1. Motion and facial motion
capture for video games
By David Kovalenko

2. Where it began:
■ Rise of the Robots was the first to use motion
capture technology in gaming to create fluid, real
movement in characters. It used CGI sprites rather
than pixel art for them, and the look of the game
was well ahead of other games released around
1994. It was released on home consoles, PC and
also had an arcade version. However the game did
not do so well critically, the game was said to be
‘too easy’ and it was said that the developers
‘sacrificed gameplay for graphics’

3. Motion Capture
■ Motion Capture is the process of recording the
movement of people, animals or objects. It is a
way to capture realistic movements to a digital
3D space. When the capture is as detailed to the
face and fingers it is commonly known as
performance capture. The best example of
developers that do performance capture are
Quantic Dream who most recent game was
Beyond Two Souls which stared big name actors
like Ellen Page and Willem Defoe.

4. Motion/Performance
Capture in Modern Games
■ Most new big triple A games now use motion
capture to it’s limits, the main reason for this is
so that they can have realistic Hollywood acting
in cut scenes. However most motion capture is
used for gameplay so that it you can see realistic
movements seamlessly and not just in cutscenes.
■ What they try to do in games now is to make the
cutscenes and the gameplay to be almost almost
seamless with no loading screens intended
however this is not cheap and harder to do with
the last generation of consoles (PS3 & XBOX 360)

5. Facial Capture in L.A Noire
Facial capture is all about the performance but not as you
might think. For example L.A Noire was one of the first
games to utilize this to the max however they had the
actors doing their lines twice. This was because they had
the actors be in a room surrounded by the most advanced
cameras to date. Rockstar did not use dots on faces to
track they just used the recordings of the actors that was
taken from every possible angle. They wanted real
authentic emotion because the aim of the game is to be a
detective and read people's emotions.

6. Price of Motion Capture
When you look at the price for motion capture you
understand why not all games have it as it is very expensive
for example Beyond Two Souls cost 28M to make. This is a
lot considering most games usually cost around 10M. The
problem with using motion capture technology is that you
need to know whether or not the game you are developing
will make a lot of money back. Beyond Two Souls sold 1.5M
by christmas of 2013 and it’s release date was on October
2013. This is surprising considering Ellen Page starred in
the game which is a big marketing ploy.

7. Performance as Reference
Some games however use motion capture as reference and for
voice acting, they record the performances and give the
footage to the animators. The animators would have to see the
performances over and over again and animate the faces to fit
the acting style. A good example of a game that did this was
THE LAST OF US; the game used top quality actors although
the faces were completely different and each emotion and
facial movement had been created from scratch. THE LAST
OF US won over 20 Game of the year Awards and some
BAFTA awards. Although this is a cheaper way of using
motion capture the process can be long depending on the
studio.

8. The Main Problem
The biggest problem with using advanced motion capture is
the amount of memory it uses, for example L.A Noire was
released on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3; and required 3
discs for the Xbox however because the PS3 discs are Blu
Rays they hold 5 times more memory space. The newly
released Infamous Second Son used very advanced motion
capture which had almost ‘uncanny valley’ feel to them and
they gameplay and cutscenes transitioned almost
seamlessly. This is mainly due to the game being on the
PlayStation 4 which can handle a lot of data and has 8GB of
RAM.

9. Sources
www.wikipedia.com
www.ign.com
http://www.develop-online.net/tools-and-
tech/motion-capture-moving-with-the-
times/0117523
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131827/p
lanning_and_directing_motion_.php