For those game animators out there looking for some inspiration or just to add some variety to existing demoreels these should prove invaluable, and if there are any technical guys out there that fancy a quick rig and skin challenge it would be much appreciated…

I loved the game when it came out last year and immediately started replaying on completion as well as picking up the DLC and downloading the soundtrack, and the recent iPhone game, (a superior free version of which you can play here). Unfortunately without the accompanying talk the details are light, but some info can be gleaned. It’s interesting to see someone else thought of attaching a camera to a mocapped head, though it didn’t work out and good old animator talent was the solution.

Download the presentation from the Art section here.

“This has been the Holy Grail in a lot of respects for video games – the ability to have characters on the screen that you can have an emotional connection with. The medium for the last 25 years has been very visceral, interactive, immersive medium – but it was very hard to have characters to actually have empathy towards or an emotional connection with… or that might make you laugh or make you cry; be some catalyst for an emotional reaction… Call Of Duty: Black Ops is the first game where we’ve been able to perfect the facial animation, mouth movement technology so that the lines that are being delivered are believable. The facial animation looks like a real person”

As to my position on the still theoretical Uncanny Valley, I’m convinced it more than certainly exists in Masahiro Mori’s pure sense as I’ve seen (or to put it correctly, felt) it in films like Beowulf and Midnight Express, though in games we often mistakenly attribute it to a combination of bad rigging and animation – failure not even near the Uncanny Valley.

However, to say that we have still to cross it is a misconception as I strongly believe it has been done many times already in CG films and games, though importantly only for a flash,when everything comes together for a few fleeting frames in a performance to convince viewers they are witnessing a “real” person acting. The real challenge is for a consistent performance that never dips back into the unappealing, which cannot come to games before film simply due to the controlled nature of the latter medium.

A more realistic target for us is to aim for believable, rather than photo-realistic, performances which is a far more worthy goal that still only a few developers have managed to attain – with quality voice-acting and writing only now becoming more common and expected by players. I expect the Black-Ops performances are good due to the high caliber of acting talent of Gary Oldman and Ed Harris, perhaps even believable, but not realistic and not fooling us into believing we see a real person at the end of our gun.

[via CVG]

[Last Guardian Director, Fumito] Ueda-san ended his talk saying that good animators should not only be discovered, but nurtured and educated. He thinks that animators are incredibly valuable to any game project. “I think great animation is one of the most important advantages the Japanese entertainment industry has over other regions.”

The best teams I’ve been involved in have had an air of education about them, and the best studios feel like universities where everyone can learn from those around. The right balance of knowledgeable seniority and youthful enthusiasm raises the quality bar across the board.

Find the original (Japanese) write-up here. [via Team Ico Gamers]

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via  Matt]

That’s more than can be said for my human companions. Our drunk driver Roger didn’t talk much, though he was always friendly, and the ice-queen with whom I shared a tent was 100% business. I even hung a picture of her on the wall and had the car re-painted in her favourite beige, but all to no effect. She wouldn’t even look at me…

Click here to view the embedded video.

While I can’t fault the animation, it would be nice to know if they experimented with removing the in-between interpolation to more accurately recreate the 2D feeling, as some charm is lost when the motion is smoothed out during the initial comparison they give. Regardless, I’m sure the studio’s consistently endearing characters come through in the story as much as in these great visuals.

This should certainly factor into anyone’s plans to create an animation or motion-capture database for their studio – something that’s good for both animators and designers to ensure both parties are aware of the content they have at their disposal. Download the fbx plugin for Quicktime here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That old post reminds me that Rockstar are still one of the few developers that have fully adopted Naturalmotion’s behavioural physics-based Euphoria, (most likely due to NM’s stipulation of inserting their own guys onto your team), leading to some unresponsive controls which are thankfully greatly decreased in the recent cowboy offering. The big sell will undoubtedly be their soon-to-be-released “Backbreaker” above, featuring character-on-character interactions as a centrepiece.

Beyond examples of animated gifs like the one included here, you can download Photoshop PSDs of all the character animations in the game from this handy location. Certainly worth a look to get an idea of the animation process behind this wonderfully infuriating little game.