Has anything been said about this for JK2? This is almost expected in good games nowadays.

Well, motion capture isn't actually always the best thing for a game. Generally well hand-animated characters look a lot better and have more "style".

Motion capture also has some problems, in that not every movement can be captured, so some programatic skeletal animation system is also needed.

As I understand it, a lot of tweaking has to be made to mo-cap data when you need to switch between different moves. And as Archie said, a lot of animators prefer to do it by hand to get the best out of it.

Having said that, there are some notable examples of bad animation...*cough* Daikatana *cough*...

I have complete faith in Raven, though - they produced Heretic II, and Corvus was one of the best animated characters in a PC game IMHO (except maybe for Konoko in Oni, and Ragnar in Rune).

If they use mo-cap to get the best results, well fine. If not, that's fine too. I can't really see it being a major issue.

what they did with force commander and xwing alliance was good, i hope they make the cutscenes more like that.

XWA used 3d studio max for the cutscene animation. I'm not sure about force commander.

i may sound newbiesh but what exactly is motion capture?

NeJJa...hey, no problem...

Motion capture is when you put a human in a suit, with trailing cables (or plaster them with lots of little white balls), and then record their movements as a motion path. That data can then be applied to a 3D model on the computer so that it's movements follow those of the human who made them.

That's about as basic as I can explain it... ;)

The same technology that brought JarJar to life.

Death to motion capture!

Hehe... :D

I vote for a Jar-Jar bot for some slicing and dicing...

thx i get it
yes i say the first mod to be released for JK2 should be a ultra-gorey jar-jar "training" mod. mauahhaah

Hmmm... freshly diced Jar Jar from a lightsaber on a stick. Now that's good eatin'!

Oh yeah, back on topic. heh

I could care less wether or not this game has motion capture. If it lets you reply a multiplayer game or something and watch you fight, I think that would be pretty cool. But it's not something that I view as making a game any better.

yeah, OB1 was going to have the motion capture thing going, it looked quite interesting in the videos where they had the result - some little CG man doing somersaults and cartwheels.

I doubt we will need things like that to go into a game at present though..


wardz

I still have those five movies on my hd of obi-wan doing an aireal, just a regular attack, a dive roll, a spin left, and a spin stab left. They still look cool, too bad we didn't get to have Obi-Wan. :(

Wow, this place is jumpin'! I'm gone for the afternoon and BAM! 13 replys. Anyway...

S2T3, thanks for reminding me about the cutscenes. Since they're in-engine, Raven would be crazy not to use mo-cap for the actors; they would save so much time. If nothing else, mo-cap should be used for this, or else the cutscenes might get a little cheesy.

Originally posted by Ki-Adi-Mundi:
<STRONG>Hmmm... freshly diced Jar Jar from a lightsaber on a stick. Now that's good eatin'!</STRONG>

QMG! btw, this is a Q3A engine game... a lot of people will make a (dare i say) Jar-Jar Binks model! :eek:

cant wait to dice that long eared freak!
:D

id have elected to do all animation "by hand", as it were, in their upcoming DOOM game, believing that it gives them a great deal more hands-on control over the look of the game.

<A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/blammo.pl?mode=mboard&action=viewboard&id=22712">John) Carmack</A>:
<STRONG>We don't have any technology specifically directed towards character features. The animation was done pretty conventionally in Maya.

Our new animator comes from a film background, and we are finding that the skills are directly relevent in the new engine.</STRONG>

<A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/blammo.pl?mode=archive&oneday=true&topic=everything&format=main&display=20010227&highlight=jim%20dosй#22740">Jim) Dosй</A>:
<STRONG>animator Fred Nilsson determined "that he could do a much better job by hand."</STRONG>

Source: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com/">Blue's) News</A> (both comments originally from posts at <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/">Slashdot</A>), which unfortunately appear to no longer be extant).

Yeah I remember reading that, ed. I guess it makes sense for a game that you'll have a lot of different animations (fast-paced action) and you'll have to make the transitions smooth. But still, it'd make sense for the cutscenes.

I think that in order for an animator to create a good looking character (moving realistically) motion capture is a must.
In movies it is very dificult to animate a CG character without mo-cap but when it comes to games things get more complicated because the character has to combine one move with another and so on.
I'm not saying that this is very dificult to be acomplished but IMO the developers know better what suits them more.
If they can do fluid animations without mo-cap thats fine by me...
But PLEASE don't tell me that the animations in H2 were great! I keep hearing that from everyone and I'm starting to feel like I have a problem with my eyes or something! I think they were blocky as hell!!!!!
Just my oppinion though :)

A technicality, but animations are never "blocky". They might be jumpy, or stunted, or something like that, but they aren't blocky. Blocky refers to either pixelisation due to low resolution, or low polygon models.

I don't care what system they use, whether it is Motion capture, Hand drawn or puppets on strings. As long as they feel happy with it, then we will be happy with it I'm sure..

wardz

Puppets on strings? Like it. I wanna see wookies on strings now.

IMHO, I would not put it past Lucasarts or Raven to put mo-cap in this game. It seems that everytime LucasArts, or George Lucas for that matter, puts out a new game or movie, they're always trying something new, something different. Just to set themselves apart from the competition, and make a better name for themselves. It would be interesting to see, but I also see the problems that will arise. :)

Motion capture isn't particularly new or anything... it's been used in football games for years to varying effect.

Oh, I mean soccer to you American's... I don't know if they use it for American Football or not.

Hehe, correct!
But if you look closer Archie you will notice more than just technical errors in my posts... :)
Since I come from Greece, English is not my native language so forgive me for my grammar and spelling errors...
By the way I knew that "blocky" means low poly models or pixelisation but I just couldn't find an other word to describe it.
Sometimes my mind goes blank or something...