Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/6960
February 2010 33 also used facial capture for the first time. "We typically hand-animate our face movements, but for this game, we wanted a little less of an exaggerated, stylized facial animation style. We wanted more of a humanistic motion," notes Lesser. e facial capture also was performed at Cu- rious with the Vicon system, albeit in a much smaller 18-camera capture volume to pick up more detail. Rather than import the data into 3ds Max, the animators decided to use Maya instead, marking the first project for which Harmonix used that software. Lesser states, "Curious has been a longtime partner of ours, and their facial-capture specialists were writing their tools in Maya. It made sense for us to delve into that software so that we could achieve the highest-quality results as soon as possible." According to Randall, when each of the band members sang, their faces moved in unique ways—for instance, George tended to sing out the side of his mouth. While the facial capture gave the animators a good starting-off point, they still had to do extensive tweaking "to add that 'Beatles thing' to each of the characters." To accommodate the facial-capture data, the team had to ensure that the generic facial capture that they applied to their models actu- ally fit the virtual Beatles' faces. New anima- tion rigs had to be set up since the group was using Maya for the first time. According to Matheson, the biggest chal- lenge the Harmonix artists faced was making sure the characters exuded the charm and per- sonality of "four of the most beloved musical artists ever." While this was an aesthetic chal- lenge, it also became a technical challenge. "We went to great lengths to get body and face motion capture that 'felt' right for each of the guys. But even so, we spent a lot of time hand- adjusting the face positions and movements to get it just right," he says. e new techniques also gave the artists more control over the animation than they have ever had before. For instance, they were able to add more apparent joyfulness in the faces. ey also had more control over the characters' positions and postures on stage, and were able to use normal maps to create exaggerated expressions. "is all added up to an incredible amount The game artists used Autodesk's 3ds Max and Pixologic's ZBrush to re-create The Beatles characters. The game developer chose a stylized look, keeping in tune with the aesthetic used for Harmonix's other music video game titles.