Ninja Theory: Uncharted 2 Animation Was "Overdone"

Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades should shut up...
Who's he? .. . Uncharted 2 set the bar, a bar Enslaved isn't touching on any level.
That statement will cost him he's profesional credibility forver.

i believe the same aswell. im not going to lie enslaved is a good game but if u look at the animation when the character jumps from one ledge to another, it doesn't seem that fluid compared to uncharted 2. i also believe they have killed dante, even tho the gameplay mite b good but changing the character design has really pissed me off. its like changing its like changing sonic into a brown hedgehog...it jus doesnt seem right. i just hope the gameplay compensates for the character design cos i loved the original dante

Hi Tameem here. I actually never said the Uncharted 2 animations were overdone. I was asked if hand animation can be overdone. I said "yes, sure and it happens in movies" citing Spiderman. NOT that i thought Uncharted 2's were overdone. This is a misleading and inflamatory headline.

i read that naughty dog did mo-cap and voice acting at the same time.. whys he sayign they do it seperate

All he is doing is reinventing the wheel and making a clone in the process. Who is he to criticize the people who dared to make something brilliant that no other gaming developer has never been attempted

how do we know your "Tameem"? lol, but anyways its good to hear its just a misquote, journalists these days just look to get a quick click rather than a following

And this come's from a company who attempted to make a AAA title and failed. I was so close to buying Heavenly Sword this week...I think I'll refrain. This is equivalent to saying "Way to go Naughty Dog, you set the bar TOO high for the rest of us." Well Ninja Theory...suck it up and try harder.

Motion capture technology isn't as easy and whipping on a black leotard and then go prance on a stage whilst a technician records your performance. No it produce a lot of noise which will distract the usefulness of the data. Furthermore in an action sequence it is a good idea to sometimes exaggerate movement, make it larger than life.

Which is exactly why ND choose to record everything separately, it's good for editing and it's good for giving animations that pow factor that would've otherwise been impossible to act out.

@Tameem

If I were you I wouldn't rely too much on "mocap only" that is what Heavy Rain is all about and the result honestly sucks. The game is good but the poor mocap job is killing some of the acting intensity.
You should always have an animator to check every animation sequence. Even if you rely on a top notch movement algorithm, the human eye is your best tool for animation. As the Human hear is always the best tool for sound.
And about spiderman ... we might have different sources but they did had animators to recalibrate some of the mocap.

@Tameem - thanks for clarifying Tameem. And I can vouch for the fact that this is actually Tameem Antoniades based on the emails we've just exchanged and the clarification we've just printed. :)

@Diago Having played the Enslaved demo, compared to Uncharted 2 the character mocap is tons better - Enslaved has subtlety & nuance in the facial expressions that you just don't see in pretty much every other game. In fact, the last time I recall seeing this level of detail was Heavenly Sword. Yeah, the last Ninja Theory outing

@Patataboy

As far as i know, they didn't use performance capture in Heavy Rain. We always add a human animator's touch to cross ref the data against the on-set video so that we get the nuances right - also our facial solver is one of the best in the business which gives a good starting point for the animators - I'm gonna see if we can release a vid of it in action soon. Without a good solver, it doesn't matter how good the data is - the results will look weird. We basically follow the techniques that Weta believed worked best.

@Tameem

Naughty Dawg does the mo-cap and the voice work on stage at the same time.

***n00b weblink removed*** />
***n00b weblink removed***

@Tameem

First of all it's great to see you take the time to contribute to these forums as well as help set the records straight.

I can understand wanting to capture the audio along side the visuals when you can see the characters face, I think the dialogue between Trip and Monkey at the end of the demo showed this really well. However in Uncharted 2 for example we spent most of the time looking over Mr Drakes shoulder or watching things unfold in front of him. So I can understand capturing assets at different times as it didn't detract from the overall experience.

With enslaved can we expect to see more face time with the characters so that we can get the benefit of performance capture? As I'm assuming that performance capture is a technique that is used in film (as we tend to see more of the characters faces and interactions), is there much difference in cost between the different capture methods?

@Shane

Thanks for the links - I stand corrected. They do capture audio on set. However, it cannot be called performance capture if you are not capturing face which is crucial to the overal dramatic performace.