Another showcasing of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’s motion capture technology is here although none of this will make it into the final version of Hellblade even though it should
Hopefully by now you’ve seen some of the amazing footage of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice‘s motion capture technology that was crafted just for this game. Ninja Theory has shown it off a few times to show what can be done in a relatively small space and without the use of all the crazy face painting and physical impairments that need to be cleaned up later. It is quite impressive and it will definitely be one of the bigger selling points for Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for those who have not already fallen in love with the core gameplay shown or the story being told. The only way I could be more hyped right now is if there was a solid release date for this PS4 and PC title, but I’m guessing E3 will be when we get that reveal.
Moving along, given that this is the month of Hellblade over at Game Informer we have a lot of new videos and information to dig through to see how the game is coming along. We had some gameplay earlier in the week and now we have a fun look at the aforementioned tech being used to capture all of the in-game animations for the characters. Only this time it isn’t a look at anything that will be in Hellblade at the end; well, outside of the character models and the actress portraying the titular character being in the shots.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice — Pushing The Mocap Process To Its Limits
In this exclusive video, Ninja Theory‘s creative director Tameem Antoniades shows off the real-time mocap technology that the team built for Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice by suiting up Game Informer’s Ben Reeves to play an NPC character interacting with Senua’s actress Melina Juergens. It’s a strange ride.
Every time I see this technology in the works from Hellblade I am floored at where we have arrived in the industry. While there would need to be a little bit of clean up to the scenes we saw above given the way Senua’s mouth moved and the distance between some of the models even when the real-world counterparts were touching, it is still so close that it could make AAA titles like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice to be developed by many other smaller studios. If memory serve, Ninja Theory is still under 30 people and we can see what they have done so far. Hopefully it will be available for more developers and easy for them to integrate when all is said and done.
What do you think about the motion capture tech that Hellblade is going to bring the industry in the long run? Given what is out there already, do you think that the tech has been updated and working even smoother than we’ve seen here? Do you think it will be a cost effective way for many other studios, gaming or not, to use or will they stick to the other tried and true methods? Let us know down in the comments what you are thinking and then discuss. As more for Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is uncovered and shown off, we will have it here. Stay locked into the site so you can see and experience all of it as it comes.