Max Bodrikov, Producer of Elven Legacy, discusses the motion capture technology of Elven Legacy in an exclusive Developer Diary only available on Strategy Informer.
Title: The Motion Capture Technology of Elven Legacy
By: Max Bodrikov, Producer of Elven Legacy
Animations made with motion capture technology are smooth and look good. The human eye can catch the detail of every move, and motion capture provides great natural animations that you want to believe in. Actually, it is not typical to use motion capture animations for wargames, but then we always knew that Elven Legacy is not your typical wargame!
Our animators just love motion capture! They say, ”A tiger who once tried human flesh won’t eat anything else.” Once you’ve worked with motion capture, you return to this technology over and over again, each time finding new expressive features – not to mention all the new impressions that accompany the recording of mocap animations! The recording of mocap for Elven Legacy was especially remarkable.
It all began in the airport. Our plane was taking off, breaking through dense leaden clouds, accompanied by flashes of lightning and thunder. And so we flew through thunderstorms. The old TU-134 plane was shaking so violently it was impossible to drink tea – it was splashing everywhere. Still, things were quite alright until one of the passengers decided to visit the bathroom. A stewardess came up to him and, so as not to frighten the other passengers, quietly said, “Please sit down, we are almost on the verge of crashing.” But we heard her alright!
Then followed the message on the intercom, informing us that ”the plane is moving in hard weather conditions, please stay put and fasten your seatbelts.” We were dying (no pun intended) to add, ”If anyone knows any prayers, then pray!” :) But then we left the thunderheads behind and landed safely.
Our ”adventures” continued when we started to shoot animations. Of course, for most scenes and movements, professional actors are more suitable. But there are scenes where it’s hard to express the nuances of a character for a person who doesn’t feel the role. We had to shoot not only blows, blocks and falls, but also whole scenes for in-game movies. Once in a while, we had to struggle into special costumes with sensors and enact our own characters.
In one of the scenes of the very first movie (a battle of inquisitors with a mysterious mage), we had to enact a fall from a blast wave. On the third take, our animator Alexey ‘Letin’ Shumeykin took such a back dive that he dislocated his shoulder when he landed. The scene was very natural, but it really hurt him! As a result, this take was chosen for the movie. We were ready to go to any length for our favorite project!
The doctor we called was at first a little bit frightened when he entered the studio. He definitely thought we should have called a psychiatrist, not a traumatologist. We surely understood him – what can a normal person think when he enters a dark room without any windows filled with cameras and several grim men in tight black costumes with lights on them? :)
We’ll finish this story with a short funny video: ”Making mocap for Elven Legacy.”
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