um so for motion capture so so what what
i realized right is
motion capture
is cheaper to mocap and then clean up
the animations than keyframe at this
scale um
especially the speed at which you do
things um
and and the thing is like for example i
have an example here like uh
let's say like we were doing a session
where it's like look the cop is um
the cop is knocking out the player right
and one of the actors it it will inform
a lot of decisions about um it has to
look good from the top down um
maybe you could move this way maybe you
could this and then i know
the personality of each character and we
can see in real time
um the performance and once the
performance is done we we have all the
nuances of the performance you know the
way he's you know he's rotating his face
the way like his head pendulum at the
end the way the shoulder shakes and key
framing this is very time consuming yeah
so yeah so we we
we we had a mocap suit that was really
big on the mocap studio we um
we did an outline of the bar this is the
bathroom like there's a full outline
like this is the
this is the bedroom like here it's the
door between the two rooms that's really
cool
so for example when the cop is searching
the apartment right we could get an
actor going from
um
he would walk
yeah he would just say okay you got into
the room you're looking around and he
would look around and i could direct him
i could say look um
you have to go a bit slower because we
know the player is in the closet he's
going to be seeing you do this so maybe
do a little pause here look on the side
here
we could play around with the
performance live
and get five six stakes and then we know
that's going to be the one that works in
the game um and it's really fast right
you have this actor that's doing all
this work of the performance and you get
like a lot of that straight into the
game um
so like here's an example of like
actually before that so the actor like
all this is remote like i love a lot
being remote like i was in san francisco
this studio was in seattle
um
so right like this is the actor would
see my little face here he would see his
performance from top down
uh then on the other end we would have
someone who was right
coordinating the effort
like so he was guiding the the session
where
he would actually load the 3d model of
the world into a screen um
and so i could um
like
like sometimes i would sit like this
wow oh my gosh your process is amazing i
actually had no idea you did it like
this yeah and it was fun like we would
be like um
we would be figuring out how um
you know how quickly do you handcuff and
for example we were handcuffing and
we're like oh actually and i don't know
if people will notice this but when you
get handcuffed in the game
at the start he struggles a lot second
time he's like you're like let's get a
little narrative on all these actions so
but the fifth time you get handcuffed he
just throws himself on the floor and the
cop is like huh like why are you not
resisting getting handcuffed uh
so right we would we would do this um
these experiments and then
because and then i i guess the parallel
to this would be the
there will be very detailed documents
like this is the old wife model about
everything like because when the wife
falls on the ground
this position has to be a perfect
position 0.5 meters
that will then transition to the
position of trying to get up
or the position of being suffocated um
so yeah we would do these animations and
then they would be um
um
let me have a couple more here
uh
like for them
yeah sorry you say all this was done
remotely
is this because of uh the pandemic would
you oh no no no so it's funny when the
pandemic came it didn't change anything
okay exactly how you were working
exactly it didn't affect any of the
pipeline i mean it affects people
emotionally but
pipeline wise there was no and this is
like this is the amazing part of it
because i was home like i was literally
home with
like this window
like there was a session on one screen
there was the they were seeing my face i
had like i had this document open saying
okay now we're recording get on knees
and if i had a doubt right i could
literally like i'll step to the game
world
look at the limitations i have i alt tab
back into the window right and they have
like you can see like when the wife says
hi right they're half a meter from each
other
and she's like sitting down like
depending on where you are in the world
she will greet you differently so if you
actually sit down she will sit down to
kiss you um
and right we could do these tests you'll
see
different ideas of how she can kiss you
from this position different attitudes
so it looks
more or less fake and i could see like i
could see the game world in real time
which was
which was great i mean i loved it it
really allowed to
on a very short but that's the other
thing like
it was a very small budget for the game
we we don't have many shots at this we
have one shot at getting this going um
look here's another one like the one we
were seeing the cop punching you
and then throwing you on on the ground
nice i have two questions side by side
yeah um first of all somebody and chad
asked if is this was this some mocap
studio that you rented out or that kind
of perna helped furnish
oh no so this was pretty lucky so um
when i was at rockstar games um
the lead animator cj marcum he he used
to work in movies working king kong and
other films and we became good friends
and then when i was looking like i was
singing at gdc for for um
for mocap and i was like i don't think
i'll do because i know i know zero about
this like zero
and i run into him and he's like oh yeah
i just started my own mocap studio and
we're we're slowly growing i'm like
really and we're looking for inner
developers i'm like really
and then i think
yeah let's work together but listen uh i
don't know the costs and i know zero
about mocap and he said all good so
so he just guided me through all the
process like all the things we need to
think about how to look at mocap like
the performance and all the casting
process so this was just like um so i
started the mocap before i worked with
an important like the game would have
mocap no matter what
but we went from maybe three to four
sessions to 10 or 12 sessions because
there were more resources to to use um
nice yeah very cool i guess yeah
somebody said it's good to know people
yeah i mean that's all like your
development
life i mean i think even in life like i
think even though your neighbors when
you wanna you know when you're out of
town and and you want someone to check
your mic i think networking is is
crucial for for ideas for creative but
for game development for sure like
the actors uh they're knowing the
different studios the different i mean
yeah it's networking is so important
it's yeah yeah i talk about this all the
time on a smaller scale especially when
we're doing uh game jams for students
and stuff and like what's the biggest
advice i'm like learn to work with all
the people those strangers you meet at
game jams because you'd be surprised how
often i interview studios who have made
it big and they're like oh yeah i met my
director when i was doing a game jam in
like you know university or it was
always stories like that
you