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Gaming n n n n to carefully plan out their work with the rig- ging and cinematics teams to ensure the pieces behaved correctly (without intersections) and looked as good as possible. Mocap Method Acting To drive the characters' animations, riggers built an IK skeleton using a basic 3ds Max bi- ped rig that was augmented with additional fa- cial bones. "Because we also have to deal with a lot of motion capture, we built a version of this IK setup that runs in MotionBuilder— the primary work space for motion-capture- based animation," says lead animator Zafer Coban. Unlike Arkham Asylum, in which ani- mators relied heavily on normal-map blend- ing for delicate deformations in subtle facial expressions, this time Rocksteady wanted to push the range in the performances by relying more on mocap. "The primary difference between the two games relate to Batman's face and face setup," says Coban. "Primarily, we wanted to enhance his performances and those of all the characters by developing a facial motion-capture pipeline whereby face actors would repeat the lines of the original voice actors [like Mark Hamill or Kevin Conroy, who plays Batman], providing facial acting in the process." This necessitated a more highly articulated facial rig, granting a much larger and more accurate range of pos- sible motion. In more than 200 motion-capture sessions, Rocksteady shot a total of 14 hours of facial data and 17 hours of body motion for the in-game animation (excluding the hours shot for cinematic sequences). In fact, every single character's animation set includes some mo- tion capture. The motion-capture setup at Rocksteady is an optical, marker-based Vicon system com- prising 32 cameras. The team uses Vicon's Blade software to capture and process the initial data. "We have a solution that ensures good, sturdy data is baked onto the skeleton within Blade before moving things on to the next stage in MotionBuilder," says animation programmer Tim Rennie. Here, animators can take the original, actor-scale performance and drive the final in-game character setup. Tweaks and embellishments to the perfor- mance happen in MotionBuilder, but much of the final animation is keyframed in 3ds Max, which is the final destination before ex- port to the engine. "We produced about 45 minutes of final fa- cial capture for most characters, during which time our facial actors match their voices to the original actors' performances," says Rennie. This involved a complex process in which the facial actor would repeat 10-second clips until we had a perfect, fully synced performance. These clips would be captured with their correct time code so they could be reassembled in MotionBuilder. In MotionBuilder, animators would use video reference from the capture to combine every- thing—marker data, hand-tweakable controls, and automatic correction scripts—to drive the final performance. The resulting facial anima- tion could then be merged separately onto the body capture within the Unreal Engine without the animators having to worry about breaking the sync to the final audio. Along with facial capture, the facial ani- mation system also employs OC3 Entertain- ment's FaceFX, depending on the importance and complexity of the scene. Using blend- shape targets in a fully articulated FaceFX rig, animators could keyframe expressive eye ani- mations or subtle facial tweaks to punctuate a particular body movement, polishing very quickly hundreds of lines of dialog. "In addi- tion, we also constructed a hassle-free pipeline to quickly embed FaceFX animations onto body animations for all in-game movements," says Rennie. Small mercy in a game with 100- plus unique faces to animate, excluding weight variants, like the fat or thin. Feline Finesse While Batman remains the story's main hero, for about 10 percent of the game, the player can slip into the sleek, skin-tight leather of Catwoman. Armed with a whip and bolo, Cat woman exploits the chaos in Arkham City to go on a kleptomaniacal rampage, thieving jewels and valuables like there's no tomorrow. In her first mission, to steal an orchid for Poi- son Ivy, she glides lithely across rooftops and alights upon some unsuspecting Tyger secu- rity guards standing over a manhole cover— her access point to a maze of sewers leading to a vault. Inside, she performs her signature "ceiling climb," dropping down on guards to pickpocket their keys. When the alarm blares, she unloads with a flurry of fluid roundhouse leg kicks that would daze Batman with their blinding speed and grace. In designing Catwoman's gameplay, Rock- steady's first objective was to make sure players did not feel like they were guiding a curvier version of Batman. This entailed a wholesale reworking of the rigging and weighting of the standard IK chain, enabling greater speed and flexibility in her animations. "Catwoman's rig is, of course, unique to her. Artists baked most of the facial details into the normal maps, and then used ZBrush and Photoshop to paint diffuse, specular, and specular power maps to simulate subsurface scattering through the skin and veins. She's a lot slimmer, shorter, and has a bunch of bespoke controls for her whip," says Co- ban. "As soon as we decided to include Cat- woman as a playable character, we wanted the gamer to have a totally new experience of the Arkham City world, not a re-skin of any sort. With combat, we've taken our influences from acrobats, gymnasts, and ballerinas to bring a unique flavor to her fighting style. We've con- centrated on legwork more, and left the hard- hitting, brutal punches to Batman himself. For example, Coban says, when Batman hits, the impact registers with sheer, blunt- force trauma, whereas Catwoman's attacks, while less impactful, are faster, more agile, athletic. "We played with those elements, and it really shows during combat. Players will par- ticularly appreciate this unique legwork in her Stealth Predator gameplay, where she'll flip up onto a thug's shoulders, wrap her legs around his arms and head, and choke him out with those long, hardened legs." Everything from Catwoman's gadgets to her navigational skills is custom-made for the feline fatale. "She doesn't have the Grapnel December 2011/January 2012 45