Marvel Realm of Champions

The Makers: Goldtooth

Led by visionary director Kody G Sabourin, Goldtooth is a team of award-winning writers, directors, and VFX Artists with rich backgrounds in the entertainment arena. Goldtooth crafts commercials, trailers, films and story cinematics from concept to completion and adopts cutting edge workflows and technology to deliver award-winning results.

"Ziva saved us huge production time and enabled us to breathe life into our characters."

– Chad Smith, Goldtooth, Creative Director

Exclusive Ziva BTS video:

The Challenge:

The Goldtooth team were tasked to deliver a CG Trailer to promote the upcoming Marvel: Realm of Champions game, a mobile-based RPG that reimagines the Marvel universe and with it, 11 beloved Marvel characters.

The Challenge Was....
... Once board edit was approved, they had 1.5 months of production time after the initial mocap shoot.

"In the past, we’ve used ncloth and rigged PSD setups to drive characters. It was always difficult to control the sims and get realistic muscle excitation. For Realm of Champions, we knew that old workflow wasn't going to make the cut. So we turned to Ziva – and we're so happy we did."

– Aaron Hempler, Goldtooth, VFX Supervisor

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"In the muscle pass, we used a cached proxy belt and drove a tissue version of the belt which then interacted with the muscle simulation. A quick Google search for Young’s modulus for steel and entering that value into the belt’s tissue value got us in the ballpark quickly!"
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"We also had lots of fun adjusting the sim and seeing the momentum created by his fists pounding his chest ripple through his body in the fat pass. when Hulk beats his chest like an ape."

– Irene Pu, Goldtooth, Rigging & Sims Lead

Giant Green Muscles

The most complex character, the 2.6m tall Hulk needed to be ferocious, fast, and ridiculously strong. The Goldtooth team completed a full Ziva anatomy sim to bring him and his barbaric titanium armour to life.

Results in 3 days

With little time to spare, the Goldtooth team used the underlying anatomy of Mr. Inc, Ziva's complimentary biped asset, to quickly kickoff their workflow.

By pairing Ziva's out-of-the-box simulation asset, Mr. Ink, with the advanced Ziva Anatomy Transfer workflow, the team was able to spend only three days getting The Hulk rigged, simulated, and animated.

To get your free copy of Mr. Inc and browse more simulation-ready assets, visit the Ziva Free Store today.
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Ziva Free Store

Modelling Ziko

FABLEfx created many Ziva creatures in the past, including a dog, cat, raccoon, elephant, and frog. As such, they were able to warp existing quadruped anatomy to rapidly model Ziko geometry.

The final model reached a level of realism and fidelity rarely achieved by studios, especially boutique teams.

"Ziva makes you make better models. It's important to watch out for intersecting geo, for example. We found Ziva's out-of-the-box 'Run Mesh Analysis', 'Find Intersections', and 'Find Self Intersections' tools were extremely useful for helping validate the mesh for Ziva simulation."
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– Vikas Jaiswal, Creature Rigging Supervisor at FABLEfx.

Volume Preservation in under 1 Hour

Spiderman was quickly improved using Ziva's single-volume simulation approach, where the entire character mesh was turned a solid volume. This instantly offers artists complete collision detection, volume preservation, and rest-shape controls with minimal effort.

"We used multiple LOA’s and animated them to drive the bulging biceps and calves when he clenches his fist and calves when he lowers himself upside down. For each Spiderman shot it took us under an hour to setup and simulate, and we’ve found this new workflow to be much quicker and easier than shot-sculpting."

– Irene Pu, Goldtooth, Rigging & Sims Lead

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"We're blown away by how quickly we were able to make adjustments and see the results.

Even just a simple Ziva volume-pass made a world of difference. We're looking forward to Ziva-fying countless more characters in the future."

- Chad Smith, Goldtooth, Creative Director

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