Games in recent years have overtaken both the movie and music industries to become the foremost, consumed type of media in everyday life. Due to the high demands placed on games, often project triangles must often be flexible in both time and money aspects to ensure the game is produced to a high standard of quality, it is common place within the industry to delay a games released for months at a time to ensure it reaches it’s consumer base in a complete and highly polished state. With many games pushing the boundary’s of quality with improved realism, motion and game play aspects, new technologies have emerged that allow visuals to be produced to greater degrees of complexity, more efficiently.
Game Project Triangle
One of these technologies is the art of motion capture, where by a human actor is fitted with sensors, to record and translate his or her movement to a digital 3D model, in order to produce realistic and sometimes human-like, animation or movement. Animation is a specialised and very technical process, without the use of motion capture creating realistic movements is a very tricky business, almost all game studios have adapted this technology into their design processes in order to save time and improve upon their games quality. Checking recent game releases, character motion flows and in the majority of cases looks natural and unencumbered, however game studios are still trying to push games to there limits with new techniques and improved in-game reactions, in order to create the best looking and most functional game, and thus the best-selling game.
Motion Capture In Progress For Golfing Swing
There are two major types of motion capture used in games motion tracking and performance capture; motion tracking is the act of translating basic actions such as walking or combat sequences, whereas performance capture is for complex motion such as facial expressions and specific finger movements.In both cases sensors are attached to the specific locations of motion on the actor who will then perform the required actions, however it is common for the actor to wear a full body suit during motion tracking. These actions are then recorded as data using specialised software so the motion can be translated onto digital models, however if the data is slightly incomplete or there is an error the whole process breaks down and usually has to be restarted.
Motion Tracking
Preformance Capture
Motion capture having become such a key part of the games industry has been considered for alterative uses, mainly as a control mechanism to allow consumers to simply interact with games by moving, for example reaching out to touch water on the screen causes ripples to be created. The main contender of this technology is Microsoft’s project Natal, which uses a motion sensitive camera to mimic the effects of motion capture to allow the user to interact with the game in real time. It is highly possible that these new motion type controls will become the future of the games industry and as such it will impact greatly upon the way games are both designed and developed.
Project Natal
To put this into perspective in terms of concepts and game development, motion capture has become an integrated part of the games industry, meaning whether designing games concepts or actually being apart of the games development process, motion capture will always have to be considered carefully and used accordingly in order to produce an efficient and upto standards game. The future holds even more implantation of motion based technology, so if decided to pursue the path of a games developer it is key to become familiar with the techniques and technology surrounding motion.
References:
Wikipedia. Motion Capture. [Online]. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_capture#Facial_motion_capture
Meta Motion. Who Uses Motion Capture?. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.metamotion.com/motion-capture/motion-capture-who-1.htm
A Digital Dreamer. Motion Capture Technology. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.adigitaldreamer.com/articles/motion-capture-vgames.htm
MOTEK. About Us: Motion Capture. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.e-motek.com/simulation/about_us/mocap.html
Cnet. Microsoft’s Project Natal: What does it mean for game industry?. [Online]. Available at:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10253892-235.html
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