BUILD | CHARACTER ANIMATION
the quality of performance must also
increase to match advancements in graphical realism and fidelity. “One of the key challenges the industry is facing is the spiralling cost of continually improving the quality of facial animation. How can studios create hours of facial animation at ever-higher levels of detail, quality and realism within reasonable budgets?” says Urquhart. “I think the answer has to be to use
technology like Dimensional Imaging’s to accurately capture the performance from real life talent. However, this then introduces the challenge that as the realism and fidelity of the animation improves, so the quality of the performance must also improve to match. I see the secondary challenge of obtaining good acting performances becoming increasingly important to the industry.”
Epic’s UE4 houses its new animation system Persona (main image). Above (from top-to bottom): The Foundry’s Brad Peebler, Dimensional Imaging’s Colin Urquhart and Epic’s Jeremy Ernst
40 | NOVEMBER 2013
ITERATING ON ANIMATION Some of the more obvious challenges include difficulties in animating and rigging, which Brad Peebler, president of the Americas for Modo firm The Foundry, says suffers from a poor feedback process. The perhaps contradictory nature of animating and the technical focus of rigging creates what Peebler calls a highly inefficient and oftentimes painfully slow process, one which can require a few minutes to judge each model and result meaningfully. “Rigging is hard. Animation is hard. That’s
the real throttle on the animation market and process,” he says.
“Both of these areas suffer from poor
feedback. Unlike a model where you can see the shape taking form in a millisecond, rigging and animation still requires seconds and minutes to see a result in a meaningful way. Since the animators tend to be less technically focused and rigging is incredibly technical, there is an implicit feedback loop
Rigging is hard. Animation is hard. That’s the real
throttle on the animation market and process.
Brad Peebler, The Foundry
required yet the linear nature of these two processes makes it highly inefficient, painful and downright punishing.” Unity’s Giroux adds: “Lowering the iteration time between animation authoring –mo-cap or other – and visualisation in-game is an important challenge,” he says. “Also, game developers are animating
more and more in-game, whether we’re talking about additional characters or simpler objects, which increases the complexity of the data. That means it’s important to have smarter workflows that allow animators to arrange and assemble animations efficiently with high-level tools. While neither of these
challenges are new, the huge increase in the amount of data introduced with next-gen consoles –which will translate into more animation –will make them more important than ever.”
GETTING PHYSICAL Another challenge facing developers is ensuring realistic interactions between the game’s characters and the physical world they inhabit. While some advancements have been made in this area, which can be seen in titles such as Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us, there are still difficulties ensuring characters correctly respond to the world around them when the user is in control. The issue of characters skirting across
different terrain without being realistically grounded or odd animations, such as climbing stairs, are just examples of the difficulties facing developers in this area, as well as ensuring NPCs react believably to objects placed in their way. Mack says NaturalMotion has tried to solve this with its own runtime character animation and graphical authoring environment Morpheme, which it recently launched with simulation tech Euphoria. This, he hopes, will help developers to push character physics to the next level. “The interaction of characters with a
physically simulated environment is a problem we’ve been working on for over a decade,” states Mack. “I believe that Euphoria has long provided the most advanced and flexible solution for dynamic character
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