Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/26447
Animation n n n n employed for building the prototype. For MMA, though, the team had to build even more tools. “It’s the first game EA has made where we can do simultaneous two- person animation. Tat was a big part of what we had to create with our technology for this game to work,” says Sherr. “We upped the qual- ity of the two-player interaction system to allow for independent movement and interaction.” Te key to MMA’s success is the realism of the action. Tere is a sense of complete and consistent contact between the fighters: Tey move independent from each other but react to each other’s movements in strikingly real- istic ways. Muscles twitch and flex during action; they ripple and undulate when hit. And, in a unique move, there is no “roll of the dice” anywhere in the game—that is, random numbers will not determine fight outcomes. “When you win a fight, we want you to win MMA fighters from around the globe; also in- cluded is a customizable fighter. And, just like in the real world, each league from around the globe has its own setting that will dramatically change how fights play out—whether they are in a ring versus a cage, and so forth. Te same holds true for the fighters themselves. Because they are based on real-life people, those fighters’ styles and capabilities are integrated into their virtual alter ego. “Tere are some fighters who are really good at staying on their feet, and they force their opponents to fight standing up. Or, there are some who are good on the ground, and they force some of the most dangerous strikers in the world to spend an entire fight on the mat,” says Sherr. “We have taken that same approach and integrated that strategy into the game, with tactical feedback given to the player to steer them in the right direction.” deformation, fix shoulders, twist forearm joints, and perform all the “extras,” such as chest jiggle. Te crew used the base MotionBuilder rig, the HumanIK rig, to move the characters within MotionBuilder and within the game it- self. “Te animation rig we animate on is the out-of-the-box MotionBuilder rig,” explains Sherr. “Te animation skeleton has the default MotionBuilder joint set, and we added on top of it a set of target joints. When we bring the animation rig into our game, we have it broken up into non-hierarchical sub-rigs. So we started with the bones we move manually—shoulders, knees, elbows—and move on from there.” As Sherr explains, the entire game is driven by the animation systems rather than specific code. “Tat’s what makes it so unique. We use game-state scripting to build complex be- haviors, animation branches, triggers, and so forth,” he says. it. And when you lose, we want you to know what you did wrong and what you could have done better,” Sherr says. “You are not a victim to a random dice roll.” Sherr notes that there are many simulation games on the market that actually simulate the results. “We discussed the differences between a simulation and a simulator; we wanted a simulator, which allows the users to feel like they are in complete control and can do any- thing they want to do, including the wrong things. We will teach them what they are do- ing wrong, rather than force players into doing only the believable things that a well-trained fighter would do.” As a result, a player’s personal strategy is dic- tated by the skills and attributes of the fighters being used, as well as the player’s own abilities, reflexes, and reaction times. Tis, in turn, deter- mines which fighters the player will have more success with during matches. “Te fighting can be brutal, but it is very strategic and cerebral. You need to play to your strengths and your op- ponents’ weaknesses,” Sherr points out. Te characters that ship with the game are digital doubles of real-life, triple-A league The artists and animators relied on ANT, EA’s universal middleware engine. ANT contains a modular animation framework for which an EA team can develop specific plug-ins for their particular title. Fighting with Character Each game character is created primarily in Autodesk’s Maya and animated using Auto- desk’s MotionBuilder. “We start and end in MotionBuilder,” Sherr says of the software. “Te tool is animation’s equivalent to Photo- shop. It gives animators complete control over posing and timing. We start the animation process with motion capture, but for us, it’s almost like shooting visual reference.” Tat motion capture was acquired using a Vicon system set up at EA Canada as well as at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Acad- emy (FIEA), located at the University of Cen- tral Florida campus in Orlando. Te group also used a portable mocap suit from Xsens, which proved especially useful during the prototyping phase, for secondary movements, and for the referees. Te mocap data was filtered through MotionBuilder and then exported to ANT. Te character skeletons comprise just un- der 100 joints, in addition to hyper-corrective joints: sets of 20-plus joints used to do muscle Te game contains 900 states, or individual movements a character can perform. Tose states are pressed down into three distinctive modes: stand up, clinch, and ground, which in turn are broken up into smaller states. EA’s locomotion system handles things like direc- tional changes, character fatigue, and so on, which are then layered on top of the anima- tion. “It is like Photoshop, with a layers system used to mask alpha channels, only here it is a way to mask different skeletal joints, layer- ing in animation either through adding, over- riding, or blending,” explains Sherr. ANT manages all those layered interactions to create the final frames—no small job con- sidering there are thousands of animations in the game. “Animation-wise, we are officially the largest animation game that EA makes,” Sherr proudly points out. Sporting so many animations, however, comes with some major challenges. “We have all the problems of a wrestling game, all the problems of a fighting game, and all the prob- January/February 2011 15