I’m currently playing through this one on my new PS3 slim and must say that of all the unique features Little Big Planet has, the puppet-like emoting is the most fun I’ve had in ages. Here’s a little bit of info on the animation in (I believe the incoming PSP version of) the game.

Looks like a simple rig in Maya to compliment the game nicely, and they use morph shapes for the facial emotes which seems a natural fit given the squashiness of the character.

I’ve been feeling for some time now that Japanese developers have been falling behind their western counterparts in the technology side of game development, so it’s always good to hear that the Metal Gear Solid team still stand up as a cutting-edge developer – even more so when you learn this via a huge drop of “behind-the-scenes” images from one of the largest games to be released this year.

A few weeks back, details of the facial animation rig and other workflow info had been posted on the Japanese XSI website and I was planning to extract information via the google tranlation and observation alone, but someone beat me to it, (and managed to do a much better job than I would ever have). Head on over to Chris Evans’ (Tech-Art Lead at Crytek) blog for full translations of the following sections:

• MGS4 Facial Animation
• MGS4 Character Pipeline
• MGS4 Cluster Constraint Setup

Regarding the  facial setup, it looks very reminiscent of the same method I saw presented at ADAPT 2007 by Aaron Holly of Disney. This involved a similar setup of a bone rig driven by a mesh giving the two following important advantages.

1. It was highly flexible and able to be moved between multiple similar faces as the animation is stored on a nurbs mesh that drives the bones rather than the bones directly, therefore allowing for varying bone positions.
2. If using a pose-based facial animation solution such as FaceFX, the bones travel along the curve of a nurbs surface rather than a simple linear translation, therefore better mimicking the movement of skin across the skull.

This is certainly something I’d be keen to try in the near future given that it now appears to have successfully been put through a full videogame production.

The final Adapt Presentation Notes Session, providing information for animators regarding character and rig development, peer-review processes and general acting tips.

Pixar: How Pixar Animation Studios Brings Characters To Life

Andy Schmidt – Animator on Ratatouille

This was an incredibly valuable lesson in the workflow for polishing an animated feature, which has some lessons we can directly employ for our own peer-review processes. The initially self-deprecating yet entertaining Andy Schmidt took us through the challenges of creating the characters for Ratatouille, (namely, how to turn vermin into an appealing character) before moving on to Pixar’s general approach to taking a scene through various levels of polish.

The biggest element of the talk that struck me was the difference between an animated film and videogame cutscene schedule – two supposedly similar projects in concept, with the key being when voice-over is recorded. Below is a comparison between Pixar and what is my experience of the norm for large-scale videogame project storytelling, taking a direct comparison with only the elements shared across mediums.

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Every so often the internet turns up a gem. It may have been around for some time now in its original form, but below I’ve provided an animation-related analysis of SCE’s original “Making of Shadow of The Colossus” presentation – a technologically impressive game with one or two valuable lessons on getting the most out of a console in its golden years.

Looking at the image below, they at least animate using Lightwave, though how much of their pipeline relies on it is unknown. Perhaps the Japanese industry is different as a whole, as in the West we mostly use either Maya or 3D Studio Max. Lightwave is more favoured among high-end artists for it’s renderer, not its animation system.

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