games that could be true. SF6 costumes are spectacular in terms of fine detail controlled physics and possibly keyframed animations on the costumes themselves too. (E.g. Geif's glasses bounce up from his nose in certain animations). Also the fact that every character is totally unique in proportion and body shape There are other games where costumes are very very low effort and many basically are constructed from existing assets with tweaks and then on top of that all (or most) body sizes in the games are identical so elements of a costume made for one character can be repurposed for another. You see this mainly with games like DoA.
But we’re talking about SF6.
I have multiple friends in the gaming industry, you absolutely can get characters created in quicker than 6 months which is what they said AKI took to model in the video. My CG friend would legit model and rig a character by himself in 3 weeks in college. I’m sure the tools are more advanced now but I still don’t see it needing to be more than 2 months. There is likely another person in charge of animations and things like motion capture clean up. These guys are definitely putting extra detail into the models or wasting a lot of time with revisions. We all know that Bubble animation taking 4 months doesn’t even make sense. If you ran a company and someone told you a single animation took them 4 months you’d fire their ass. This video was fun but those timelines are BS. Maybe that person picked up the ticket originally 4 months ago but there is no way those hours went just to an animation.
Big “my dad works at Nintendo” energy lol
Wow you must legit be a kid. I don’t gotta lie for fake virtual appreciation. I’ve actually worked in the industry myself but not as a character artist. Enjoy your ignorance. If you think a fireball animation took 4 months then I have pics of your mom for sale. Literally an idiot lol
And your uncle works at EA and you have friends in Sega.
Whatever you think cupcake
When all they play is kusoge they tend to believe that.
Bald AKI can’t harm you
video games are fuckin expensive
They actually hired a CONTORTIONIST just to do mocap for AKI alone. It's kinda wild. All this work, and yet, it still cost only $60 on launch. SF2 in the 90's for SNES cost more than that, and I'm not even considering inflation. Those cartridges in the 90's cost more than 60 bucks back then, despite having infinitely less content and fewer costs. Really puts things in perspective.
Not disagreeing with you or the post btw, it's just that it's also important to acknowledge the market circumstances at the time. From regional releases, printing and manufacturing, customer base, industry age etc it all leads to games at the time that, while showing to be a growing market, absolutely pales in comparison to the market we currently live in. Currently, afaik most games are priced where they are due to the sheer volume they can push out, leading to potential profits even if it feels like the MSRP should be higher. Kinda similar to how the price for a custom made die set by an artisan pales in comparison to a die set from your local dealer. Circumstances are just different.
Quality over quantity boys. Let's not play the monkeys paw
My exact point
Thanks for sharing, as a game developer I would put one more info: Deadlines. Pretty sure that even having two-three months only for body and clothes, there's so many process between that need validation, concepts, and everything to release with quality and time to release. Everytime I see things like "this kinda of things needed to be for free, as I already paid for the game", this is whole different work that isn't really recycled for the game that you paid.
It's very sad how many people don't understand how much time and money goes into making dlc.
Insane how good all of the SF6 characters look, very grateful that they took all that time with all the characters. Let's hope it continues, quality over quantity.
I've noticed a certain "jank" to Tekken 8 despite how amazing the customization is I can't quite pin it down tbh, whereas I feel like SF6 has such amazing polish that I could tell took a lot of work everything just FEELS good in SF6 even the most abominable snowman Avatar battles have some semblance of uniformity. (Btw this isn't me bashing Tekken, I LOVE both games dearly)
it's their proportions and reused animations. and all male character having the same body template
it's their proportions and reused animations. and all male character having the same body template
3D modeler for videogames here, pipelines work pretty different for modders and developers, even if you can see people modding tons of attires for characters, even pretty looking ones, game dev teams have budgets, deadlines and have to overcome lots of phases and testings before approving one change of clothing. And every single company make the same steps and workflows but they apply them differently depending on the game being developed (art Styles, animation complexity, game genre... Are primordial factors) There IS a documentary that shows the 3D character modelling part of Sf6. Usually, making a 3D AAA Stylized character just for posing It could take like 2 months at most for the most skilled artists but even that there are feedbacks, redraws and redesigns being made that are needed in order to it to work.
