Ride 'em, (digital) cowboy: No detail too small for dev team of upcoming western game
The developers of the soon-to-be-released western-themed Red Dead Redemption used extensive motion capture sequences to fine-tune their animations of the many horses that will feature in the game, according to a report from Gamespot.
Rockstar San Diego art director Josh Bass told the gaming news publication that getting the motion capture sequences correct was "an adventure of its own," despite working with a horse that had featured on-camera many times before. The increased detail - which includes painstaking modeling and animation down to the level of individual muscles - should show up clearly on modern flat-screen monitors, HDTVs, and HDMI projectors.
Bass told Gamespot that "research came from live, image, and film studies, as well as a state-of-the-art motion capture recording, breaking movement down to five common states that translate best into in-game motion: idle, walk, trot, canter/lope, and gallop."
Modern motion-capture animation is an increasingly common feature in video games, whose budgets continue to grow. In some cases, big-name video games rival Hollywood movies in production value.
