Indie Developer Uses Real-time Tech to Compete against AAA Studios

**FYQD-Studio reveals the secrets behind Bright Memory: Infinite game development**

A new era for game developers has dawned: small and indie game studios can now compete against triple-A studios with the support of real-time technology.

Bright Memory: Infinite, a fusion of FPS and action genres created by a solo developer at FYQD-Studio, has found success and popularity since its January 2019 launch via Early Access on Steam. It received an Unreal Dev Grant in 2019 and was presented by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at GTC China 2019. The developer, Zeng Xiancheng, lays out the behind-the-scenes story on how he achieved a spectacular looking game – with the help of Unreal Engine, NVIDIA RTX, and real-time animation tools: iClone and Character Creator.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at GTC China 2019 giving the Unreal Dev Grant to FYQD Studio.

Developer Zeng Xiancheng is currently working on content for Bright Memory: Infinite, which is slated for release by the end of 2020. He hopes fans continue to stay tuned for the launch. In this article, Zeng shares how he was able to produce the game all by himself with very limited budget and manpower.

FYQD-Studio Interview video:

How was he able to produce this game by himself?

Zeng Xiancheng has been working on Bright Memory since 2015. He has been working on the art for the 3D scenes for seven years, as he has always been insistent on delivering astonishing game scenes.

FYQD-Studio owner Zeng Xiancheng shares his behind-the-game technologies.

The planning and conceptual phase of Bright Memory took about a year to complete. The script took about 15 to 20 days to conceptualize, and the game character creation took only two months to complete, with the environmental art taking the most time of all (70% of the production schedule) with a total of about eight months for the Early Access version of the game.

Zeng reveals that the main reason he was able to cut down the character creation timeline to around two months was thanks to Reallusion’s real-time animation software iClone, Character Creator, and iPhone facial mocap.

Along with iClone’s new Unreal Live Link plug-in, which significantly helped him during production, he was able to fast track workflows for camera direction, lighting parameters, and other tasks which can easily be imported into Unreal Engine with a single click.

Zeng using Unreal Live Link plug-in to preview his animations in real-time.

iPhone facial mocap saves a significant amount of both time and money

Having struggled with character facial animations, Zeng tried out many kinds of 3D animation software, and the results were not ideal. The various software was also difficult to use. Luckily he discovered iClone and its many animation features.

Zeng says, “I find many aspects of iClone to be on par with professional production-quality software. My favorite example is the ability to input dialogue audio and have iClone automatically generate the lip-sync animations for my characters, which saved me from having to animate the talking animations by hand. Having the ability to capture facial motions in real time with iPhone facial mocap (LIVE FACE plug-in) allows tight-budget indie game developers such as myself to quickly create character animations.”

Zeng uses iPhone facial mocap to “mocap” his face for game characters in real time.

Generate a game character in just a few hours with Character Creator & Headshot AI

Zeng is currently working on Bright Memory: Infinite (the full release version of the game), aiming to complete the game by the end of 2020. He generates character models using Character Creator 3 in order to reduce production time to ten days per character.

With the application of the new Headshot AI plug-in, and in combination with a high-definition camera, he can generate digital human faces with ease. Integrate that using Character Creator 3, and one can build characters in just a few hours.