Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/196542
camera in a motion-capture volume and frame performances from actors on stage applied to digital characters. "They could see the face and body capture altogether and get a feel for the digital characters, Busch says. "They could " frame, play the scene back, and frame again until the camera was where they wanted it. We streamed the shots into Final Cut, so the directors would go to an editorial station, pick the camera angles, and in a matter of five minutes they had ■ FACEWARE'S SOFTWARE finds key features in a face and automatically tracks motion during a performance. a QuickTime file that was the equivalent of an animatic. And that's when the lightbulb went on. That's why we developed Faceware Live. Even just seeing the eyelines helps directors make good decisions for camera position. " Meanwhile, according to Busch, game developers like Rockstar and Sony's Visual Arts Facility are already using virtual production tools. "They see the value of virtual production, he " says. "They get all the animatics locked early. That's how they make their massive games. " cubic motion Tracking, analyzing, retargeting from video "We're not an alternative capture solution, says Gareth Edwards, " director of Cubic Motion. "Our specialty is machine vision. We're good at analyzing video data from whatever source and extracting geometric measurements at a fine level of detail. We can track exactly where that information is and help people map the data onto digital characters. We deliver animation curves on a customer's rig. " The company's primary customers are video game developers. Its ideal customer is one who asks what type of capture technique to use. "We have strong views, Edwards says. "Facial anima" tion is often done back to front. Someone will capture 50 views of a head. It might be useful in certain circumstances, but might not be optimal for what they're trying to get on-screen. We ask whether they're trying to reproduce an actor or create a character driven by an actor. Only then do we start saying what type of capture they need. We can look at a rig, see how a character behaves, and then determine the set of measurements the customer needs. " Edwards gives an extreme example of a character that looks like a crocodile and has a jaw with one degree of freedom. "The character might be photoreal, he says, "but the set of measure" ments you need is small. Knowing what you're trying to produce With clients ranging from game developers to Bollywood studios, CounterPunch's team specializes in building photoreal digital doubles. "In India, there are older actors who can't do action films like they used to, so the studios contract with us to build digital clones," says CPS Owner Andrew Egiziano. "These photoreal digital doubles can live forever. The next wave will be bringing back deceased actors." To build the youthful clones, the studio starts by scanning actors at LightStage, which licensed technology developed at USC/ITC. "Our team comes up with a set of expressions for the actor," says Producer Kay Arutyunyan. "We capture a neutral pose and several expressions, and then build a neutral face and a rig." Prior to CPS, the core team formed the production unit at ImageMetrics, and when ImageMetrics spun off Faceware, they formed CounterPunch Studios. As a result, Faceware is a preferred partner. "Faceware gets us 60 to 70 percent of the way there," Egiziano says. "For films, we build our rig in Maya, and for games, in 3ds Max, and then animate overtop the performance capture." For games, the primary work is creating characters for cut-scenes. "Games have become more realistic," says Producer Jake Fenske. "The companies want to scan in their actors, but the game engine is limited, so we create characters based on the scans, without using the scans." The studio's goal is to populate more mediums with high-end digital characters. "In Bollywood, the whole budget of a film is equivalent to the visual effects part of a Hollywood movie," Arutyunyan says. "Before our studio, they couldn't reach this quality with the budget they had. And our pipeline fits many models – video games, new media, theme-park rides, and commercials. We're looking to expand into these fields." – Barbara Robertson C G W S e p t e mb e r / O c t o b e r 2 013 ■ 13