Comments on: Mo Money or Mo Cap

By: Dom

Dom — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:06:28 +0000

Even as a game artist, I’m a fan of motion capture in theory. Unfortunately the reality is that, a lot of the time it ends up looking worse than keyframing. There’s a floatiness to motion capping that simultaneously looks real and unreal (uncanny valley, perhaps?) and totally replacing keyframing just isn’t feasible yet.

By: bean

bean — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:14:05 +0000

While I can see the point you’re trying to make, and it all works well on paper, it really all comes down to whether the company is willing to spend the money and suffer the downtime adapting to a new system, and being one who works in the industry, I know how reluctant the higher ups are about taking any hit to the coffers or productivity, especially when you’re working in a tight time frame.

That being said, I totally agree, especially when it comes to realistic games (FPS or actions games especially). There are always going to be things which you simply cannot mocap, which will require animators presence of course, and some things are better left to a physics engine these days to keep things dynamic. It’s really my opinion that the thing that could benefit the most from mocapping is a simpe walk cycle – it really bugs me when I see awkward animation for characters walking/running, since for most games these days that’s a very prominant animation, but maybe it’s just me.

By: spitfire

spitfire — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:13:25 +0000

Euphoria’s pretty cool (now that it’s finally ready for prime time). I don’t think it’s going to be unemploying any animators, though. It just handles live dynamic collissions really well, and allows you to blend animations well. You still need good animations to feed the simulation.

By: john

john — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:44:56 +0000

I think it was the Bethesda guys who mo-capped a horse… anyways the horse in Oblivion felt just horrible, more like hover bike than anything else…

What do you guys think of Euphoria? Is it just a gimmick or will we soon see some unemployed animators?

By: spitfire

spitfire — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:44:54 +0000

You can motion capture animals, but it’s a huge pain in the ass.

Cats, for instance, are probably impossible to mocap, as they won’t allow you to stick markers all over them, even if trained.

I know some people have done horses, but even then the capture volume needs to be insanely large, and you’re still working with an unpredicatble animal.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:56:26 +0000

Do animals ever get motion captured? Seems to me this would add a lot of fluidity to the movement of in-game pets or even monsters. I find myself expecting monsters to move in a certain way – often it’s like a human on all fours or some other approximation based on certain assumptions. Seems to be there is huge potential on motion capture that isn’t being utilised.

By: Mickiscoole

Mickiscoole — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:47:27 +0000

I remember reading once that Ubisoft motion captures everything in the Splinter Cell games except for Sam Fischer, which I found an interesting way of doing things…