After 2 weeks off relentlessly plugging away at RE5 it has fallen
Having finally completed everything I took some time to watch the Making of Documentary that came with the special edition. RE5 has some really good production values and some of the techniques they used for making the cutscenes I’d never heard of before but were really awesome
- realtime motion capture, so the movements processed realtime and there’s a preview screen with the in game engine showing the movements of the actors
- previzualization, sort of like a moving storyboard for the director to be able to visualize his concept before they actually start fully committing to it. For RE5 they used a combination of live action for the actors, superimposed on the game CG cutscenes, which the final product looks almost exactly like
- virtual camera, so after all the motion capture is done and ported into the game, they set up a virtual camera in the scene which can be moved around in real life using some kind mock camera in real life with a monitor so the director can pick the camera angles as though they were filming live action
All this reminded me of Hideo Kojima’s talk at GDC where he mentioned using good game design and technology to overcome impossible barriers. He also mentioned that Japenese developers mainly rely on good design while the west had access to superior technology. It’s good to see developers like Jun and Hideo embrace the west use it to make the best game they can.