Assassin’s Creed Unity Models Didn’t Help Rebuild Notre Dame

This summer’s Olympics in Paris have revived a long-standing story that Ubisoft’s models of Notre Dame Cathedral, made for the 2014 Olympics, were used for soccer competitions. Assassin’s Creed Unityhelped rebuild the cathedral after it burned down in 2019.

People have been saying this since the fire, and I made a YouTube video debunking it in 2021. But oddly enough, not everyone has seen it, and videos claiming otherwise continue to garner thousands of views on TikTok.

So let’s demystify it. Again.

One of the first outlets to break this story was NME. Here’s what they published in 2019:

It also appears that French publisher Ubisoft still holds the 3D models and original photos that could help rebuild the cathedral. Ubisoft has yet to comment on these claims, and no full restoration plans for Notre Dame have been confirmed.

This doesn’t sound very safe, does it? Keza MacDonald, a video games journalist writing for The Guardian, saw this and reached out to Ubisoft for comment. She posted a response from a Ubisoft spokesperson, which probably should have been the final word on the matter:

We are not currently involved in the reconstruction of Notre Dame, but we would be more than happy to contribute our expertise in any way. (…) It is important to keep in mind that what we did for the game was not a scientific reconstruction but rather an artistic vision.

But despite this fairly clear answer, rumors about the Notre Dame models have persisted. They were spread by an ArtStation blog post from 2023, which is currently one of the first things that come up when you Google the topic. It’s written by an artist who doesn’t appear to be associated with Ubisoft and doesn’t provide sources for the claims he makes in the article.

In 2019, Ubisoft claimed that it had not participated in the restoration. If it had, I think the company would have made a big deal out of it. Just as it did at the time with a press release announcing that it was donating €500,000 to Notre Dame and offering Windows PC copies of Unit for a week. The company also made its stance pretty clear: it encouraged people to explore Notre Dame in-game and donate to the restoration effort if they could.

Now let’s see what the developers at Ubisoft to have told how they designed the cathedral. Top artist Caroline Miousse is the person widely credited for the construction UnitNotre-Dame. She was interviewed by Destructoid as well as IGN, and Ubisoft’s news blog also did a lengthy interview with her that has since been republished by Siggraph.

Miousse was asked what references she relied on to build the cathedral, and this is what she answered:

We were able to find a lot of blueprints that show us exactly how Notre Dame was built. (Maxime Durand, Assassin’s Creed historian) helped me a lot because he has the historical background. I also have tons of books. Google was also my best friend for a while. You can find so much stuff on the internet now.

The Notre Dame Cathedral that appears in the game has been modified for level design and gameplay reasons, and to respect copyright, as many elements, such as the rose window and the organ, are protected by copyright and cannot be legally recreated.

But even so, it doesn’t appear that Ubisoft has done any detailed scans of the cathedral to work on it. Miousse mentioned photos, plans, books, and Google.

You know who did make scans of the cathedral?

Hundreds of people have been studying it for decades!

Among them was Cédric Gachaud, the CEO of a company called Life3D, which was doing scans of the cathedral for the restoration work that was underway before the fire. In 2019, he spoke about it to the newspaper Le Monde. You can find his original quote at the link, but here is my translation:

The people behind Assassin’s Creed have done an incredible job. But they are graphic designers, very skilled, who work from photographs and plans that they have recovered. They are looking for a coherent visual. But if a statue is two meters taller than in reality, it is not important to them. We are looking for millimeter precision, we work with engineers, with data analysts.

Le Monde also unearthed a quote from Assassin’s Creed franchise historian-in-residence Maxime Durand, who spoke to Quebec newspaper La Presse about the restoration of Notre-Dame. As above, the quote is in French, and here is my translation:

The monument we have reconstructed shows a beautiful artistic freedom. I cannot say that those who will rebuild the cathedral will necessarily be interested in our modeling.

Again, if Ubisoft had If the company had been able to contribute to the restoration of the game’s models, it could have legitimately boasted about it. But that is not the case. Everyone who has contributed to the game emphasizes the creative and artistic vision of their game, over and over again.

The restoration of the cathedral involves “around fifty teams and research laboratories spread across the whole of France and brings together a total of 175 researchers”, specifies the Ministry of Culture. The latter come from disciplines as varied as “archaeologists, historians, art historians, anthropologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, computer scientists”.

To better understand why this scientific work is so different from Ubisoft’s, we can look at scans made by the late Andrew Tallon of Vassar College. The laser technology he used to scan the cathedral has a margin of error “often less than five millimeters.”

This is the kind of data that exists. During a visit to Vassar in 2023, Philippe Villeneuve, the lead architect of the Notre Dame project, confirmed that Tallon’s data on the cathedral’s vaulted ceilings had helped in their reconstruction.

Tallon was not alone in undertaking this work. Professor Stephen Albrecht is one of the other participants in the restoration. He and his colleagues have spent 20 years working on the cathedral. Before the fire, they had made 3D scans of the transept, and this data was passed on to the restoration.

Ubisoft didn’t do scans like this. Because it’s not need a. Because the cathedral in the game is an artistic creation that captures what one feels. feel it’s true, it’s true feel precise, and it is a huge achievement.

We don’t need to invent stories about how the video game is so literally accurate that it could help rebuild Notre Dame. That would discredit the artists who made it. UnitThe destruction of Notre Dame de Paris, erasing the incredible work they have done. And it is a discredit to the scientists who have worked to understand and maintain the real cathedral since the beginning.