Image Metrics Unveils New Warrior Demo

Image Metrics' new demo concept is a mythical story, in which a warrior apologizes to his master for failing a mission and is consequently punished by a form of mental torture (think Darth Vader in Star Wars). Because the pain being suffered is an internal pain, the warrior tries to contain it within himself; however, due to its intensity you can see the pain expressed in subtle facial emotions. 

All assets were created in-house at Image Metrics, including the rig. The whole pipeline was developed in three weeks, which includes the model, textures, rig, and animation. The rig is made up from joints, blendshapes and animated normal maps, all of which are technologies capable of running in game engines. The animated normal maps can be swapped out for animated displacement maps if the demo does not need to run in real-time. The facial animation was created using Image Metrics's proprietary animation technology in just two days.