00:24I'm Todd Pappy, Game Director at God of War Ascension.
00:27What you're about to see is making a video
00:28that we've been shooting over about two plus years.
00:31It gives you a good idea of the inception of an idea
00:34all the way through to the final product.
00:36Keep in mind that this is a work in progress. Enjoy.
00:51Today we're at House of Moves in Culver City
00:53doing what we've dubbed VOMOCAP, VO and motion capture at the same time.
00:59This is the first time we've done the VO MOCAP.
01:02In the past we've done just MOCAP and voice recording completely separate.
01:06I love MOCAP. Love me some MOCAP.
01:09Because the outfits are just hot.
01:10The actors being together and acting out the scene,
01:13having that relationship with each other adds a lot to the scene.
01:17It's more about being able to live whatever in that moment is
01:20through movement and voice.
01:22You know, this is a job where we get to come to work and play every day.
01:26The things that a friend of ours said, the things that used to put them into tension.
01:30Welcome everybody, welcome back.
01:32You walk into this room, quiet room, it's night time and there's a little girl sleeping.
01:37We're actually going to be doing an emotional scene with Kratos.
01:41This is one of the rarest cases, so it's going to be awesome.
01:44I have missed you child.
01:47And one thing I didn't mention before, before you say the line and you're looking at her,
01:51only time you've ever seen you smile.
01:52Smile you got her.
01:53In this one, we're trying to show off a little bit more of his humanity.
01:57Seeing him smile, seeing him kiss his kid, seeing him hug his wife.
02:01After this, he really starts turning into supreme .
02:04I would actually just go, all the evil laws are going to be yours once again.
02:07He's a little bit different guy in this one, I think, which I'm happy about.
02:10It's kind of the last moment of him having any kind of humanity in him.
02:15She has grown.
02:17They don't wait far too long.
02:19It's hard because we haven't really seen the son of Kratos,
02:24so we want to be careful not to lose his character.
02:26I think in that sense, this scene might possibly be the hardest one.
02:31In the game, Kratos ends up in this prison effect on him,
02:34and the Furies who have been kind of infecting his mind
02:36and causing these insanity moments are trying a little bit different tactic
02:39and trying to give him what he wants.
02:41So he's in this blissful illusion where he meets his wife and kid.
02:46He's back to all those skin Kratos and goes and sees the kid.
02:51This kid's sleeping, goes in, gives her a kiss, sees the wife,
02:55has somewhat of an intimate encounter with her.
02:58There's something that Electo does that pulls him out of that.
03:01Something that doesn't feel right.
03:02And then he finally figures out that it's not real,
03:04and he's more interested in knowing what the truth is.
03:13This is the master bit. This is where he makes love to his wife.
03:17The moment she does this, you no longer go for her anymore.
03:22But everything else is so awesome.
03:23When you're working on a computer, everything's so planned.
03:25You have to know exactly what you want.
03:28A lot of times, actors bring in something of their own
03:30that just makes that scene that much better.
03:44One of the best parts is they work with other actors.
03:47It's like theater.
03:48And we can play in an imaginary world
03:50because nothing's really there.
03:53I try to push them interacting with each other more on wants
03:57to try to get that emotion through TC's acting as well as his voice.
04:01I will never return to Lord Ares. Never!
04:07Do you see? I love that. The holes.
04:09Yeah, with the hand.
04:11Very good.
04:13The odd part is over, Spider.
04:15Jennifer stood out as she had the right voice for it.
04:18It was soldiering.
04:19And out of all the theories, that's what we were looking for,
04:21for Electo and being able to do the wife as well
04:25and sell those intimate encounters better.
04:36I'm crazy, first of all.
04:38And so it's not really acting.
04:41It's just I can picture all these things happening around
04:43and I can picture myself looking this way.
04:44So that's my only advantage, I think, is that I'm certifiably insane.
04:49Scene seven, take one.
04:50Roll sound.
04:51Sound speed.
04:52T-pose.
04:52Roll video.
04:53Camera speed.
04:54Roll mocap.
04:55Mocap speed.
04:55Mark it.
