TUTORIAL UNCHARTED 2 | BUILD
Motion Capture Cinematic Animation Lead Josh Scherr talks us through the motion capture process for Uncharted 2… WE APPROACH MOTION CAPTURE quite differently than most studios. While we do extensive planning prior to the shoot, we don’t do storyboards. We discovered early on that planning out all the shots ahead of time was not only unnecessary, but didn’t allow for all the spontaneous discoveries (and inevitable changes) that happen during rehearsal and shooting. We’ll sometimes do rough camera blocking for scenes with elaborate setups or a lot of characters. We spend most of our prep time measuring our game environments to make simple physical sets, coming up with rough staging, and making props. On the day of the shoot, my job is to make sure the animators get everything they need to create the best possible performance. Getting video footage is DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
absolutely vital. Not only does it help me pick the best performances from each actor, it provides the animators with essential reference. We don’t do any facial mocap—all of the faces are animated via keyframing—so three of our four cameras focus on the actor’s faces, and the fourth camera acts as a master overview of the scene. I also try to make sure the actors don’t make any performance choices that won’t read well once applied to their characters. After the shoot, I review the best takes and choose what mocap I want to use. Since there’s rarely a completely perfect take, I usually mix and match the best takes from each actor to make the final scene. Once we receive the data, the real work begins. We don’t just take the raw mocap, drop it into the game, and call it done. Everything is carefully edited, modified, and polished. JULY 2010 | 61