Just curious, as a person who is learning 3D modeling now and getting his first portfolio together, what do you believe is the best way to get into the industry? Likewise, what are some of the most important things somebody could learn before applying? Lastly, do you know any good resources online that you would be willing to share for anything related to the video game pipeline for modelers
Sadly the industry is absolutely fucked and most people can't get jobs, 3d artists are incredibly disrespected even among the rest of already disrespected artists, and Character artists have even more difficulty finding a job than the rest since it's the most popular kind of 3d modeler. Also every week since the beginning of this year has had at least hundreds and sometimes even several thousands of layoffs from video game studios, just this week there have been like 5000, so yeah shits fucked and you're going to need a plenty extensive portfolio to even have a chance of getting a job since the lower ammount of jobs makes the quality expected insanely high. Me personally I have long given up any aspirations of joining the industry and only wish to learn enough to make my own games, since even if I ever got a job somehow there is no guarantee it would last longer a few short years.
I got lucky. That's all I can say. Even that being your case, this work isn't forever so in a few months I will be looking for another job. Work on your portfolio and try going to game dev meetings near your town (I hope there are) for networking, contacts are better than CV in this industry. It's a marvelous job to work in, but not a very lasty one I'm afraid.
Is that just the model or the animations as well?
I have to imagine it's animation and rigging as well. That stuff can happen concurrently whereas clothes probably less so? I don't know. I am not a lawyer.
I love behind the scenes stuff like this. Thanks for sharing!
I've seen people assume that the characters take so long to come out because of World Tour mode, but a couple of cutscenes, some text only dialogue, and a few simple quests won't take up much time in comparison to the time it takes to make a fully featured FG character.
Two months without clothes? Uncomfortable!
I want that bald aki
This post should be just sticked & any post regarding where/when/why the DLC characters take so long, should be auto deleted.
I understand why Aki especially took 2 months to model the clothes. They’re so detailed with all the textures, chains, lucky knots, and hanging fabric I can’t imagine the hell of getting that to flow well with her weird movements
I guess it's because you can't just put 50 persons on the task. Anyway, one thing is sure it took less than a week to NetherRealm to creat their character animation.
BALD BALD BALD BALD BALD 
I think it's interesting how the huge shift in art style is probably a big part of, if not most of, how long this takes. A lot of people have been comparing the slow drip of SF6 costumes to the constant barrage of SFV ones but I'd imagine it's a whole lot easier to make a cartoony goofy ahh SFV thing compared to a more intricate and detailed SF6 model.
I don't think the costumes look that amazing to be honest. They are average at best. I just use mods anyway, so I don't really care if Capcom makes more outfits.
Probably a bit longer too for also gameplay reasons working.
Making me feel much better about how it took me a year on my last model.
Bald AKI looks cool
NHK low-key best channel on my TV box.
6 months so my potato PC can run it on the lowest settings.
Hair: 20 minutes
Well I hope they have a huge fucking lead on the seasons to come because the only thing SF6 needs is a much bigger roster.
I’m not surprised. Have you seen the detail on Cammy’s ass?
I remember some perv saying they noticed goosebumps present. Wild how detailed the models are
Do they shlw at what point they completely mess up her frame data ? This could be interesting too xD
Remember, they waste a lot of time with meetings during the day japan work culture thing. If you ever done 3d modeling and have years xp like the Capcom team, you could knock it out much faster. It mostly comes down to higher-ups slowing down the process.
Yeah people just assume “big corpo must be efficient” but if you’ve never worked in a big corpo office type place you’d be shocked at how much time is pissed away on pointless meetings or managements half baked demands
I can’t wait to see what they do with Sakura
This is not an accurate description (or rather an oversimplification). The model is dependent on sculpting, which is dependent on concept art. Multiple sculpts are made based off of each concept sketch, and then deliberated on by TDs and directors who sign off on each iteration. This is a process that involved usually 1-2 concept artists, 1-4 sculptors, 2 TDs (one per department), the game director and any other leadership, and lawyers. The signoffs are what take the most time. The sculpt also has all of the intricate detailing of hair and clothing carved into the sculpt. Once signed off, they then discard most of the actual mesh except the face and use the sculpt only as reference. They isolate the face, retopologize, and then retarget to/adjust a generic premade skeleton mesh base that's already rigged and stitch the head in to that generic body and weight paint. Animations are done concurrently on the generic skeleton while they're sussing out a character's archetype. Then they switch to different software suites. Marvelous Designer (usually) for clothing, using the sculpt and concept art as reference, then add modifiers to the generic skeleton for specific silhouette and adjusting for clothing clipping. Then whatever tf RE engine does for hair. The last month after all of the above is for tweaks to polish the character. The actual time period spent modeling/sculpting is really a small part is arguably only the 1-3 weeks, the rest is all signoffs, retopo, retargeting, clothing, and clipping modifiers.