04:56Mark.
04:56License.
04:57Action.
04:58This is not the matter to discuss it.
05:00When we started looking for our ghosts, we did multiple sessions and found Troy.
05:05For me, he had the proper delivery and also regalness to his voice.
05:10Troy fit the bill.
05:11The theories are near.
05:13They cannot know I speak with you.
05:16I will draw them away.
05:18The truth waits for you in Delphi, Kratos.
05:22Seek the Oracle.
05:23This story is so good.
05:26And the writing is brilliant.
05:27And the characters are so established that we got to try really hard to fail.
05:32And what path is that?
05:34Do not let illusion deceive you.
05:36Then this is what you shall have.
05:39Of all the minds in question, mind is not the one you worry about.
05:43Use these items to steal your mind, Kratos.
05:46Freedom from your bond to the god of war himself.
05:50Troy, TC, and Jin did a great job.
05:53We got the voice direction the way I wanted it.
05:55And so, I'm very happy with it.
05:59It's been a really fun experience.
06:01You know, you got to learn a lot.
06:04It's fantastic to be a working actor.
06:06This is like heaven.
06:09It's cool.
06:10I mean, I really would like to do more of this.
06:12I'm excited to get it back to the studio and see it all come together.
06:21We got a lot of great performance from our actors, and now it's time to implement it.
06:28When we received the raw motion capture data, oftentimes the characters aren't quite aligned properly.
06:34Usually, like, say one person has to shake another person's hand, the hands might be a little bit off.
06:39There's no face.
06:40They just have just deadpan puppet face.
06:42And we have to add in all the eye blinks and darts, all the mouth talking and emotion and eyebrows
06:48and everything.
06:48We do get pretty good fidelity with just the basic body.
06:53But every once in a while, maybe the actor didn't give us quite the performance we wanted.
06:57Maybe Kratos didn't look manly enough.
06:59Maybe the wife didn't look wifey enough.
07:01So you go in and finesse the acting as well.
07:04So this is the video reference that we get back from the motion capture suit.
07:08That's Kratos' actor and the wife.
07:10I'll use this to get a sense of, well, where was her hand on his shoulder?
07:15What are the fingers doing?
07:16So when we get the motion capture data back, it's mapped onto these joints, which is kind of the skeleton
07:21of a character.
07:22Each joint is getting data about translation or rotation based on what the actor was doing at the time.
07:28This is Kratos and the wife doing their thing.
07:33On top of the rig, we have the characters that get mapped onto these joints.
07:38From there, we have these controls that we can put on.
07:43These controls are what I can actually use and manipulate the animation like this.
07:47Move him around, adjust his arms or whatever.
07:50So I will often take this data, copy it into my scene with the environment, and then start adjusting his
07:57hands or his torso to make it look a little better.
08:00Maybe that hand isn't quite, they're not looking quite real, like they're actually holding hands, so I may end up
08:08moving her arm or his arm to make it look a little more realistic.
08:12So this scene has quite a lot of dialogue in it, but when we get the motion capture data back,
08:17it's not there, there's no audio, and you can see the mouths aren't moving, there's no facial animation happening.
08:22So what I will do, I'll bring it into my scene.
08:25So within my scene, we have these sliders where you can control his eyes, his eyebrows, or his mouth, and
08:39make these phonemes, which are basically the mouth shapes for when he's talking.
08:44So if I move this slider up and down, you can see his mouth is opening, and this is all
08:48done by hand, it's not part of the motion capture data.
08:50It is not real!
08:52Here we have a video reference just on TC's face that we can study.
08:55I can really see the details of every blink and every mouth shape.
09:00It's very difficult to get subtle nuances when you're animating by hand without doing a lot of effort and work.
09:06For these emotional scenes, we wanted to get that subtlety, and in a game production, it's just we don't have
09:11time to spend getting all those nuances by hand.
09:15So the motion capture really helps save us some time.
09:17Your mind is troubled, but your skills are still without equal.
09:24Do you have business with me?
09:27I have been away far too long.
09:31You can see her in the morning.
09:33Go.
09:35Go.
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