Just Dance 2020: Ubisoft and Sculpteo’s collaboration

Posted By Jérôme Deschamps on Jan 15, 2020 | 0 comments

Have you ever played Just Dance 2020? If yes, you may be surprised that Ubisoft has collaborated with Sculpteo for this game. “God is a Woman” by Ariana Grande is one of the many songs available in Just Dance 2020, but it has one big difference: The costume the dancer is wearing has been 3D printed by Sculpteo. 

Just Dance’s costumes design

What is Just Dance?

Just Dance is a prestigious dancing games license that Ubisoft has pushed forward for over 10 years. The goal has always remained the same, that’s to say, gathering friends and family members around hundreds of choreographies to be followed on-screen. No less than 500 different songs, hence 500 single choreographies have been integrated in Just Dance 2020 and bring up quite an important challenge: Designing all the costumes the dancers are going to wear.

The constraints of dance costume design

Ubisoft puts a great effort toward keeping the Just Dance license active, as one game goes out every year just within Just Dance’s main series. Keeping Just Dance entertaining over the years requires Ubisoft to innovate, first in the gameplay itself, but also in the costumes they use. 

But designing a dance costume has to meet a few requirements. For this project, Ubisoft wanted to achieve a very ambitious, authentic design that would match the tone of the song it would be used for. On the other hand, the costume needs to remain convenient and shouldn’t hinder the dancer’s performance. This implies that to be viable, the design has to reach a fair balance between volume and lightness. 

The advantages of 3D printing Just Dance’s costumes

Ubisoft’s decision-making

As mentioned previously, Just Dance’s development involves huge needs in terms of costume as well as much originality. This leads Ubisoft’s dedicated design team to always consider new technologies that would add to the design potential of their costumes. Prior to choosing 3D printing, Ubisoft’s need for Ariana Grande’s “God is a Woman” already oriented their design team towards 3D printing, as Just Dance Creative Director Damien Pousse explained “As we wanted a character who is a little bit different, we thought that we would experiment with shapes and materials that we would not usually use in the making of a classic costume, and it brought us to 3D printing”. 

Ubisoft knew 3D printing would allow for designing complex geometries and the use of new materials. It eventually led Just Dance’s very audacious creative team to take a plunge in 3D printing.

Ubisoft and Sculpteo’s collaboration

When Ubisoft’s creative team met Sculpteo for the first time, they already had a clear idea of the design they wanted to achieve. Industrial Designer and Head of Studio, Alexandre D’Orsetti addressed Ubisoft’s technical needs, furthermore, his expertise let him infer that 3D printing would definitely allow the design to reach its target weight. Along with this first advantage, 3D printing would also guarantee the achievement of high geometries and still at a competitive price.

Although Ubisoft’s creative team had already sketched their concept and could start the design, they were new at 3D printing issues and needed some guidance as to how they could leverage the technology. This is why this first meeting gave ground to a second workshop with Sculpteo Studio held to orient Ubisoft in the way they could use 3D printing and in their design process. 

Just Dance’s costume creation 

The design process

Just Dance’s creative team made use of the consultation with Sculpteo Studio to produce a very sophisticated design for their costume. The complex geometry they had achieved proved that the creative team had developed a very good understanding of designing for 3D printing. 

It also appeared that the meshes of this rendering couldn’t be created using anything other than 3D printing. This potential is, by the way, one of the reasons why additive manufacturing is interesting for fashion.

Sculpteo also contributed to this design by hollowing the file. This process consisted in removing matter from within the parts to make them lighter. This step had to be achieved with the utmost care by Alexandre so that it wouldn’t have any bearing on its sturdiness. One last step Alexandre took care of was to split the design into two different parts, in order to make them fit in the printer Sculpteo would later use. This method also implied building the system that would assemble the two parts into one. 

The production process

Once the design was completed and was fit for 3D printing, it got sent to production. The printing technology Sculpteo used for this project is Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), which basically consists of selectively scanning (with a laser) and sintering specific parts of powder layers, one after the other. Once the costume got printed out in Nylon PA12, the only last remaining step was to glue and assemble the two parts. The whole process was completed in a one-month time period. 

After the project

The costume was delivered to Ubisoft and completely fulfilled its intended purpose. The “God is a Woman” choreography was shot with the dancer wearing this costume and the performance was great! 

After this project, Ubisoft decided to make a 3 minutes video capturing this creative process.

The Sculpteo team is very proud of this experience with Ubisoft and was happy to discover the world of game development. We would also like to thank Ubisoft for this collaboration and for featuring us in their Creative Spotlight.

As you can see 3D printing can be used for quite various applications, as the advantages 3D printing can bring to companies are numerous across all industries. If you would like to figure out how 3D printing can benefit your business, don’t hesitate to contact us. You can also try our 3D printing service by uploading your parts onto it. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get all 3D printing tips and the latest news in the industry.