CHARACTER ANIMATION | BUILD
managed, but at NaturalMotion Games we’re using Morpheme and Euphoria to great effect on mobile,” he says. “A bigger issue in mobile is that many
developers have little or no experience building 3D games and 3D characters. There’s a lot to learn, and development budgets have to accommodate the extra work involved. Mobile studios have also historically been reluctant to license middleware other than complete engine solutions. “As the complexity of mobile games
increases and budgets rise to match, we may see this change and open up greater possibilities for animation on mobile.”
THE NEXT-GEN STEP As hardware across the board gets more powerful, and the PS4 and Xbox One launch later this month, the future of character animation looks at both times promising and extremely challenging. As more games take a narrative-driven
approach and expectations rise, so will the costs of character animation as developers strive to create believable characters. Dimensional Imaging’s Urquhart claims the
next-gen jump could require game assets and performances on par with that in TV and film, with more complex rigs created for increasingly realistic facial animation. “The levels of quality and realism that
could previously only be achieved with offline rendering will be able to be achieved in real-time on next-gen consoles,” he says. “I therefore think that we are truly entering
animation. The major problem has been the level of expertise required in order to be able to integrate and use it to best effect. That’s why so much of our focus has been on simplifying the authoring experience. Now that we’ve launched Morpheme with Euphoria, we hope that we’ll see developers using our tools to push character physics further than ever before. “Another key area is the interaction between AI planning and animation that’s required to have characters respond believably to their surroundings. We have been working hard on tools to assist with this, and Morpheme includes our Prediction Model system. This can provide a game’s AI code with the information it needs about animation capabilities to make smart control decisions at runtime.”
ANIMATION ON THE MOVE Away from consoles, the booming mobile sector offers its own unique challenges in character animation. While the tech behind smartphones and tablets has improved rapidly, it has arguably still not yet surpassed the current generation consoles, and appears a long way off exceeding next-gen consoles. Epic lead technical animator Jeremy Ernst
says the challenges facing devs creating games for cutting edge mobile devices is similar to those faced on the PS2 and Xbox. He highlights potential performance issues with real-time physics and cloth for in-game characters that can prove a limiting factor for many titles. “Bone count and influences per vertex are still limiting factors, though even the bone
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count was pushed quite far on Infinity Blade, similar to those we used in Gears of War 3,” he explains. “Real-time physics and cloth for characters is still a performance burden as well. These are limitations generally associated with the hardware, though.” NaturalMotion’s Mack asserts however that,
from a technical standpoint, mobile is not far away from the current generation of
With the rise in quality, many of the shortcuts used in
games now may not hold up to the fidelity required.
Simon Mack, NaturalMotion
consoles. But he warns that many mobile developers are inexperienced in creating 3D characters and animations, and questions whether, at least for now, these studios are ready to take advantage of better hardware. He also believes in the past mobile
developers have stayed away from many external tools, but says as the hardware gets more powerful, developers may open up to third-party offerings and create more ambitious 3D titles. “From a technical point of view, mobile is not so different to console now. Obviously the complexity and size of assets has to be
an era of convergence, where the quality of both the assets and performances required in games will be much more on a par with those required for television and movies. In terms of facial animation, the additional resources available in new consoles and engines will allow much more complex rigs that will be able to deliver more realistic animation and convincing performances than ever before. Traditional rig based facial animation will also begin to be augmented or even replaced by vertex cache driven animation, animated detail maps and animated textures.” On the subject of facial animation,
Mixamo’s Corazza adds: “The next step for character animation, is going to be about facial animation first and foremost. Cutscenes showing static, lifeless characters without facial expressions or slapping a mask or helmet on characters to avoid dealing with facial animation will not be accepted by players for much longer as they are getting more and more familiar with great facial animations.” Mack also says that next-gen games will be
required to push the boundaries of physics simulation further than ever before, and characters will need to respond realistically and intelligently if this new wave of titles are to match up to the hardware and high consumer expectations. “Characters are going to have to be able to
respond intelligently to these dynamic environments,” he explains. “Motion synthesis and other procedural and adaptive animation technologies are going to be increasingly important. The rise in graphical quality will also put a spotlight on animation quality as a whole, and many of the shortcuts used in games nowmay not hold up to the fidelity required.”
NOVEMBER 2013 | 41
Above: Unity Software engineer Pierre Paul Giroux (top), Mixamo CEO Stefano Corazza and NaturalMotion CTO Simon Mack
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