Unity, the latest Assassin’s Creed release was conceived to feature cooperative multiplayer gameplay. As such, the trailer does not stage just one hero: it stages thousands of them. And every single one of them was designed by the fans, then re-introduced and animated, one by one. An interactive version of the film enabled online users to find their avatar, or those created by their friends, in the thick of the action. And a few lucky fans even got the surprise to find their avatars posted in the streets of their cities.
Creative Execution
We received waves of data files that contained each winner's Name, ID, and Assassin Variation combination. The animation team would then animate an Assassin's performance, then export the specific Geometry Parts (upperbody, hood, pants, or belt) based off a winners ID using a custom export tool we had to develop for XSI. We could then import that into our Scene Assembly files where we had to develop yet another tool in 3dsmax which would look at the custom Assassin's ID based off an individual null which would apply the corresponding clothing colors (blue, white, red, stripped, etc) and then finally would apply the proper skin tone. Now we would be able to render the individual winners in 3dsmax and Vray with the environment, lighting, atmosphere, and FX.
In order to create the bounding box effect, we had to code a customized render element that would look through the camera in the scene and record the minimum and maximum X and Y dimensions based off the pixel screen space and output a data file that contained each Winner's Assassin. This data was then aggregated into a single data file (per frame) which would allow the winners ID to be tied to the proper screen space bounding box.