The gaming industry has done an impressive job throughout the 7th generation of consoles in bringing facial animation to an entirely new level. When you think back about how impressed you were with the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox, it’s almost mind blowing to see how far we’ve come. Lately, L.A. Noire has been receiving compliment after compliment when it has come to Rockstars latest usage of facial animation, however, Bungie may have something to say about that as it teams up with Image Metrics for its next IP.
According to Bungie’s Creative Director, Marcus Lehto, “Creating realistic facial animation is a critical component to bringing believable, character-driven performances to life…”
“Creating realistic facial animation is a critical component to bringing believable, character-driven performances to life for our next studio project. FACEWARE lets us raise our extremely high quality bar and maintain the ultra fast turnaround times and animator efficiency we need without impacting our existing pipeline. No other tool gives us this level of flexibility and control.”
Image Metrics CEO, Michael Starkenburg, is excited to be teaming up alongside Bungie. After all, the facial animation technology that Image Metrics has created is world renowned for its inclusion in AAA video games of the past as well as Oscar winning films and Grammy winning music videos.
“Image Metrics has used FACEWARE for years to create believable facial animation at all levels of quality. The technology has been proven repeatedly, whether on AAA game titles, Oscar-winning films, and Grammy-winning music videos. We are excited to put this powerful tool in the hands of world-class developers like Bungie, so that they can benefit from the reduced production schedules, increased believability, and cost savings Image Metrics has always provided through our technology.”
We’ve included a trailer below that shows off Faceware, the Image Metrics technology and it’s quite impressive indeed. I can’t wait to see it utilized in Bungie’s upcoming project which is still yet to be revealed.
I did an animation degree at university so I know some stuff about facial animation, it was a painstaking process. Great to see its coming on so much further.
It’s great to see devs push each other to be the best. Still think MotionScan is more impressive, but we’ll see. The sort of innovation that Bungie and Rockstar are showing further shows that we don’t need new consoles for at least 3-4 years. Although I expect to hear something regarding the “X720” and “PS4” around 2013.