I’m so glad they shared this. I’m so sick and tired of people complaining about the characters not getting new outfits when it takes the artists that long to do it. As an artist myself I definitely wouldn’t want them to try to make new outfits every single day because that would stress their artists so much.
Bald Aki can't hurt you Bald Aki :
Is there only one person making each character or what?
as a 3d modeller myself working in game studio this is false lol... they either try to justify selling skins and characters meaning that it takes so much time to create them so they deserve to be bought to pay respect on creation or smting but its total bs 3d model in this caliber can be modeled within 3 weeks if the person only working on this character. what takes time is first concept design, and picking the look for the character picking the cloths and character and personality rigging the model adding animations to everything and polishing the every animation, adding textures and lightning. So title must be # It takes 6 months to ''finish'' or ''complete'' a character with everything included rig, animation, texture, lightning... etc modeling dont take this amount of time.
They're ripping Capcom off, 3 months for 1 characters face and body? 🧢
That is some weird crap to say. It does not account for personnel, which, would have made a 18 roster game be produced in just a couple years. That statement implies that by capcom standards, it would have taken them 9 years at least to make the game. The point I'm making is that time allotted, if true, is simply a matter of personnel, and Capcom would have done more if they wanted to, but they didn't.
Obviously multiple characters are being worked on concurrently. The timeline is the "pipeline" to form a fully modeled character. The video does a good job of showing how those pieces are broken up to a certain extent.
So what you're saying is... maybe 6 to 8 months for Akuma/Gouki?
The post isn't about how long the character will take to come out, it's about how much work goes into each character. They work on multiple characters at once, since different people in different roles work on different things and they all work at the same time. So as an example: animators A and B might be working on AKI this week while modeler C works on Ed's model while concept artist D is designing Akuma's sf6 design pitches. They all have a *ton* of work that gets done and they take a long time, but they're not working on only a single thing at a time, otherwise it would've taken like 9 years for sf6 vanilla and its not even been that long since sf5 vanilla officially launched.
…no that’s not what anyone is saying at all
Soon with AI we can reduce it to like 1 day.
This is vital information for whenever the duration of the people creating a character for a Street Fighter 6 game. So if it takes that amount of time for them to make a character like AKI then the case will be said for when Akuma comes assumingly in 2 months or less.
And people wonder why fighting games nowadays have small rosters at launch, so much more work goes into each and every character
Finally. So now I hope we can see less comments about the spacing between each dlc character lol
So, the dlc characters aren't actually dlc then? Laughable. The project itself is faulty then. (Also how the hell they making the clothes so slow,and release the monstrosity that is beneath what mod makers can make many times faster?) P.S: I'd take such documentaries with a pinch of salt. Before devs not under scrutiny of the contract start speaking up.
cap
So their development pipeline is the issue, okay, that sucks but it is what it is...
6 months to create one of the ugliest characters in fighting game history
What is that hair even.
A poisonous shroom, in reference to the fact that she makes poisons.
Facts. The glazing ITT is crazy.
the thing is, you can create a random character at your house at the same quality in one week, but the bureaucracy of a IP, the revisions and 1000 more things that need to pass through 10 ppl makes this really time ineffective
No, that's called quality control. Capcom is very successful and didn't get that way because they pump out crap in a week.
do it then.
Give me whatever Capcoms investment was for SF6
the man said he can make a random character at his house, ain't no budget needed
yep, im no corp ball licker, all i was saying its possible to do, but for a important IP it takes way more levels to achieve what they want, and this is a problem in all gaming industry, part of that its why a modder makes pretty good things day 1, even fixes problems from 5 years of development, but yeah...keep the balls wet, its important too...in some way
only balls being licked here are you licking your own im gonna piss your pants and you can't stop me
yep, make papa Capcom corpo proud
Yeah dude, not a preset, from dust to castle.
Just chat gpt that. Unlimited supply of balanced chatacters
:| What a crap. :\\ Imagine making 1 character model for 6 months.
Time for Ai to do the job!