The super-detailed facial animation on Quarry was done with the same motion capture technology used on Marvel’s Thanos, and the whole process looks pretty grueling.
According to a Washington Post interview with Aruna Inversine, creative director at effects studio Digital Domain, a new motion capture system called Masquerade 2.0 was created specifically for the development of The Quarry, and it was designed to keep up with facial movements. and bodily. . convert them into numeric characters that can be changed in real time. The system replicated the original Masquerade, which was designed to track motion and recreate Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.
To capture The Quarry’s performances, Digital Domain began by taking facial scans of each of the actors. He then covered each of the performers with motion-sensitive dots and had them run a series of tests to properly calibrate the equipment. However, the most creative part of the process was Digital Domain creating physical molds of each of the actors’ heads, then drilling holes in them and inserting motion sensitive dots to match those of the real actors, allowing complex AI. keep an eye on your every move and automatically read anything that was missed during filming.
“It’s a performance that Ted Raimi did,” says Inversine, referring to the Sheriff Travis character, “and you see him in the game and it’s his lip quivering and his eyes looking around. The host didn’t fix it. You know, that’s what What did he do on stage?
In addition to the amount of work required, on film, motion capture artists can take a photo and broadcast it digitally en masse. However, in games where players can choose dialogue and interaction options, facial animations should be able to change in response. To do this, Digital Domain used a different system called Chatterbox, which uses a complex algorithm to record player input and then select the appropriate facial reactions from a library of over 1,000 performance shots. You say something that makes the character sad, Chatterbox listens, then attacks and makes a sad face.
In total, Digital Domain shot 250 million frames of animation for The Quarry, and of the approximately 4,500 frames that were deemed enough to use in the game, only 27 were adjusted by the animators in post-production; the remainder were natural performance catches.
It sounds like a gigantic effort, but if you’ve played The Quarry and seen her bring her characters to life, then it’s certainly worth it.
Source : PC Gamesn
