Quantic Dream’s David Cage has spoken out on Rockstar’s L.A. Noire, calling the technology used to recreate facial animation an “interesting dead end.”
Speaking to CVG, Cage seemed dismissive of what the upcoming detective game was offering. “I think it’s an interesting solution to a problem for now,” he said, “but it’s also an interesting dead end. That’s exactly what I feel.”
“Their technique is incredibly expensive and they will never be able to shoot body and face at the same time.”
The next game from Quantic Dream (which we think is called fiv5) will feature dual head and body capture. “We see a huge difference between shooting the face and body separately and shooting everything at the same time. Suddenly you’ve got a real sense of acting that is consistent. You can’t imagine how related what you say with your face is to what your body does.”
Hopefully it’ll be a step above what we saw in Heavy Rain, which whilst undoubtably impressive also looked a bit odd in certain circumstances.
On the other hand, we’ve played L.A. Noire, and we think it’s great.
bacon_nuts
Interesting argument.. Could be mean and say he’s jealous :P
StevenHibs
He’s just bitter that they have done something that he wanted to do!
Dr_mohannad
Nobody does body motion capture better than naughty dog.
LA noire’s face capture technology is impressive.
Heavy rain was great with graphics but didn’t add anything new in terms of physics
PoorPaddy89
Yeah, didn’t Uncharted 2 do both face and body capture together? Either way, the acting in Uncharted 2 is unsurpassed in gaming, in my opinion.
Dr_mohannad
I think uncharted 2 didn’t have face mo-cap, in the making of videos they had preset animations for the faces.
DRCD1
They only do body mo-cap, and even that serves only as a guide, I think. You see, they have much more more control over the animation that way. If they want a small detail, they can just place it there, without having to plunder to much with the recorded animation.
xdarkmagician
For RDR, Rockstar put motion capture on horses while they ran on treadmills.
bunimomike
He’s got a good point. The trailers for LA Noire are wonderful but there’s a little disjointedness that’s very apparent in some of the clips.
The technology behind it is awesome but still has huge limitations.
quinkill
agreed on the most part, unless the gameplay caters to those limitations. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Kev
The early days of MoCap were a bit odd looking too and that technology has grown and grown. The tech for capturing facial expression will grow too and will become so cost-effective it will be the norm eventually.
I think Cage is talking out of his arse, to be frank. He realises that he’s too far into his next project to include this ground-breaking tech and is trying to de-value it for some reason.
Cutter.T
I thinks you misunderstood what he is saying, because in LA Noire they capture the head and body seperately, so when they capture the facial expressions, the actors sit downh in white room and read out their lines to themselves. Because it is easier to capture faces this way, David Cage says it has already been perfected but it has its limitations.
On the other hand her says Face AND Body motion capture has a long way to go, but will ultimately provide a better result.
Foxhound_Solid
Legend is Mr Cage.
BG Tips
Why can’t everyone just get along? I loved Heavy Rain and think LA Noire looks brilliant.
rht992
exactly. lets leave the Mo cap wars and have a nice cuppa tea
cc_star
wow
I thought the lack of facial animation & the usual gaming ‘dead behind the eyes’ ‘weird cavernous empty mouth’ look ruined everything Heavy Rain set out to achieve
It would have been an unlimited amount better if they had the LA Noire tech propping up the game