Archives For mocap

Full Performance Capture on Far Cry 3

January 21st, 2013 — 2 Comments

Here is a video on Far Cry 3′s full performance capture technology, which is virtually identical to Assassin’s Creed III’s given that we used their workflow entirely albeit from a third-person perspective. I can’t imagine recording face, body and voice separate again after seeing the subtle nuances picked up by all three working together in sync.

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Marc is the Technical Director in charge of R&D at our Montreal mocap studio, (we have one in Toronto also), so oversees the motion-capture technology-sharing on all Montreal projects. For more info on FC3′s character pipeline you can see an additional talk by Character Technical Director Kieran O’Sullivan here.

In Cutscenes, Facial Animation , , , , ,
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Quantic Dream’s “Kay” Demo at GDC

March 8th, 2012 — Leave a comment

While I may disagree with their approach to interactive storytelling, one can’t deny Quantic Dream’s ambition and accomplishment in terms of performance capture. Probably more than just the purported tech demo, the level of emotion captured in this piece sets a high standard with simultaneous body, facial and VO capture fast becoming the standard in our post-L.A.Noire era.

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UPDATE: Behind the scenes video here.

In Facial Animation, Motion Capture , , , , ,
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Cinematic Reel : 2011

April 10th, 2011 — 3 Comments

I took the time this last week to put together a reel of my work on Mass Effect 2, done between late 2008 and early 2010. Look below for a full shot breakdown, and, because you’re gonna ask, the music is Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy.

Shot Breakdown

Below is a breakdown of what I was responsible for in each scene. The terms used are as follows: Continue Reading…

In Cutscenes, Work , , , , , , , , , ,
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First-Person Movement for Mirror’s Edge

November 5th, 2010 — 1 Comment

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.

In GAME ANIM Articles, Game Animation , , , , , ,
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Uncharted 2: Mocap Club Interview

May 30th, 2010 — Leave a comment

The Mocap Club has posted an interview with Uncharted 2 Cinematics Lead, Josh Scherr on the mocap process for the game’s high quality cinematics, complementing the videos on the subject included with the game.

Some technical insights towards the end, but most interesting of all is the emphasis placed on the human side of the shoot, something that comes through in the finished work. Regarding casting:

“Well, we start with the obvious things – e.g. talent, distinctive voice, whether an actor is appropriate for the role, etcetera. But since we’re looking for people who will be doing both the mocap acting and the voice, we also watch how the candidates physicalize their performance. It’s also important to see how they deal with adjustments and to see if they take direction well. For the top candidates, we’ll actually bring them back for a second audition and have them perform a scene with Nolan (North, who plays Drake) to make sure they have good chemistry.”

In Cutscenes, GAME ANIM Articles, Motion Capture , , , , , , ,
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Autodesk FBX Plugin for Quicktime

May 25th, 2010 — Leave a comment

While it’s always been a format for mocap files, its recent adoption as an optional non-proprietary animation import format by the Unreal 3 Engine as well as take-up by development teams within the industry means .fbx is fast becoming the real standard format for transferring animation data between varying content-creation packages and game engines, so it’s great to see an improved plugin release for previewing .fbx files in Quicktime.

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.

In Game Animation , , , , , , ,
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Heavy Rain Mocap Numbers

August 31st, 2009 — Leave a comment

I loved the setting and scenario in their previous effort, Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, but felt the narrative methods used were a step backward 20 years, being more something akin to Dragon’s Lair. Nevertheless, some pretty impressive numbers here:

Your partner at Quantic Dream, Guillaume de Fondaumière, has said that this is the biggest motion-capture project attempted in a game to date – what are the implications of this from a development perspective?

We bought our in-house mo-cap system in 2000 and we’ve had a full-time team working with it since then. We developed proprietary technologies, tools and pipelines to produce high-quality data in a very limited time frame. Heavy Rain was more than 170 days of shooting with more than 70 actors and stuntmen, plus 60 days and 50 actors for facial animations. We recreated most props on the set to allow actors to know what’s around them and to have the right contacts with their environments.

[via Edge Magazine]

In Motion Capture , , , , ,
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Resident Evil 5′s Virtual Camera

February 16th, 2009 — Leave a comment

Despite a clearly phoned-in voice over, Fox News’ Gamers Weekly has posted a video highlighting Resident Evil 5′s use of a Virtual Camera in the production of its cutscenes. This technique has intrigued me for some time, though equally interesting was the section showing the realtime feedback on the fully skinned and textured ingame characters. While it appears to be diffuse-only, this looks to be a small yet significant improvement.

[via Kotaku]

In Cutscenes, Motion Capture , , , , , ,
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Dragon Hunter 2

February 9th, 2009 — 1 Comment

Had this sent to me at work today – class.

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I’m pretty sure this was how game mocap, (or at least game voice-over), used to get done. In all seriousness though, there is something to be said for directing actors to do something other than the actual action to recieve your desired results.

In Motion Capture , ,
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Beowulf Mocap Postmortem

June 27th, 2008 — Leave a comment

It’s certainly some time after the event, (it’s slow going when you’re in the middle of a full production), but I’ve finally collated my remaining notes from this year’s Game Developers’ Conference that relate to animation and characters in games. So to start off, we have the head of R&D on last year’s landmark film featuring virtual actors, followed by a trio of Japanese developers giving insight into their approaches to animation and character development.

Sony Pictures Imageworks: A Believable Character Postmortem: Motion Capture on the Virtual Set of BEOWULF

Parag Halvadar – Lead R&D Engineer

Hailing from the same studio that created Monster House, Halvadar’s talk concentrated on facial motion as that’s a recent topic for games industry. As is often the case with movie industry approaches they couldn’t directly be recreated for use in a game development situation, but nonetheless provided an interesting insight into some of the lengths that must be gone to in search of the (some say, false) holy grail of truly photo-real virtual characters.

Continue Reading…

In Facial Animation, Film Animation, GAME ANIM Notes, Motion Capture , , , , , , , , , ,
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