| gaming news |
| Wednesday, 11 August 2010 00:13 |
Ninja Theory on mocapBy Matthew Reynolds,
 Chief designer and co-founder Tameem Antoniades said that recording with separate performers is inefficient by today's standards. "I think it's totally inevitable that [studios will] have to [use performance capture], because we get to the level of Avatar, anything less is not going to be good enough, and we will get to that level of performance," he told DS. "You can't replicate that on realistic characters with animators, you just can't. Well, you can, but it would be grossly inefficient, it would take just too long. "There are still games out there that voice separately in a recording studio, capture movements with different actors, and then they put it all together, and I just think that's just insane. Why would you do that? It's just ridiculous!" Antoniades said that the technology is now affordable for big budget releases and he doesn't know why it is not used more often. "If you're doing a fairly big budget game then it should be the way you do it, I think. I don't see any benefit or reason to do it any other way," he said. "Hiring a massive team of animators to do it is not going to be cheaper than hiring some actors, a crew and a set to do it. So I don't know why it's not done more often. I think it's early tech, we're just at the cusp of it, the tech we developed at Weta was ahead of its time. Now, other games are catching up, and I think it will be used more." Enslaved: Odyssey To The West follows Heavenly Sword in employing Andy Serkis and other actors for simultaneous motion and voice capture for its cutscenes. The title will be released for Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 8. |