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How Little Buffalo Studios saved 8,766 hours of 3D production time using Kaedim
About Little Buffalo Studios
Little Buffalo Studios is a new Toronto-based gaming studio with a team that has previously worked at PlayStation, Ubisoft, Netflix and other studios. They focus on making stylized games with incredible depth and beauty, drawing upon real world history and events.
Project Overview
Their first fully-funded project is called Akiiwan: Survival: Akiiwan is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) word that means “It is the Earth” and in the game you explore the wonder of the world, by literally crafting your way all around it on an epic journey.
Mission & Goals
They are inspired by a quote from a great Indigenous artist who once said: “We live because everything else does.” Akiiwan is a survival crafting game centered around the exploration of the diverse ecosystems that thrive across the globe, where players must adapt and thrive amidst the richness of life found in every corner.
Their goal is to create a game that will immerse the player in their world's richness and beauty, and allow them to craft their own stories.
Challenges
“We’re making a game that will ultimately have hundreds if not thousands of harvestables and crafts. You can’t can’t really appreciate the ingenuity that sustained people for tens of thousands of years, or their incredible understanding of every plant and animal unless you actually can put that in a game.”
In order for Akiiwan: Survival to have the depth and beauty that the Little Buffalo Studios team envisioned, it was a necessity for them to create a wide array of assets to populate their world.
Solutions
Before Kaedim, Little Buffalo Studios faced the challenge of choosing between 2D and 3D due to budget constraints. With Kaedim, they were able to allocate the time and resources saved for prioritizing the depth of their gameplay.
Kaedim's Impact
Evolved Workflow: The team now only needs to input one image into Kaedim to get their desired 3D model. They then generate using High or Ultra, setting the max polycount lower for their game’s Switch release.
“Generally one piece of art is enough to create the models we need.”
They then use Kaedim’s add-ons: Automatic Texturing, UV Unwrapping, and Generate LoDs to complete their assets before adding them into their game.
New 3D asset production pipeline
2D Concept Art
They create 2D line drawings, which are enough to start generating their 3D models.
AI Modeling with Kaedim
Generating in High or Ultra quality and lowering the max polycount enables them to create assets that are detailed yet low in polycount.
Final touches
Using Automatic Texturing, UV Unwrapping, and LoDs, they are able to create a fully finished game asset.
Importing into game
Once they have finalized the assets in Kaedim, they are then able to import them into their game to create a finished scene like this:
Why choose Kaedim?
- Seamless integration: With our APIs and useful add-ons, the team was able to integrate Kaedim into their workflow seamlessy, being able to create 3D assets effortlessly with their already existing concept art.
- Customer support: Kaedim provides 24/7 support, which ensures that users can be confident that their assets will be ready for release.
- Continuous improvements: Kaedim has been able to provide significant improvements to features with the Akiiwan team’s feedback.
- Time and money saved: With Kaedim, the studio was not only able to realize their game goals within their budget, they were also able to save hours of manual modeling time.
See more from Little Buffalo Studios:
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