2. Intro
Triple A game developers have a tenancy to push further and further when
it comes to making everything realistic. This includes 3D Motion Capture
which has now become to main tool when it comes to making realistic
and believable human behaviour in games but it didn’t come overnight.
It has been a long process of trying to perfect this technology and to this
day it still isn’t perfect - there ares still problems and limitations that still
occur. During this presentation I will be going into more detail about this.
3. The ‘Two Types’
• Modern motion capture systems fall intro two general
categories, optical and non optical.
• The majority of systems on market today are marker
based, this means that the subject must wearing special
reflective or lighted markers in order for the system to
work.
• Markerless systems are fewer but are able to identify and
track subjects without any suits or markers.
4. Marker Based Optical Motion Capture Systems
• Marker based has been around for a while, making impacts in the film and
gaming industry.
• The system quickly identifies objects and tracks their motion which is very difficult
and still in research.
• Markers are either highly reflective balls or else small bright lights that stand out
from the background.
• Maker based systems are very expensive and take a lot of time to use - games
will have to planned around the equipment and not the other way round.
5. Problems With Marker Based Systems
• Subjects have to wear special body suits with markers on,
precise application of the markers is essential, as the software
is estimating the position of the subject.
• One applied correctly the systems must go through a ‘user
calibration’ process in order for the system to be able to tell
which marker is which, after a while and especially when a
scene as a lot of characters in it, the process becomes very
long.
• Motion capture teams have to be careful that markers don’t
get blocked by other objects or get’s moved as the tracking
will be inaccurate.
6. Markerless Motion Capture
• Professional markerless motion capture systems uses advanced technology
in order to track subjects without the need for any special suits or markers.
• Without the aid of markers to provide hints to the image processing
software, advanced algorithms are required, especially when the aim is to
track motion in real time.
• The only software commercially available today is ‘Organic Motions Open
Stage’.
7. Advantages & Disadvantages To Markerless
Systems
• No special suits or markers are required, subjects can
simply step into the capture area and begin tracking.
• Game developers can capture more accurate motion
capture motion data in less time and for a much lower
cost.
• The challenge is implementing accurate tracking
algorithms that perform well enough to real time use
without the aid of markers to provide hints to the
software.
8. La Noire
• LA Noire was the first game to use markerless motion capture - in fact they used a combination of
both.
• The marker based system was used when it came to acting out the scenes with their body, it helped
construct the characters movements when picking up objects and other things.
• The markerless system is used specifically for the facial capture side of the game.
• The need for high detail facial motion capture was due to the fact that the LA Noire gameplay is
detecting when somebody is lying to you - problems have arisen due to the difficulty of creating this
look without any motion capture.
• The markerless system captures an actors actions and gives the game developers the best ever
template to go from.
