New developments in animation production for video games (panel session)

The booming videogame industry is currently making a dramatic move from modest, low end production techniques to state-of-the-art computer animation frontiers such as 3D character animation. Video games is driving the development of new animation techniques such as motion capture and adapting cinematic production techniques as Hollywood and Silicon Valley merge. Through presentations and demonstrations by the midwives of these dramatic developments, animators, producers, and directors will gain practical insight about the special demands of videogames animation and how new production techniques are being developed and adapted. Description Interactive entertainment overall is a rapidly expanding area with a great requirement for creative intervention and sophisticated computer graphics: a good target for SIGGRAPH conference focus. Videogame development is the largest and most established component of the interactive entertainment field. The videogame industry has only very recently come into focus for many people in the computer graphics field and has certainly not figured much at all in SIGGRAPH venues and events. Yet, this industry is driving much of the technology development in computer animation. The production segment of the SIGGRAPH audience will benefit from information about new animation production techniques being applied to this large job market. Why this special panel focusing on videogames and not just generic production show-and-tell on these topics? Because a) the application of existing techniques in videogames development requires major adaptations and b) videogames are driving the development of many new techniques and technologies. Video game production has all the complexity of linear-media animation production, but the animation must then interface with interactive software and be displayed in real-time on low cost platform hardware. Non-linear content presents different challenges than linear content. Platform hardware, whether arcade, consumer cartridge, or PC/ CDR OM, changes regularly and frequently. All these factors introduce additional and demanding requirements to animation design and execution which must be discussed within the context of videogame animation production to be understood. Here are some of the primary topics to be considered: 3D Graphics, 3D Character Animation, and Motion Capture Video game development is moving quickly from exclusively 2D into 3D computer graphics, from low-end to high end technologies, and from proprietary to production standard software. Low-end and limited only a couple of years ago, the videogames industry is emerging as a primary developer and user of motion capture and 3D character animation, both state-of-the-art computer animation techniques. Evolution of Production Techniques and Animator Roles How exactly were videogame graphics designed and produced in the past? As we work to define and master new production techniques and adapt them to videogames, how does the role of the animator change? Adaptation of Cinematic and Special Effects Production Techniques Inspired by market scale and encouraged by advances in data compression, Hollywood has turned to video games as another publishing dimension and now, cinematic production techniques are now being adapted to videogames development. Future of Interactive Entertainment Authoring The demands of interactive entertainment media authoring and an increasingly competitive market are stimulating innovations in HOW such games designers and animators work. Reminiscent of the introduction in the 1980's of user interface toolkits and management systems, digital media development is embarking on an era of high level authoring environments, sophisticated assets management, and game prototyping environments. Paul D. Lewis: Applying and Adapting High-End Computer FX Production Techniques to Videogames Our current videogame projects have all the content development complexity of a high-end film FX facility, with a considerably reduced schedule and with the additional requirement to interface with interactive software in real-time display. The subject of my talk will be the problems and opportunities of combining these domains. The videogame development process is different from that of conventional special effects in many ways and comparing the two is instructive. The development process for conventional media such as movies mirrors the resulting linear product. In the same way, the videogame development process mirrors the dynamic, non-linear, interactive resulting product. In film, you carve out a plan of what you want and fill it with work, but in coin-op videogame development someone (the market) is digging a trench that constantly changes depth and direction. Film aims for a finely tuned product presented to a passive audience. The audience response may vary but the film is predictable. The character of a videogame changes based upon the player's participation. Content development for games requires producing not just the artwork for one path, but all of the possible paths allowed and how to transition smoothly between them all arbitrarily. The content development process for film is relatively well understood and established while game format and interaction, not to mention production techniques and platform capabilities, may change with each new product. Content volume and schedule are other areas of contrast. A film action sequence might have 30 FX shots, where a typical fighting game will have 1200-1500 moves, or shots. Film production from concept to delivery might be 4 years or more, where game development cycles need to be 16 months or less to be cost effective and stay in tune with audience trends. As different as film FX and videogame graphics production are, one of the primary challenges of the expanding field of "interactive entertainment" is to successfully combine them. There are many motivating factors. Videogames are subject to the movie and television trained audience expectations of photorealism, character expressiveness, and overall graphics sophistication and complexity. Production and delivery technologies as well as professional expertise are now migrating freely across all these linear and non-linear realms in response to market opportunities. We embarked upon applying state-of-the art animation technology to video game projects, only to discover that it needed to be expanded and extended yet further to meet our requirements. Some requirements were in the areas of shared databases and work practices, computer supported cooperative work, parallel distributed processing, prototyping pipelines, production tracking, and assets management.