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How Kaedim Helped Azra Games Reduce 3D Character Creation Time from 8 Weeks to 8 Days
The accelerated production of 3D assets has significantly increased development speed, enabling designers to integrate assets into games much faster. Now, characters can be game-ready within a week rather than a month, allowing for a quicker, more efficient creative process.
with Kaedim per month
— Travis Boudreaux, CTO, Azra Games
About Azra Games
Azra Games is a cutting-edge Web3 startup led by Mark Otero and former developers of Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Headquartered in Sacramento, CA, with over 60 employees, the team is developing their first game, Project: Legends (code name), while a second game is underway at their Austin, TX studio, aiming to revolutionise gaming with blockchain innovation.
Project Overview
Azra's Project: Legends is a character-collector RPG set in a dark sword-and-sorcery universe, showcasing the studio's commitment to delivering immersive AAA-quality experiences. While their second game remains in early development, Azra sought to revolutionise their 3D production pipeline to meet the demands of creating top-tier character assets. By integrating Kaedim into their workflow, the goal was to streamline the production of AAA-quality characters, enhance artist workflows, and achieve faster, scalable, and higher-quality asset creation.
How It Started
As Azra began work on Project: Legends, they were already exploring other generative 3D AI tools to streamline their 3D asset production process. While researching these tools, Travis Boudreaux, Azra's CTO, recalled his connection with the team at Kaedim. The timing was perfect, and discussions between Azra Games and Kaedim began.
Azra's needs were clear: they wanted a way to reduce the development bottlenecks caused by traditional 3D asset pipelines. These processes were slow and costly, with assets often taking 6-8 weeks to create. For a team competing with industry juggernauts like Nintendo and Mihoyo, time was a luxury they couldn't afford.
Mission & Goals
Azra Games is redefining mobile gaming with AAA-quality experiences that combine innovative storytelling, cutting-edge technology, and blockchain integration. By leveraging AI, they streamline development, reduce bottlenecks, and deliver console-level graphics and gameplay on mobile platforms. Azra's mission is to rival industry leaders while empowering players with true ownership of in-game assets through seamless blockchain technology.
Pain Points
Scalability
The game required a large volume of game-ready 3D assets to be produced on a tight schedule to support their upcoming game.
Speed vs quality
Reducing the time spent on 3D production without compromising on the visual quality or functionality of the assets.
Outsourcing overhead
Traditional art outsourcing involves significant overhead, including lengthy feedback cycles and communication challenges.
Artist workload
Artists had heavy workloads, as they were responsible for managing every step of the pipeline independently, from sculpting to UV layout.
Building Trust
In the first few months of collaboration, Azra Games and Kaedim worked closely together to test Kaedim's capabilities. Pre-production was in full swing for Project: Legends, and the art team was skeptical. Senior artists, seasoned by years in the industry, and outsourcing partners had reservations about relying on AI for something as intricate as high-quality 3D models. Would the results meet their standards? Could Kaedim truly deliver?
Testing speed and quality
The team decided to test Kaedim's potential with a trial run. They provided Kaedim with concept art and basic model inputs, letting the system generate high-poly sculpting bases and game-optimised meshes. The results were transformative. What once took 6-8 weeks was now achievable in 6-8 days. Despite initial pushback, the undeniable speed and quality of Kaedim's outputs silenced the doubts.
Continuous improvements
By working closely with the Azra team, the Kaedim team continuously refines custom styles, introduces new features, and finds ways to further accelerate the production process.
Customer support
Kaedim's support team also played a pivotal role in building trust. They worked closely with Azra's artists, addressing concerns, refining workflows, and improving Kaedim's algorithms based on feedback. This responsiveness created a true partnership, not just a client-vendor relationship.
Solutions
Custom fine-tuning
Kaedim collaborates directly with the studio's Art Director, Lead Artist and Technical Artist teams to ensure that each asset meet the game's specific style and quality requirements.
Base Sculpt Generation
Kaedim quickly generates an accurate base sculpt, eliminating the manual effort previously required to create this foundational step. This reduces time spent on refining and preparing the sculpting base.
Automated Retopology
Retopologising high-poly models to create game-ready meshes was a tedious process. Kaedim's automated retopology tools streamline this step, delivering optimised game-ready models faster and with improved quality over time.
Streamlined Workflow Integration
With Kaedim, Azra's team now starts by uploading a base body model and concept art, downloads a generated mesh, and then sculpts details in ZBrush. Kaedim also generates a game-optimised version of their high-res sculpts and provides UV layouts, allowing artists to focus on creative work rather than manual touch-ups and cleanup.
Efficient Revisions
Our platform enables teams to inspect their assets and provide feedback quickly and easily, enhancing collaboration and allowing for faster feedback cycles.
Kaedim's Impact
The accelerated production of 3D assets has significantly increased development speed, enabling designers to integrate assets into games much faster. Now, characters can be game-ready within a week rather than a month, allowing for a quicker, more efficient creative process.
The accelerated production of 3D assets has significantly increased development speed, enabling designers to integrate assets into games much faster. Now when a designer wants to see a certain character in-game, they don't have to wait a month to see it, it can be in that same week!, Dave Gibbons, Art Director for Azra Games, notes.
6-8 weeksper character→6-8 dayswith Kaedim
Character Pipeline Breakdown
Kaedim's pipeline enables artists to intervene at any step of the way, adding their own creative touches to their assets before adding it back into the pipeline. As shown in the breakdown below, each step is followed by refinements by Azra's artists, ensuring artistic input enhances the process before progressing to the next stage.
Total Time
- Kaedim output: 2.5 days total
Azra artist refinement: 5 days total
Why Choose Kaedim?
- 25x Faster Production: Kaedim enables 25x faster 3D asset creation, allowing them to focus on other aspects of their game development such as animation and concept art.
- Custom Fine-tuning: Kaedim empowers studios to leverage their existing database and intellectual property (IP) to efficiently generate new, high-quality assets.
Enhanced Quality & Consistency: Kaedim maintains the game's unique art style and technical standards, ensuring all assets meet their high-quality requirements.
Improved Efficiency Across Workflows: Automated steps like retopology and UV layout significantly cut down manual work, allowing artists to focus on creativity and refinement.
Scalability: With Kaedim's support, Azra overcame production bottlenecks and efficiently scaled their 3D content creation to meet the increasing demands of their project. This efficiency enabled seamless integration of Kaedim into an additional game.
Conclusion
Azra's art pipeline had been transformed, setting the stage for the rapid development of Project: Legends and beyond.
Looking ahead, Azra Games plans to integrate Kaedim into its sister studio in Austin, TX, and use it for future projects. The collaboration has solidified Azra's position as a lean, tech-driven studio capable of competing with the best in the industry.
Learn more about Project: Legends
In-Game Screenshots
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