Here's a short film showcasing Quantic Dream's (of Heavy Rain fame) newest performance capture technology. I feel that the whole self aware robot stuff is a little bit of an old hat by now, but this is still done well enough to warrant a watch.
I remember reading about David Cage kind of hating on LA Noire's face scanning system because that's literally all it could read was the face.
With this technology it captures the entire performance all at once.
Heavy Rain wasn't the greatest game ever and the story had a ton of holes in it, but it was a game I actually enjoyed immensely. It was so different and to say that the great actors in the game had nothing to do with my pleasure with it would be doing it a disservice.
Too bad the controls were as wonky as they were. Maybe next time.
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I'm artistically opposed to motion capture tech like the one used in L.A. Noire. The result is fairly convincing, but the trade-off can't possibly be worth the effort. The whole time I spent playing was giving me this uncanny valley vibe. More importantly though, character animation is a craft, and one that is difficult to master.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QM1eTAwOYc
That link is to the "Meet the Heavy" video from TF2. Most of you have seen it, but at around the 50 second mark is some of the best, subtle character animation I've ever seen. It may be cartoonish in it's design but it's so solid through and through. I've got some background in the area of "why this is so good", but really it's just because of the complete comprehension of the character by all artists involved - the voice actor knew the character, the designer met the expectations of the voice, the animator captured the nuance of the performance, and it is all interesting and engaging to watch.
I'm not trying to rail on new technology, I'm just a little sad to see older, tried and true methods get disregarded in the wake of "cutting edge tech" that is there to mostly save money.