Ha. At the science animation day yesterday the Taliesin auditorium had only a few dozen people for the later presentations. Today, a guy from EA Games is talking & I can barely get a seat.
EA are moving toward the next generation of gaming by pulling in animators from Disney & ILM. Eamon Butler, a new EA recruit from Disney gave a presentation about animation methods, giving insights into the development of Disney’s next animation film, Chicken Little.
Codemasters are looking in a similar direction & hiring animators, so I guess their next project is to be a character driven first person shooter. They’re really focusing in on facial expressions & methods of animating them in real time, but they’re also applying these techniques to whole body animation.
Havok are developing some amazing fracture physics. Meaning? Next-gen games will see truly destructible buildings, and more realistic destruction of large objects. This stuff looks ace. The demo they used showed a tank destroying the bases of skyscrapers, causing the buildings to come tumbling down, fractures spreading as corners & edges crash to the floor. Fun physics.
Unfortunately the Havok guys couldn’t get some of their videos in their presentation to work. So don’t feel bad if it happens to you. What they did show – characters fluidly walking up stairs, placing a hand on a bannister, eyes following objects or your camera – were very involving & impressive.
The character’s physical reactions to being hit by an object were also markedly improved on anything available today. Demos of this improved ragdoll physics had the audience giving the types of oohs & aahs associated with skateboard crash videos, especially when the character threw itself down some stairs and over walls, & picked itself up again. Its interactions with its virtual world & objects appeared very real & accurate. Very cool.
