Why motion capture will always fail

[Kenzomatic]

So I have been reading up on Heavy Rain and hear they are setting many records with the amount of motion capture they are recording. Before I go off on my little rant let me first state that Mo-cap will never replace an animator.

The reason why mo-cap always fails is the same reason why rotoscoping (tracing movement) always fails, because it is not about reality it is about perception of reality. Why does pixars stuff look so good? because they emphasize what your mind picks up on in the real world. Every animator on planet earth knows the 12 principles of animation.

1. Squash and stretch
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
6. Slow In and Slow Out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary Action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid Drawing
12. Character Appeal

A few things change when you transfer to 3D but you can bet a lot of money ILM follows these rules and they sure don't rely on mo-cap for anything other then a base start. Because Mo-cap negates almost everything on this list. Go watch Ratatouille then Monster House or watch Davey Jones in pirates of the carabean then watch Beowulf. The difference is glaring. The funny thing is for both Baowulf and Monster house they spent millions and millions just cleaning up the Mo-cap so it didn't look truly god awfull and then they try to add the 12 principles of animation in. while the technology is improving the biggest problem is when you animate you make smooth multiple frame arcs but Mo-cap keys every frame and then you have to smooth it out best you can after words. And instead of reacording the smooth flowing perception of human movement you get the jerky reality that it is times 10 becuase the technology is not there and within an 1/8 an inch makes it jerky. Even when it gets there the amount of input points you will need will be insane and the smooth arcs still won't be there.

Also I love how people say we have crossed the uncanny valley. No we have not when my grandmother can watch it and thinks its real then we have, not when some gaming nerd that has been spent hundreds of hours stairing at this crappy motion capature sees a slight or even major improvement a declares it looks real cause comparred to the old it a thousand times better.

Suspension of disbleif and the uncanny valley do not go hand and hand at some point in time if you wacth enough anime you stop noticing that its only at 12 frames a second and at some point in gaming you start to ignore the flaws in crappy gaming mo-cap. Its still crap its still there you have just have just built up a tolerence and gotten used to it. There should be no transition time in the best stuff that is made anyone will be able to imadiatly conect.

I can apreachiate a lot of what has been done with Heavy Rain but improvement, time, effort and money do not equal perfection. when it come to game I think lighting/texturing/modeling is getting close but the movement of the characters is 15 years behind.

[El Duderino]

I don´t know what Heavy Rain is or what half your rant is about but I will agree that traditional animation is many different arts in itself and has endless history to look back on and thats why it can never be replaced... I still do think motion capturing has its place and even though its nowhere close to perfection it will one day reach a level where it is its own art... perhaps its not right for all movies and videogames... but sports games for example already profit from it... some fighting games probably do to... and in movies... well lets just say I can´t wait for the day we get to see a Hitler vs. Churchill wrestling match... or a young Marlon Brando and James Dean make out in the incredible remake of Brokeback Mountain...

[Gengibre]

"Also I love how people say we have crossed the uncanny valley."

Agree, mostly with the whole Heavy Rain == CGI Quality, that d@mn thing looks good for a static model, but in movement starts to look like a corpse, the lack of detail in the facial expressions (In the body too) made the characters look like a zombie :S is just plain weird, I sort of miss the cartonish look of some characters in other games...





In this aspect I really love the Valve´s efforts to add a more human facial expression to the Source Engine, they choose that path instead of just more detailed face models and textures... Somehow even if they look creppy, I found the facial expression on HL2 way better than the technical demos of heavy rain...

[Kenzomatic]

"Also I love how people say we have crossed the uncanny valley."

Agree, mostly with the whole Heavy Rain == CGI Quality, that d@mn thing looks good for a static model, but in movement starts to look like a corpse, the lack of detail in the facial expressions (In the body too) made the characters look like a zombie :S is just plain weird, I sort of miss the cartonish look of some characters in other games...

In this aspect I really love the Valve´s efforts to add a more human facial expression to the Source Engine, they choose that path instead of just more detailed face models and textures... Somehow even if they look creppy, I found the facial expression on HL2 way better than the technical demos of heavy rain...

If I remember correctly all the face movement in Half Life 2 was hand animated. But like you said they went for accross the board standard and not "well the stills look great" quality.

Also I thought I would continue my rant and move over to aliasing which drives me nuts it has to be the second worst thing next to mo-cap. Maybe its because I work on the film/tv side and in that world aliasing is unexceptable. Either way if I go play Banjo-kazooie (arcade) on the 360 then Gears of War, I find in many ways Banjo looks better because the edges aren't aliasing like crazy and everything has smooth well rendered edges. Thats probably what I'm looking foward to most or at least hoping for most next generation and that is no more aliasing. But then again who am I kidding they will go for full fledge forrest and quadruble layered caustic acurate skin and more until they have to have alaising in order to get the frame rate. Well at least full HD helps hide it, well depending on how large your tv is and where you sit.

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