Archive for the ‘Game Animation’ Category

At long last, we’ve finally been granted a video of the intriguing 1st-person free-running game Mirror’s Edge - and it looks amazing.

They seem to be pushing the immersive 1st-person view even more than Far Cry 2, but to be honest, the game could be about anything - what I’m most excited about is the fantastic world you’re let loose in. The architecture and music really capture everything I want in a near-future urban setting, without a gangsta in sight - perhaps something that can only best be done by a team in Scandinavia. This is Swedish design usually reserved for ultra-modern interiors and furniture. Videogame visuals take another step forward.

I had hoped to post about the fantastic leaps forward in ingame animation brought about by the highly publicised (in the gaming press anyway) integration of NaturalMotion’s behavioural/physics-based Euphoria middleware in the recently released GTA4.

However, I was one of the unlucky few whose copy would invariably freeze during the opening stages of the game. Even worse, the XBOX360 would also lock up for the next few attempts even without the corrupt disc inside. I have since bought a replacement copy but the current situation sees my machine now sporting the dreaded Red Ring of Death, (much too close to be a coincidence), so it looks like I won’t be playing any games for the foreseeable future - cheers Rockstar, cheers Bill.

In the meantime, above is a video demonstrating Euphoria in a standalone manner, which looks very interesting indeed. Reports from colleagues tell me that the movement and ragdoll look incredibly natural, but the player character unfortunately handles looser than in previous games - something to be expected of any move towards visual fidelity.

I plan to write an article in the near future on creating the ultimate videogame animation showreel. Not that I ever made one myself, but I know what I want to see when trawling through piles of entries.

In the meantime, something to take home. If you’re sending in a showreel, don’t include actual 3D files containing meshes, rigs and or animation from games you’ve worked on - especially unreleased ones. One would think that’s a no-brainer, but sometimes people need to be told…

Here’s an interesting video via gamepolitics.com depicting an overtly videogame-like rendering of one of American republican candidate Ron Paul’s speeches.

If officially sanctioned, it must be an attempt to connect with the Halo demographic of American teens likely too busy capturing the red flag to busy themselves with something as trivial as democracy any time soon. I especially enjoyed the allusion to Monty Python’s Meaning of Life for the rising building shots towards the middle of the piece.

Cameron Fielding has uploaded this excellent video highlighting some of his work on the recent Turok from Vancouver-based Propoganda Games. I’ve only played the demo, but found the 3rd-Person knife actions to really make this game stand out from other 1st-Person shooters.

On the challenge of moving from a cartoony background to a realistic style for this project, he says, “I had always wanted to animate stuff like this, so I was totally up for it. I am still surprised with ultimately how similar the two approaches are, particularly with how exaggerated you can go with the movement of the creatures. The realistic human animation I found the most difficult, and used video reference frequently to solve a lot of the problems I encountered.”

During game development, we often refer to fighting games as the best example of where real-time animation can be pushed due to the genre typically concentrating on only two characters in an enclosed arena, though unfortunately most often in terms of “We can’t do that - we’re not making a fighter…”.

As noted on the previous movies, these recent screens of SFIV point towards some pretty animation-intensive details, sporting bone scaling, cloth and an impressive detailed facial setup, as well as what must be some form of muscle deformation to maintain volume in the limbs. On top of all this is a look-at system between not only the two main protagonists but also the crowd of onlookers - something that will become standard in the near future to overcome the lifeless gaze of previous-generation videogame characters.

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I just read that THQ picked up the award for Best Animated Videogame of 2007 at the 35th Annie Awards. That’s very impressive in a year that also brought us Assassin’s Creed and Team Fortress 2. The complete list of nominees were:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender “The Burning Earth” – THQ, Inc.
• Bee Movie Game – Activision
• Ratatouille – THQ, Inc.
• Transformers: The Game – Blur Studios

Congratulations to the team at THQ - beating off such stiff competition must have really taken a lot of hard work and talent, and I look forward to your future output. And congratulations to the Annie Awards jury for such a keen and incisive analysis of the current state of my industry - I also look forward to your future output.