Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/26447
n n n n Animation lems of a boxing game—all wrapped up in one title” says Sherr. Because MMA fighting involves such a wide variety of moves, they all had to be incorporated into the game, along with subsets of those moves. “You wouldn’t believe how quickly that can balloon up into a massive volume of animation,” he adds. Smooth Moves With the focus on realism, it was impera- tive that the characters move realistically and logically, despite the unpredictability resulting from so many movement options. Moreover, the fighters have to move independently of each other but still react to each other’s movements in a plausible way. Accomplishing these am- bitious animation goals, particularly between characters of different sizes and proportions, required believable contact between the char- acters. To this end, one of the groundbreaking developments in the game was the introduc- tion of Relative IK (RIK), which uses a com- bination of HumanIK and MotionBuilder to forge complex relationships between the char- acters. Its use was twofold: to solve player-size scaling issues (it will adjust how player contact works depending on the size and girth of the opponents) and to prevent a player from los- ing control of the character (it will enable the characters to fight simultaneously by adding multiple layers of animation onto the charac- ters using the Photoshop-like methodology). When the MMA opponents connect physi- cally, that contact has to be precise—no easy feat when the characters can vary greatly in size and girth. Tis issue was resolved with non- uniform scaling, which involves changing the length of a character’s limbs and joints to con- vey different body sizes and proportions, and then applying the animations to the scaling rig using HumanIK. Te player’s target joints—key points on the body that move according to body type—are linked to the surface of the skin, allowing the animators to grab or punch positions on the body that are on the surface and totally inde- pendent of the girth of the fighter. “So if the character’s stomach or chest becomes larger, 16 January/February 2011 The title features various venues, many of which are modeled after actual locales in the US and abroad. The game characters follow the fighting rules and styles dictated by the virtual country hosting the event. we can still stretch the actual surface of the skin,” explains Sherr. Unlike most other fight games, MMA en- ables players to maintain control of a character during two-player animation situations while still having single-player interactions align with the other fighter—all without incurring cosmetic issues. For instance, if you are be- ing grappled or pinned, typically you cannot fight back. But the two-person animation in MMA enables the characters to fight simulta- neously—so if you are being pinned, you can still punch your opponent and land crushing blows. “Te fighters still could punch and do all the things they normally could do indepen- dently of one another, but now they could do it at the same time as the opponent did.” Once the animators developed a polished, two-man animation, they devised all the im- portant contact relationships between the fighters. “Te fact that HumanIK is integrated into both ANT and MotionBuilder is a huge plus for us because the interoperability is es- sentially seamless,” says Sherr. “I can go into MotionBuilder and add auxiliary effectors on one fighter and parent them to his opponent. For instance, if I am grabbing him by the head, twisting his arm, rolling him over, I can create auxiliary effectors for those contacts, all of which makes transitioning between those positions more realistic.” Tose auxiliary ef- fectors are then exported with the animation, along with each effector’s location relative to the joint to which it is parented. Another way the team was able to get the CG characters to anticipate and react like skilled fighters was through procedural awareness, de- veloped for EA Sports’ FIFA Soccer franchise, which eliminates what Sherr describes as the “dead cow stare” typically found in most fight- ing games. “Using procedural awareness, we can give our characters a lot more personality,” he says. “With eyeball tracking, we can fine- tune how each body will react to a specified target in space as the eye follows it.” Lastly, the animators used HumanIK to de- velop realistic foot pinning to determine pre- cisely where and how each fighter’s foot would be planted for a particular move. A Champion is Crowned With a totally committed team, defeat in the form of a mediocre game was not an option. In all, the crew spent nearly two and a half years in full-time production—more than double the time a team usually gets at EA— making sure it delivered a product of which they could be proud. “When we started this, we convinced EA that we had to do it right, and that it would take time,” says Sherr. “We wanted a small team who would work on it for a long time, and that is what Peter [Moore] gave us. He was dedicated to the idea that this was going to be EA’s next triple-A title. It’s not every day that you launch a new sports fran- chise, but we didn’t want to release a game that felt like a first-year title.” Over the development time, the crew ex- panded from a dozen people to close to 70 at the end. “I’ve never worked on a game where we have been able to apply this level of polish,” Sherr adds. And throughout that time, the crew had kept their eyes on the ultimate prize. “Ev- erything I have done with EA to date since I started in 2003 was with this game in the back of my mind,” relays Sherr. “I am very proud of what we have done with MMA, and even more excited about where we are going next with it.” Without question, though, it will be the game players who will be the real winners as they step into the virtual arena for a truly Use your smart- phone to read related story on how the fighters were created. unique MMA experience. n Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of Computer Graphics World.