Everyone’s talking about it so it would be rude not to post that the new trailer for Rockstar’s (Sydney-based team Bondi’s) L.A. Noir dropped yesterday and the facial performances look fantastic. Using Depth Analysis’ MotionScan technology, they appear to be going all out to capture the performances of apparently over 200 characters.

While the visual benefits are obvious, I can’t help but wonder just how much it cost the production for so many actor contracts when not only voices but likenesses are required. Additionally, the production task must be one of the hardest parts of the game, considering that at the time of writing they’re still hiring senior roles for the cinematics team around 6 months before the planned release date.

That said, I’ve really been keeping an eye on this since E3 so can’t wait for spring to roll around, plus I’m a Noir nut since a Humphrey Bogart stint last summer.

Read more about the MotionScan tech and process here.

UPDATE: They’re not still hiring as the front-page job posting on their site is dated 2008. Makes me feel better about the frequency of my own posts.

Gotta love French Trio We Are ENFANT TERRIBLE’s video for their song Snap Dragon. Sounding a lot like my current obsession, Crystal Castles, the visuals are an obvious homage to Double Dragon, and I can make out sounds from Streets of Rage 2, Streetfighter 2 and the classic Konami startup screen.

DICE have posted a number of slides covering various aspects of their games’ development over on their website. While there’s a beautiful presentation from middleware company Illuminate Labs on their lighting technology in Mirror’s Edge, arguably the game’s standout visual feature, of interest to animators will be the one on the creation of their first-person animations which, with the camera, combine to give an immersive experience not seen since Project Breakdown.

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.

I’m not a fan of stop-motion animation purely because it’s so difficult to create that that in itself is part of the charm, which always leaves we wondering if we’d accept all the jerky motions if we believed they were down to a lack of polish. This, however, looks awesome and is a very clever idea.

[via Fubiz]

I am forever confused by the duality of games players (and developers) on the opposing subjects of art and censorship in games. The former gives rise to claims of higher meaning in their creations or past-times, while the latter all too frequently finds defence in being “only a game”, and therefore absolved of the same scrutiny deserving of other commercial forms of expression – I’m looking at you, Taliban-less Medal of Honor.

So which is it, gamers? New entertainment medium with an obligation to provide socially and morally responsible experiences above the puerile, or harmless and meaningless time-sink?

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says a lot of things. While he has talked at previous investor conferences about facial animation, (curious in itself as an investor buzz-topic), he joins a growing line of non-animators claiming to have overcome the biggest challenge in CG acting. Speaking at the recent America Merrill Lynch conference:

“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.

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Speaking at this month’s CESA Developers’ Conference in Yokohama on a talk entitled “The Power to Move: Looking Outside the Industry to Grow as an animator”…

[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]

You can stop at the sunset flip – it doesn’t get any better than that.

[via  Matt]

Once again, the Japanese Softimage site has posted information on another showpiece title – and they spend a heavy amount of time talking about how Softimage interfaces with Motionbuilder. This is encouraging for me as I’ve decided to dive fully into Motionbuilder for my current project after finding it to be the most rounded solution for mocap, keyframe and facial animation out there.

When we initially showed Mass Effect at E3 2006 I recall a handful of Square developers attending to evaluate the facial animation. While it looks like their production methods are somewhat dated due to the long development cycle, playing FFXIII shows the eventual result to be outstanding – presumably due to their dedicated engine for facial closeups and meticulous planning.

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