Mocap Cleanup

Here is a video update of what I have been doing in the Mocap studio this week, I have been cleaning mocap data for my first assignment. The video is of the very final steps of cleaning unwanted elements and looking through the data to spot any mistakes.

Texture Assignment Final

After getting some feedback from my teacher I decided to redo some things, including scaling down the pattern of the metal texture so that it repeated itself more times inside the texture instead of repeating the texture as many times for the same result. It did help somewhat with the problem I had wit dark patches appearing in Unreal that where not really visible inside photoshop.

The stone texture got a new normal map with deeper lines between the stones as it was looking kind of flat, I also adjusted the levels of the diffuse map which again made the texture look less flat.

I played around a bit with the Gloss Map and managed to make it look as if it had rained. I liked the effect but my teacher was right that those effects should rather be made in the game.

Nim the Snowman

The background for the winter level of Totemic is complete, as a bonus you get Nim, the snowman. :)

Metal Texture

I have been working on a tiled metal texture over the last few days, there are still some problems with the dark patches but it is starting to look pretty good. It has Diffuse, Gloss and Normal maps attached to it and this is how it looks in Unreal 4.

Totemic Winter Level

Today I have been working on a new level for Totemic, it is a special winter theme for DreamHack Winter that we are leaving for in less than two weeks now. There is still a lot to do on it but it is starting to look pretty cool and we are really excited to show it at DreamHack!

Totemic at DreamHack Winter

In two weeks time we will be taking Totemic to DreamHack Winter, we will be at Uppsala University's booth at the DreamExpo.

Come see us there and play Totemic!

3D2

Yesterday we started doing some textures from photo references in Photoshop and Crazybump and learning the basics of implementing them in Unreal 4.

Firstly I created a Diffuse map that would tile, using the offset filter in Photoshop and layer masks, from that I baked a Normal map in Crazybump after decreasing the saturation to 0 and finally I made a Gloss map from that by inverting the colours so that the skicy parts would be darker and the matte parts brighter.

These maps were then imported into Unreal 4, linked and tiled so that it would be displayed correctly when applied to the floor. The first one I created in class and the second one is something that I tested doing at home last night.

Diffuse, Normal and Gloss Maps In Unreal 4

Photo References Used

 

Diffuse, Normal and Gloss Maps In Unreal 4

Photo References Used

Motion Capture: Tomb Raider

This week I started the Motion Capture course, the first blog assignment was to choose a game that I admire that uses Motion Capture. I have chosen the latest game from one of my favourite game series of all times – Tomb Raider (2013).

For capturing body movement Tomb Raider uses a Passive Optical Motion Capture where the actors wear suits with lots of reflective markers on them. For the facial expressions they use MotionScan where the face is covered in a fluorescent paint called MOVA. I also found an article saying that they used an in-house XSens suit (Inertial Motion Capture).

The Motion Capture of Tomb Raider was recorded at Digital Domain in Los Angeles, which is a huge studio with the possibility of using several actors simultaneously; at the most I could see four actors on the set at the same time (picture below).

 

The videos I found from the Motion Capture Studio with the actress, only shows that it was used for cutscenes although the article I found said that the XSens suit was used for in-game motion capture.

For the role of Lara Croft the developers hired an actress that they felt could personalize the character and make her seem like a realistic person. The actress finally chosen (Camilla Luddington) was one of hundreds of actresses that were considered. There are similarities between the actress and the character, but the character is not a replica of the actress. Mostly it is the hair colour that is similar while facial features vary in likeness.

They used the actress for all movement, facial and vocal captions. As far as I can see from the video material they only captured general body movement and not fingers, although weapons used were also motion captured.

It was not very easy to find a lot of information about the use of motion captures I thought, but from what I could find; one of the most prominent reasons for using Motion Capture was to use an actress that they felt personified the Lara Croft that they wanted to portray in the story.

Both Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics use Motion Capture and both of them have technologies in-house.

I chose the game because the game series is probably my favourite one of all games I have played; I truly appreciate the realism, both in artwork and movement, and style of the game. I really liked how the developers managed to convey a personality and story. It is what they wanted to achieve by using the various Motion Capture techniques and I think that it worked well.

I did not know before whether Motion Capture was used or not when creating the game and I would not have thought of so many different varieties of Motion Capture being used. I did not before yesterday even know that they existed. I have learnt how important having a good actor can be and how that can be used to get a more realistic result than using traditional animations. This is because actors have trained to express emotion with their bodies and faces that an animator might not have.

What I did like the most about the animations in the game was probably how it showed personality and emotion. It has been quite a while since I played the game so I cannot really remember what I liked the least about the animations. The only thing I can think of was that at times they seemed a bit “rubbery” almost, not as explosive as real human movement, as If lacking strength in the muscles.

I had read about how they wanted to humanise Lara before playing the game and I think that they managed to do so. They used the Motion Capture techniques available to create this result with the help of a real actress, when watching the video material, the size of their budget was very obvious. It was really interesting to see a little of how the game was done and very inspiring as a game like this would be my dream project to work with.

Sources:

A Glance at Square Enix' Motion Capture Studio Visual Works  

http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2013/Volume-36-Issue-5-July-August-2013-/Laras-New-Look.aspx 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-MIho4SD6I

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1797530/fullcredits/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Domain

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/games/60548534/new-tomb-raider-a-leap-in-facial-motion-capture 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbZCW8uiAvQ 

Paladin - Work in Progress

Just wanted to share something that I am currently working on, I have been experimenting a bit with technique and brushes on this paladin.

Character Assignment Complete

This is my final version of Bella in UDK with Diffuse, Specular, Normal and Alpha maps.

Normal Map

Diffuse Map

Alpha Map - used to create fringes on the scarf

Specular Map

Final UV layout in UV Editor of 3DS Max

UV Checker in Viewport of 3DS Max